The Dry Earth (Book 2): The Nexus

by Orion, W. J.

  “Scary,” Caleb said as he parked the truck in one of ten spots in the center of the worn and faded asphalt parking lot.

  Each of the isolated, centralized parking locations were separated by a wall of cinderblocks stacked four high. Each vehicle, once parked, could only back out, and had to remain five yards distant from any vehicle parked in one of the other spots. When the truck went into park, Caleb holstered his pistol and slid out the freshly armored door of the truck to the steaming hot pavement below.

  Yasmine followed suit out her door and remembered to grab her Halligan tool from the floor beneath her seat. She pulled up the bandana from her throat to cover her mouth and adjusted the baseball cap on her head to protect against the scalding sun of the day. When she got to the other side of the truck to join her uncle, two women with long, dark hair erupting from the bottom of head wraps and flanked by four armed guards approached. None of their skin was exposed to the harsh sun or the occasional whips of windborne sand. They were like feminine, human versions of Trader Joe.

  “We heard our great friend the Baron approached, and we heard as well that he had a dead crab in the back of his truck,” one of them said with arms spread wide. “We had to come see for ourselves.”

  “Understandable,” Caleb said with a smile. He rubbed his red, bald head and thumbed at Trey in the chassis. “But as you can see, we did actually bring one with us.”

  “Dangerous business,” the other woman said. “Bringing a crab around, especially here.” A gust of wind tossed a cloud of abrasive dirt by, pausing the conversation while everyone covered up.

  “It’s all dangerous business now. No safe harbor for anyone. Sisters of the Station, let me introduce you to my niece, Yasmine. I’ve been calling her the Baroness. She kills crabs for a living.”

  The two sisters shared a genuine belly laugh in the windy parking lot, but when Caleb and Yasmine didn’t smile, laugh, or play along with the joke they thought Caleb had told, their laughter dissipated.

  “Are you serious?” one of the two asked.

  “Yup. More than one,” he said. “And I tell you what: trade us for two hundred gallons of fuel at a fair rate, and I’ll have her show you the video of her last victory over a crab.”

  “Show me a video of a crab getting cooked by this young lady and I’ll give you fifty more gallons of bio for free,” one of the sisters said.

  Yasmine pulled her mother’s phone from the cargo pocket it called home and brought up the video as the two women stood with their guards, amused, waiting. Yasmine stepped forward and held the phone up towards them.

  “Watch,” she said. “It’s a little messy, but I think you’ll like it.”

  She was right. They liked it, and they had her show it to about thirty other people there who also liked it.

  Chapter Ten

  I Don’t Exactly Fit In

  “We made good time today,” Caleb said to Knox as he struck flint to steel over a bed of dry tinder. The fire caught before Knox replied.

  “Roads were clear,” she said. “No idea what they’ll be like tomorrow.”

  “You did a great job leading us,” Yasmine said to her, then closed her eyes. She leaned back against the wooden post that held up a length of guardrail. As the sticks and tinder started to crackle and give off that pleasant wood smoke aroma, she opened her eyes and looked around at their campsite.

  Caleb parked his truck, and the others their vehicles, below an overpass just a few yards away. They made their camp inside a ring of steel guardrail that surrounded three pillars of concrete that held the upper road level aloft. The stars shone above; with their light, and the light of the growing fire beneath the overpass, Yasmine was able to read the green sign with white lettering stuck in the ground nearby; it read “Fischer Creek Road.”

  At arm’s length, in the semi-circular end of the guardrail, sat Trey in his white armored chassis. He kept his facial sensors and tendrils pointed out and away from them. His multiple feet shuffled to and fro, allowing him to sway his field of view for better observation.

  He’s always vigilant. The white knight, if there ever was one. “Are you going to build a big fire?” Yaz asked her uncle. “It’s gonna get real cold tonight.”

  “I should, but I need more sticks,” he said. “Hey Bernie, Yaz… shit, Trey–can y’all go up that embankment there and gather up some of those sticks? As many as can be moved easily. Knox, you shoot anything that approaches. Cedric and Harry, you two set up an observation area above us on that overpass; grab some binoculars and make sure nothing sneaks up on us. We’ll set up shifts once the fire is up and running. Trader Joe… you do… whatever it is you do.”

