Eighteen
“He’s not coming back, is he.” Jack sat defeated on one of the crates; she still held the crackers, although she had since forgotten about them. What did it matter if she ate or not, when Riddick had walked out and left them here to die? How could he do that? It was strange, but it felt worse to be left by Riddick than it did to be abandoned by her family.
She had grown inured to their coldness, and over time had been able to throw up a wall to protect herself, but something happened when she first saw Riddick. Of course she knew who he was on sight, he was notorious and you couldn’t turn on a vid without a story on the escaped convict. Stories that got larger with every telling it seemed. Could they have been right? Even as she said it she refused to believe it, but with him gone that fight was harder.
Shazza stood behind Jack and put her hands on his shoulders, and watched Imam as she spoke. “Of course he’s going to come back, it’s just too hard to look out for all of us at once. We’re safe here; he’s going to come back for us, Jack.” Shazza didn’t know who she tried to convince more, Jack or herself. ‘Trust me.’
She closed her eyes as she pressed Jack’s shoulders; she couldn’t see Jack’s face, but Jack’s eyes were also closed; Imam’s also. They didn’t breathe, they didn’t move; all of them thought of Riddick; a man they had known for less than a day and who now held all of their lives in his hands.
She had felt Riddick’s hand in hers, the weight of him as he had protected her. She felt his thumb trace over her tears, his fingertips tangled in her hair. His voice a deep whisper, as he told her to trust him. She had been a practical woman so long that it was hard to break that habit, but deep in her heart she trusted him, even if she told herself, at the surface, that it was foolish to hope. He would come back.
“Mr. Riddick is more than what even he thinks he is; he is a noble and honorable man, young Jack. He will come back for us.” If Imam had any doubts, he never let on. Jack watched him for a moment before he turned to look up at Shazza, who patted his shoulder again. “Sit with me Jack, yes, bring those as well.”
Shazza sat on the crate across from Imam and Jack and watched as Imam set out to comfort Jack, which only brought his care of the three boys, now dead, into painful relief. He was obviously trusted with their care, and he did care deeply for them, but Shazza knew just to watch that he cared for all children. He didn’t treat them like children either, but listened.
Imam had mentioned his god several times in their talk, and Jack eventually asked about what he believed. Imam rested his head back against the bulkhead, and took a bite out of the crackers. Shazza and Jack almost thought he would not answer, but Imam just looked up at the ceiling above them.
“It is quiet now, the creatures have moved on. Quiet is good for the soul, it clarifies; and shows us things we would not otherwise see. He was a prophet, and a man from the city; but he had to travel to the desert, where there was quiet, to hear the words of god.” Imam closed his eyes and rested again. All of them thought of Riddick.
—
It was easier to get through the ship when they had light. He could still hear the creatures, both the one inside the ship itself and the others that clicked against the hull. Riddick concentrated on the sound of their strange language until it didn’t startle him anymore.
There was an inner rhythm to it when you listened; this wasn’t the excited clicks and whistles that they used in full dark; it was as if they warned those outside about the light. He could hear Johns’ feet shuffle and his hissed intake of breath every time the warning sounded. It was his only outward show of fear, but it was plain as day to Riddick who also had the ability to smell it on him. Maybe no one else would have known, but Riddick knew. Johns was terrified, but not so terrified that he wouldn’t risk it.
Fry stayed in between the two men, protected in the wide circle of blue light until they had loaded up the cargo cart with the four power cells from the sandcat. She felt a huge surge of relief the moment the huge bay doors were open. Being trapped in the tiny room had shaken her badly, she could still hear the creatures outside, but it was nowhere near as bad as it was to be hunted inside the ship.
The creatures hated the light and stayed well away from it and she started to believe that their plan could actually work. She didn’t think about the others, still inside; once she was free, she didn’t think about them again.
“The lights’ too bright for my eyes, I’ll run ahead, and make sure that it’s clear.” Johns didn’t like the thought that Riddick would not be right at hand while they made their escape but he didn’t really have an awful lot of options. He needed Riddick to be able to see, and if he couldn’t see clearly with the blue light so close, then he would have to be trusted to run ahead.
Johns helped Riddick clip the powerful light from his shotgun to his back; with it pointed down it didn’t affect his sight, but it did keep the creatures away from him. The creatures themselves never left them, but followed them; their shapes could be dimly seen at the periphery of the ring of light, as though they waited for that light to die for just one moment. His guts knotted when he looked up to the ship and realized that the creatures that had been all over the ship were now gone. Because they were here, all around them.
Riddick looked back as they started out, and met Johns’ eyes just once; it almost froze Johns to the spot. His face was colder and harder than at any time Johns had ever seen it before; completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever.
Johns knew that Riddick never really felt much, he was an animal after all, but he guessed that over time Riddick had learned to at least pretend well. The thought nagged at the back of Johns’ mind that he really didn’t know anything about the man at all; that everything he thought he knew, everything he read, had been wrong.
