Boneyard Read online

  BONEYARD

  D. M. DARROCH

  ISBN 978-1-890797-26-3

  Copyright © 2022 by D.M. Darroch

  * * *

  www.dmdarroch.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States by Sleepy Cat Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Requests to publish work from this book should be sent to: [email protected]

  Books by D.M. Darroch

  Silvanus Saga

  Canopy

  * * *

  Inventor-in-Training series

  The Pirate’s Booty

  The Crystal Lair

  Cyborgia

  * * *

  For young children

  No, No, Nora

  Nora and the Lake Monster

  For Johnny O

  Contents

  The Present

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  The Present

  The Present

  I look at her.

  I’m not sure which eye to focus on. Both together, they make my head hurt. Not a hurt like an alarm headache, but a sort of dizziness, like she’s hypnotizing me, controlling me somehow. Except I’m more in control than I’ve ever been. Also, I’m not.

  Her eyes are steady, unafraid, curious. She sits on the ground, legs curled beneath her like she’s sprouted from the forest floor. Relaxed yet alert, her body is ready for anything, afraid of nothing. I am distinctly aware of her.

  She is not beautiful like my Rajani. Not colorful and elfin. Not dangerous in that unpredictable way.

  She is not delicate like Ami. Not gentle or timid. Not nurturing and tender.

  And yet, there’s something about her.

  I see her.

  All this time, I’m sizing her up. She’s doing the same.

  She sees me.

  I decide to face it all. And I tell her everything.

  Chapter One

  It’s always the last job that gets you.

  If you worked the Hill long enough and paid attention, you would know about the slingers who were planning to quit, done with the after-curfew deals, about to go straight. The ones who were going to do one last job, one last sale, one last pick up. Those who stayed in the game one deal too long. The slingers that disappeared.

  If you paid attention, you’d know when it was time to quit the business. You convinced yourself you differed from those other slingers. The ones who got caught.

  One last job. I only needed one more job to top up my savings and have enough crypto to pay for my trip home. One last collection. Then I’d return to the shallows, get myself a little float. One last walk on the dark side of First City. Then I would put the dust slinging behind me, pick up a kelp fork, and take care of my mother. One last visit to Rajani before I joined the kelp farmers. I would make Ami proud. One last deal, and I’d be free.

  I was late for the pick up. I cut across the central park to reach the hill where Rajani and the other dustrats lived. Concrete covered the entire park; its inhospitable surface prevented rough sleeping. I tightened the drawstrings of my sweatshirt to cover my nose; the light-transmitting pavement reeked of chemicals. Prompted by my neural mesh, the sidewalk glowed on as I walked past, dotting a path through the darkness.

  The message packets had been spliced into the automated curfew alert. I hadn’t recognized the coded signature, which in retrospect should have been a clue, but the money was decent. The sender had arranged a pick up at Rajani’s, and I figured, if they were in business with her, they’d pay as promised. She’d been slinging dust a long time, had bought my stash when I’d turned up in First City. It was Rajani who had taught me the street value of a bottle of Axon pills after I’d escaped from care with the clothes on my back and whatever I could fit into a pillowcase. She showed me how to survive on the Hill and had introduced me to the slingers and dusters who’d become my people. I had moved on from slinging and I was collecting now, bringing cash from the slingers to their suppliers. Though I’d moved beyond Rajani, I kept her close. I’d miss her when I went north. Even though she rejected my romantic advances—either she didn’t like men or she didn’t like me or the dust was all the lover she’d ever need—she was family to me.

  She was sexy as hell, and because a part of me still hoped for a thing with her, my judgment was off. I didn’t know the supplier who’d sent the message, which was unusual. Collections were usually a routine thing. I picked up payments from the same slingers, delivered them to the same dead drops. A few hours later, my crypto account filled. Occasionally, my mesh would get a transmission, additional pick ups or requests for a communication with a specific slinger. I’d never consider heading into the streets after curfew to collect for some unknown supplier.

  But then, I’d never received a transmission from a strange supplier. And this one knew Rajani. She avoided the shadiest of suppliers. If this one was paying for a collection from Rajani, they were probably legit. I could ask Rajani when I got there. It would be fine. Besides, it gave me an excuse to see her before I went north. Remember, the money was decent. I needed a little more to pad my bank account. It would be my very last job. The very last one. No more after that.

  Jogging around the corner at 13th, I pulled the hood of my black sweatshirt off my head. I shook out my bleached hair and dug my fingers into my sweat-tickled scalp. The air was humid and cloying and my jeans and sweatshirt, the uniform of the after-curfew collector, stuck to my skin. Soon, I’d be in the shallows again, feeling the gentle breeze off the water, dangling my feet from a float into kelp-filled waters. I could break curfew one more time, make a collection one more time. Maybe Rajani would let me kiss her, just once, my going-away gift.