  Joe chuckled and nodded. Everyone else got to work.

  Yaz hopped up, and a moment later Bernie did as well. Trey powered up his chassis and stepped over the guardrail with mechanical grace. The trio ascended the nearby hill on one side as the two lower ranking Monolith squires ascended the other side. Yasmine picked up sticks and handed them to Trey, who wrapped a small number of long but thin manipulator tendrils around them. Thirty sticks and a few small logs picked up in the chill of the night air later, they headed back to her uncle, who tended a growing fire.

  “Thanks, team. Just another night camping in the alien apocalypse, eh?” her uncle said. “Anyone got marshmallows?”

  “I had an old bag in my storage for a long time,” Trader Joe said. “White, squishy pillows. But they didn’t last long. Got dry and hard. I wound up giving them to a family near Shant. They said they were still delicious.”

  “Makes my mouth water,” Caleb said. “Just imagining a s’mores….”

  “What’s a s’mores?” Yasmine asked.

  “Sit down, kid, and let me tell you a ghost story about the snacks that once were,” her uncle said.

  So, she did.

  Six hours later, in the middle of the now frigid desert night, atop the overpass that her friends were camped beneath, Yasmine’s mouth watered. The ghost story of snacks from the past had left its mark on her soul.

  “You don’t have to be awake,” Trey said, using his speaker. He’d dialed down the volume so it sounded like a coarse whisper. “I don’t have to sleep. I rest my individuals in waves. I’m almost always resting in one way or another. I can do all of the watches by myself. Go rest.”

  “I can’t sleep. It makes me very… squidgy to be out in the wastes like this. So many people, with a fire, right out in the open. I dig holes and hide in them. Smallest footprint possible.”

  “Big part of why you have been so successful for so long. Caution begets safety, and safety begets prosperity.”

  “You sound like Trader Joe,” she whispered as she looked into her uncle’s binoculars at the darkness, trying to see anything in the moonlight. “Logical, with a ton of metaphors.”

  “I’m trying out a more serious tone. I think it lends me an air of credibility.”

  “That’s crazy. Who are you trying to be more credible with? And what for? Did anyone doubt your credibility before?”

  “Um… no?”

  “Just be you, Trey. Being genuine is credible. People will read through any act you put on. I promise you that.”

  “Sage,” Trey said. “Anyway, go to bed. Go get some sleep, please. We’re gonna need all the eyes we can get tomorrow when we head out.”

  “Is it going to be more dangerous as we head north?”

  “I haven’t spoken with the crabs in the resistance cell we’re headed to in a long time, but generally, humans tend to attack us when they see us, and these crabs have had a stable operation in place for years. I would plan on experiencing some locals that could be hostile to protect them. Potshots at the cars as we move, rocks thrown at us, spears, that kind of thing. Maybe worse if they see me in the truck.”

  “Should we throw some blankets over you? Leave your face sensors out but cover your chassis?”

  “Yeah, that’d be smart. Face me to the rear and have the Baron drive as the last vehicle s
o I can cover our backs. Hey… I’m seeing something out there,” he said, trailing off as he lifted his head and aimed it south in the direction they had come from. “Mile and a half. Looks like four cheeseburgers.”

  “I’m too hungry for your translator food mishaps,” she said, turning the binoculars in the direction Trey searched. “I can’t see any cheeseburgers. You know I have a video of my parents eating a cheeseburger at a picnic on my mom’s phone. Looks delicious. I would love to try one someday. With a slice of tomato and some lettuce.”

  “If we get to a safe place I’ll look into getting you a cheeseburger. That being said, I see four humans. Walking with bicycles. Three males and female. Hold on…” He paused, and something in the head of his suit powered up with a gentle hum. “Biometrics show they’re young. Around your age. I’m storing their data.”

  “Are they armed?” Yaz asked. Holy crap. My hand is on my pistol. When did I put my hand on my pistol?

