Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [41]
Off to one side, deep in the shadows of a mostly whole building, something moved. Cheney went into a crouch, faced the black opening of the doorway, and growled softly. Hawk stopped where he was, holding the prod ready. After a few tense moments, Cheney turned away and started off again. Hawk swung in behind him, and they continued on.
Sometimes he thought that it would all be so much simpler if they lived in the compound with Tessa and the others. Not that it would ever be allowed after they had lived on the streets for so long, hut just for the sake of argument.
There was safety in numbers. There was less to be responsible for and less to worry about on a daily basis. Food and shelter and medical supplies were easier to come by. Some of the people in the compounds still had special skills that street kids would never have. But there was something so abhorrent about compound life that it overshadowed everything that made it appear desirable. Too many restrictions and rules. Too little freedom. Too much conformity of the few for the benefit of the many. Too much fear of everything outside the walls. It was the old world in miniature, and if Hawk was certain of one thing in this life it was that the old world was dead and gone and should remain that way.
Eventually, a new world would be born from the ashes of the old, and living in a walled fortress was not the way to make that happen.
Darkness was almost complete when he emerged from the ash-and sootblackened ruins of the city’s south end and could see clearly the dark bulk of the compound outlined against the gray skyline. Walls several stories high surrounded what had once been an arena and playing field, stretching away on four sides to occupy several city blocks. A raised metal roof rested atop a network of steel girders and wheels that had once allowed it to move back and forth on a track to open the playing field to the sky, but now was rusted permanently open. Barbed wire rimmed the tops of the walls and the perimeter of the compound in thick rolls. Watch towers dotted the corners and heavy barricades blocked those entrances that hadn’t been sealed completely. A wide swath of open space separated the compound from the rest of the city; everything close had been torn down to prevent enemies from approaching without being seen.
A sign with bits and pieces of its letters broken off and its smooth surface blackened and scarred proclaimed that this was SAFECO FIELD.
Rumor had it that there had once been an adjacent arena that occupied the open space between the city and the compound. But terrorists had bombed it when it was one of the last active playing fields in the country and still fighting to maintain its traditions. More than two thousand had died in the attack, and much of the building had collapsed. Shortly after, the first of the plagues struck, wiping out fifty thousand in less than a week, and that was pretty much the beginning of the end of the old ways.
Hawk made a circuitous approach to the compound, keeping to the concealment of the rubble and shadows. His destination was some hundred yards east of where he worked his way forward in a crouch, Cheney close beside him.
Nothing lived in this part of the city because the men on the walls kept watch day and night; if anything was seen, they were quick to send out a sanitation squad to destroy