  Rajani’s hole was five blocks down on H Street. And it was literally a hole; a set of steps below the street led to her door. Bars covered her windows on the outside, sheets of paper covered her windows on the inside. I’d known her three months before she’d trusted me enough to tell me where she lived. I always thought it helped that I wasn’t a duster; she knew I wouldn’t steal her stash. No, I’d had plenty of those Axon
pills when I was in care, when they were testing their drugs on me. No way I’d choose to snort the powder from those pills, not that I judged anyone else’s choices. After all, those choices were paying my way back home.

  When I got there, H Street was empty. That should have tipped me off. I was overeager to see Rajani; maybe that’s why I ignored so many warning signs. The optical fibers on the street had burned out; First City had never replaced them, not as long as I’d lived there. Cost-cutting measures or maybe the city leaders didn’t want to know, not exactly, what happened there. As long as the throwaways kept to themselves, the city left them alone. Except tonight, no one was on the street. I wondered if a patrol had come through earlier and scattered the dustrats to their holes? Even the stairways to the underground apartments were clear of rough sleepers. Where had they all gone?

  My scalp prickled, and I pulled the hood back over my head. I crept along the street, throwing glances to my left and to my right. I spun around and looked behind me. Whistling lightly under my breath, I picked up my pace. I didn’t run though. Didn't want to appear weak or scared. Not here. Not ever. I stuck my hands into my pockets and hunched forward. I was minding my business. Last job. Good money. Then out of here.

  Light bled from Rajani’s window, tinted yellow from the papers across the glass. I stumped down the concrete steps to her door and raised my fist to knock. The door drifted open on its own. Rajani wouldn’t have left her door open. She’d paid too much for her air processor. “In and out, quick! Door closed!” I could almost hear her voice in the silent night. Yet I kept going. Stupidly, blindly, working for that payday.

  “Hey, Rajani! Queen Rani! Why’s your door wide open? It’s me, Lazlo!”

  I stepped into the room. The air processor hummed in the corner, sucking in heavy oxygen air, pumping out a lighter vapor. I shut the door behind me. The ceiling light cast a harsh glare on the room. A battered beige sofa snugged against one wall, duct tape and chewing gum holding the stuffing inside. Rajani’s discarded clothing, all bright reds, oranges, and yellows, coated the scuffed and water-damaged parquet flooring. A plywood table in the middle of the small room held a box of tiny plastic bags, three scrip bottles of Axon tablets, and a stack of glorious, old school, untraceable cash.

  I pocketed the cash: that’s what they had sent me to collect. The supplier would smuggle it out to Canada, wire it back to Cascadia, append it to the financial accounts wired into their networks. It would go out untraceable and return legit. And sometime tomorrow I’d get my payday, a boost in the cryptobank coded into my neural mesh, and I’d go north.

  The bags, the pills—those were Rajani’s trade. I left them alone. She scored those pills, crushed them into the dust that was so potent, even when cut with lesser substances, that hooked a duster the first time they snorted it, sent them dissociating into beautiful, multicolored worlds with no rough living, no enforced curfews, no PAP alarms, all the light air you could breathe. And no Axon Pharma. The irony: dusters became dependent on Axon Pharma’s pills to escape Axon Pharma.

  That dust she was slinging? Those pills were Axon Pharma’s solution to the mental illness, what we called yiyuzheng, the illness that caused the insiders in their light air high rises and their air processed offices to off themselves. The mental illness that was the unforeseen side effect of Axon Pharma’s own neural mesh technology. But yiyuzheng was an insider illness. We outsiders didn’t live long enough to suffer from it. Didn’t stop them from testing those pills on the throwaways though, the lost kids of the outsiders. The kids like me who’d been stolen from their families and sent to care.

  That dust Rajani was slinging, those pills she was crushing, had made me who I was today: a runaway dust slinger with an overactive dendrite disorder.

  And those dendrites were on fire now. I squeezed my hands against my head, the agony unshakable. An alarm was sounding, shooting tiny darts of energy through my mesh, knocking me to my knees. I curled up on the dusty floor among Rajani’s clothing and squeezed my eyes tight, willing the alarm to stop. Tears pricked in my eyes, crept beneath my eyelids, and dripped down my face. I wiped them away quickly and forced my eyes open.

  Rajani’s dark eyes stared back at me; her lifeless body stretched across the bathroom threshold at the end of the hallway. Multicolored braids pooled around her head, shimmering garishly in the bright light, and her lively brown face had faded to a dull gray.