  “Nothing in hand that I can see. They have backpacks and there are bags on their bicycles, so they might have weapons in those.”

  “What are they doing now?”

  “Sitting with their bikes. No fire. I think they are trying to sleep, based on what I understand about your body language. They have to know we’re here. The fire is surely visible to them, but they aren’t making any effort to hide beyond laying low. Strange. They probably think we can’t see them from here.”

  “Should we wake anyone?”

  “There isn’t much they can do to us from that distance unless they have some plasma weaponry or really large pre-war human rifles stashed in those backpacks. There’s no way they know I’ve seen them, and they’re not acting threatening. I’ll keep my sensors on them, and if they do anything that makes me nervous I’ll alert everyone.”

  Yasmine yawned.

  “Go below. Tuck yourself into that sleeping bag your uncle gave you and have some sweat creams. I mean dreams. Sweet dreams.”

  “You are becoming so strange and awkward, Trey.”

  “Story of my life,” Trey said. “There’s a reason why I’m on the outside of crab society. I don’t exactly fit in.”

  Yasmine stood and rested a chilled hand on his very cold chassis carapace.

  “You fit in with us just fine,” she said, and left her friend atop the overpass, where he would protect them until dawn.

  She slept well with that knowledge and had dreams of delicious cheeseburgers she’d never had before.

  And s’mores, too.

  Chapter Eleven

  Baba Ganoush

  “They’re trying very hard to keep up, but I don’t think they have the stamina,” Trey said from the bed of the truck. “We’re gaining about a yard a minute on them. By midday they should be long forgotten.”

  “Good riddance,” Caleb said as he kept his attention fixed on the rear-view mirror. “We can’t break five miles per hour with this cracked and broken road, but it’ll be enough to dust scavengers on bikes.” He sighed in frustration. “I can’t see anything over that blanket on your back.”

  “You don’t have to see anything,” Yaz said. “His crab sensors can see, smell, and taste everything ten times better than we can.”

  “In Trey we trust,” her uncle said and shook his head in disbelief. He turned to Yaz, “You have any idea how alien this experience is? I’ve got a crab in the back of my pickup, protecting my six, no questions asked, as I head north to a place I’ve never been, after an invasion that destroyed our world? Oh, and there’s another kind of alien sitting in another vehicle in my convoy.”

  “Surreal,” she said.

  “You can frigging say that again. This is like the Twilight Zone on steroids. You know what the weirdest part is?”

  “What?”

  “I trust Trey. Like, not even a little doubt that he’s got my back. Any sane man or woman would be nervous that he’d be up to no good, but not me. Complete trust. What the hell is wrong with me?”

  “Nothing,” Trey said with his speaker. “Trust is earned, right? I think the trust you’ve put in me was earned. There’s also the small matter that we went to battle with each other and risked our respective lives together. That’s a big deal. When it mattered most we were there for each other.”

  Yaz watched as her uncle smiled at Trey’s statements. He added a nod and kept driving.

  “We’re slowing down,” Yaz said. She picked up the walkie from the center console of the truck and thumbed it on. “Knox, why are we slowing down?”

  “Lotta debris in the road. There’s an off ramp ahead that had a bad traffic pileup. Tons of wrecks in front of it and on the other side of the road. I’m driving us around most of it, but ahead I can see some car wrecks we’re going to have to move with the winches. Might be able to push them out of the way with one of the trucks, but it’s gonna slow us down for a good while. It goes out as far as I can see. Miles, no joke. Our trip just had four or five hours tacked on, at least. We still have that slow tail?”

  “We do,” Yaz replied. “Keep going. We’ll watch the group following us. You navigate us north. My uncle keeps worrying about flat tires, so no flat tires.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Knox said back.

  “What’s that mean?” Yaz asked her uncle.

  “It’s the navy equivalent of, ‘yes sir.’ She’s just being silly,” he explained. “Trey, our tail getting closer?”

  “Tiny bit,” the crab replied. “If we slow, they’ll be able to catch up. Especially if we’re zig-zagging through crashes and obstacles. Bicycles might be slow, but they sure are maneuverable.”