He knew that if he was wrong about Riddick that they would all pay with their lives. He also knew that Riddick was nothing else if not a survivor, so he pushed the thoughts that worried him to the back of his mind. He had Fry take half the weight of the cart, so that he could keep the shotgun out, not pointed directly at Riddick, but close enough to make Johns breathe a little easier. It was a curious position to be in, to be behind Riddick laden with supplies, especially after he had turned him into a sled dog earlier.
They crossed the open ground quickly enough, and Riddick, true to his word, had run slightly ahead of Fry and Johns, as they pulled the cart behind them. It was heavy, and the sandy ground beneath them made the work a lot harder.
The power cells were heavy, and wanted to settle into the earth so they had to constantly move forward; it wasn’t long before Fry and Johns were both exhausted, but still they pushed on. There was no way to stop now, and Riddick didn’t stop no matter what they did, he kept the same pace the entire time. He didn’t slow down even when they reached the canyon, the path they would take to get to the settlement.
If the canyon unnerved them before in the daylight, with its strange echoes, it was worse at night. The calls of the creatures as they whirled overhead filled the canyon with sound that bounced everywhere, until they were certain the creatures were right there, right on top of them. The blue light, rather than make everything clearer, instead cast strange shadows on the bones all around them and gave them a life all their own. More than once, Johns and Fry started when a shape would loom up over them only to see a ribcage or a skull when they passed by.
Jumpiness turned into numbness quickly; they couldn’t sustain that level of nervousness for long, until their bodies own defenses shut it down, and they both put their heads down to concentrate on the cart, which was a lot harder to pull in the canyon.
The ground was softer here, and every step was a struggle. Johns put his head down to press into the weight, and chose to look up every couple of minutes to watch Riddick as he loped comfortably across the canyon floor. It wasn’t the first time that day that he resented Riddick.
Riddick listened as Johns and Fry struggled behind him, and increased the pace slightly. He knew Johns would never tolerate Riddick being out of his reach, so he would run a little faster, and a little faster, to keep up with Riddick, even if he didn’t realize that he did it. They were both near the point of exhaustion behind him; he didn’t care. Their every rasped breath was a beautiful sound in his ears, and he grew colder with every step.
When they got to the canyon, he put a little more space between them; not all at once, or Johns would have suspected something was up, but just a little more, and a little more. It was easier as time wore on, because Johns had to drop his head to push against the increased weight of the cart. Johns had thought about wheels first, when he should have thought about a sled, which moved easier across the sandy ground.
Riddick too had noticed that the creatures had left the ship to follow them. He wondered if the lack of sound put the others at ease, or if it frightened them more. He closed his eyes for a moment as he ran. He had touched Shazza right before they left; her skin was so soft, and he had wanted for a moment, as his fingers touched her hair, to run his fingers through it; the feel of her tears against his skin was bright in his mind. He hadn’t been prepared for how that would make him feel, for how much that had hurt, just to see her hurt.
He had seen lots of people cry, a lot of them right before he killed them; it had never bothered him before. This was different; this time he would have done anything to not see her cry anymore, and for once that didn’t involve just not caring about it. He wanted to fix it, to make her happy. And then there was Jack, who said nothing but just turned her back to him and wouldn’t look at him, that hurt too.
He moved farther ahead, almost twice as far ahead as he was on the run from the ship. Every once in a while he would run in front of the bones, to get Johns used to the idea of him being out of sight for a moment, and then would reappear. Johns grew complacent and, as he struggled against the weight of the cart, he didn’t look up as often to see that Riddick was still there.
“Johns, he’s gone.” Fry said in a shaky voice.
Riddick had turned off the light from the shotgun, all it did was draw the creatures attention, and slipped free of Johns and Fry. He watched as the cart stopped its forward motion and Johns cursed loudly as he looked all around them for any trace of Riddick; he never left the hard circle of blue light. He watched as Fry and Johns fought, as they yelled at each other about whose fault it was.
It didn’t matter, all of the excuses they told themselves, they were both responsible. They both plotted to leave the others here to die. They both plotted to kill Shazza and Jack, and Imam. Johns probably thought he had come ahead in the deal, in that he didn’t even have to shoot any of them in order to do it.
This wasn’t just about survival anymore, this was something else. Riddick would make them both pay for the hurt they caused Shazza and Jack. That was new to him as well. He killed for his own survival. Once or twice he had killed because he knew in his gut that it was right somehow, that some things just called out for killing. This time he would kill them for something else. Something he didn’t know how to define, something he was afraid to even think, something he had never felt before. He was going to kill for the touch of a woman.
He watched as Johns screamed at Fry, and forced her to pull the cart while he ran slightly ahead. That didn’t surprise Riddick either; he had always known what Johns was. He watched as Fry struggled against the weight of the cart, her features knotted with tension and fear. She had made her choice. If she had chosen anything but what she did, he would let her live, but in the end she chose Johns, and she was damned for it. It was too late for sorry now. He looked ahead to the knot of bones left behind by the sandcat’s passage, and chose his killing ground.