  I crawled painfully toward her and placed my hand against her wrist, against her neck. Her skin was still warm, but she had no pulse.

  “Rajani? Wake up, Rajani!” I slapped her face again and again. White dust powdered her upper lip and her tiny nose. She’d tested the supply; maybe she’d taken too much? But dust didn’t kill you, did it? Long-term dusters vanished into ever-longer states of dissociation until, one day, they never returned. Couldn’t tell reality from fantasy. They didn’t go out like this; Axon dust didn’t kill them. Did it? How long had Rajani been using?

  She wasn’t breathing. I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t just sit there staring. That was Rajani lying there, my first friend in the city, my almost lover. I wiped the dust from her nose, crouched over her, put my mouth on hers, and blew. Pushed on her chest a few times. Blew again. I pushed on her chest again.

  And finally, my heart understood what my brain already knew. Rajani was dead. Alive, she’d never have let me close like that.

  I lay on the floor beside her. The alarm was shooting currents of energy through my mesh, slicing through my brain. The signal enveloped me, crushing my brain. I buried my head in my hands, cringing from the physical pain, yet unable to avoid seeing the body of my friend. She had a slender frame and thin hands and feet that were constantly moving and dancing. Her vibrant pink and blue and yellow braids extended her body and punctuated her words and emotions when they were swinging free. Her facial piercings, nose, lip, eyebrow, gleamed and shimmered with every one of her myriad facial expressions. Every bit of Rajani lay still, silenced forever.

  Nausea overwhelmed me, and I rolled away from Rajani’s body and vomited. Pulses throbbed against my skull, and I knew I had to run. This was a full PAP alarm, “Preserve And Protect”; its purpose was to lower the resistance of people in a specific area, making them easier to arrest. It would soon knock me out. If the police found me hovering over a dead body, well, that wouldn’t be an optimal outcome.

  I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stand. Stumbling toward the door, I saw those three scrip bottles on the table. No way I could leave those here. If some rough sleeping duster got their hands on those, they’d surf the neural gray zone so deep and hard they’d never come back. Besides, I could trade or sell them, add a bit more crypto to my bank for the journey north.

  I’d never steal from Rajani, not when she was alive. It might sound cold, but she was dead. I could do nothing now to help her. If it had gone the other way—me lying dead on the floor and her alive and staring at my stash—I knew she wouldn’t have thought twice.

  I grabbed those three bottles and jammed them into my pockets. The alarm in my head hammered, and I knew I couldn’t fight it much longer. I forced my body to the door, dragging one heavy leg behind the other. Drawing that inside air into my lungs, I put all the energy I had into my two arms, hauled my hood over my head, yanked open the door. Ascending a mountain couldn’t have been harder than climbing those three steps to the street. I was close to being in the clear when the fog rolled over my mind and all went blessedly numb.

  Stinging in my nose, acrid fumes, and I was awake again. A glaring beam of light in my face, shadows around me, the pounding never having stopped, and a voice: “Wakey, wakey sleepy head.”

  Rough hands grabbed my arm and pulled me up. I slumped forward, my body not yet mobile, and my face stung from an open-handed slap. My vision cleared. Facing me was a respirator mask, neural-blocking helmet, and PAP body armor emblazoned with the joint Axon/Cascadia logo. The hundan wearing it was bigger than anyone raised on kelp, textu
red food product, and nutrient water. An insider.

  “Check the pockets,” he said.

  The hands holding me patted me down and tossed the three scrip bottles to Respirator Mask. “What have we here?” Hands waved the wad of cash.

  I was having trouble staying vertical. The alarm continued looping over the network, far longer than I was sure was legit. But as long as patrols wore neural-blocking helmets, they’d continue to break the Cascadia law on humane alarm limits.

  “This where you live, Rat?” said Respirator Mask, walking down the steps to Rajani’s apartment.

  My head rolled to the side. The fog was creeping in again. I opened my mouth to answer, but only drool came out.

  “Freaking duster’s totally out of it,” said Hands.

  “Got a dee-bee in here. Probably his slinger.”

  My arms were yanked behind me, cold metal squeezed my wrists. I was being arrested, but it barely registered through my haze.

  “Looks like this is your last trip paid by Axon, Rat,” said Hands. “Unless you count your next trip—to jail.”

  I wanted to tell them I wasn’t a dustrat or a thief; I hadn’t killed Rajani. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I was in the neighborhood; I looked the part, and they caught me with the goods. They had me in cuffs; why didn’t they shut off the alarm? One thing I knew for sure: I was in trouble. Well and truly in trouble.