  “What do we do?” Yaz asked her uncle. “Wait and see?”

  “What would you do?” he asked her as the truck’s trajectory began to swim side to side around piles of car parts and busted, upended pieces of roadway. “Pop quiz time.”

  Okay, think it through. What’s the goal? Keep the convoy safe, get us all north. Minimize risks and avoid violent confrontation when possible. Gotta save bullets. “Okay… I say, we have Trey fire his heavy cannon back at them, over their heads to send the message for them to turn around.”

  “But then they know we have a crab working with us,” he reasoned. “Might draw a lot more heat if they get away.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said, thinking again. “A regular shot from a gun at this distance might not even register with them and could hit them by accident, and I don’t want to hurt them in case they’re actually not trying to hurt us. I mean, they could be harmless.”

  “You’re right. And furthermore, Monoliths would not make shots like that. We only shoot at things we’re trying to kill,” her uncle answered as they slowed further to avoid blowing tires out on twisted shards of metal guardrail. “Think faster, Niece. They’ll be on us in no time.”

  “Let Trey and me out at that flipped over semi-truck up there,” Yaz said, impulsively. “We’ll hide and scare the crap out of them with a crab appearance. They turn and run; we rejoin you in a couple miles. They will have no idea Trey is with us. Looks like a random appearance of a crab after a convoy rolls by.”

  “What if they attack Trey?”

  “I’ll defend myself with minimal force. Disrupt them with no injury,” the crab said. “My people who are trying to help here have to run off humans attacking us all the time. We’ve gotten good at it. It’s a decent plan, Baron.”

  “So be it,” her uncle said. “Use cover, and if you get worried even in the least, you radio for help, and I’ll turn this big red turd around and come with my guns blazing.”

  “Won’t be necessary,” Yasmine said. “You radio to the rest of them what we’re doing and let us out.”

  “Bingo, bango, bongo,” he said.

  Yaz’s uncle stopped the already-crawling truck and she opened the door. Yaz slid out and dropped to the ground as Trey jumped out of the bed in the back, landing on the battered pavement with heavy thuds as his chassis’s feet came down. She pulled the Halligan out from under the truck’s seat
and made sure she had all her regular supplies in the pockets of her pants–most importantly, her mother’s phone. She grabbed her backpack off the floor, and put it on over her shoulders.

  “Drive careful,” she said.

  “You can literally watch me drive. I won’t get a thousand yards by the time the Tour de Wisconsin catches up.”

  “It’s just good advice.”

  “That it is. Trey, you take care of her. If she comes back hurt I’m eating calamari tonight.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say, Baron,” Trey said, somehow sounding hurt in his mechanical voice. “After all we’ve been through together.”

  “I’m kidding, Trey. I don’t have any red sauce. You’re safe,” he joked.

  “My relief knows no bounds,” the crab said.

  Yaz shut the heavy, armored truck door with a grunt and jogged over behind the burnt-out semi-trailer. She took cover from the distant pedaling threat and watched as Trey blasted the distance with another invisible shot of scouring sensor energies. Once he was satisfied with the data he’d gathered, he thudded his chassis over beside her and dropped it low to the ground.

  “Anything new?”

  “Biometrics suggests they’re sweaty. So, no, nothing new,” he croaked.

  “Plan is to sit here until they get to, what? A hundred yards away? And then we just parade you out into the open to scare them?” Yaz suggested.

  “When they reach that open spot between the smashed concrete barrier and where there’s no cover. Not much else we need to do,” Trey said. “I haven’t run into any groups of humans that stood their ground or kept going after seeing a crab up close and personal. Calamari-joke-making Monoliths aside.”

  “My uncle can be a little... uh, coarse, eh?”

  “You remember the text messages we exchanged about him? I meant them. None of them were lies. He can be… ruthless. His sense of humor is probably just as savage as his attitude towards getting things done,” the crab said. “I like him, and I appreciate him now… but we are not far past him locking me up in that old cell phone control room atop his building. He would’ve let me die up there and never lost a moment of rest over it.”