by L. B. Carter
Fireworks was a poor choice in goods to sell. First of all, they were in a drought—there were extreme fire bans, to the point of preventing smokers. Henley probably didn’t realize the little fires she’d built for her fuel production were illegal or she wouldn’t have been quite so upset about the car. Second, it was not one of the core essential items all humans needed, like nourishment, clothing, housing and… companionship.
“That truck doesn’t go fast,” the experiment said to Nor. “You’re overestimating.”
Did she even know how to drive? Jen had raised her in a lab, she said. Ace saw her as more like one of his computers, or Henley’s devices… albeit with a function he could not fathom himself. She was built for underwater.
Ace looked out across the heads of the crowd at the sparkling sea, its banks teeming with bodies filling up water tanks, loading onto boats, removing cargo from barges. He conceded that being able to travel underwater might be useful now. He doubted the experiment would go without Nor, attached as they were. Companionship was an impediment, a handicap, he reminded himself. Regardless, two hundred miles underwater would take even longer than walking subaerially.
“She was just getting water. It wouldn’t take that long.” Nor was arguing still.
Ace missed Henley. She would’ve broken up the argument with reason and logic. “Nor is right,” Ace tried. “Sorry, you are incorrect.” The girl’s lip curled. Evidently his attempts to pacify and be courteous to both parties in the argument went poorly. Ace gave up. “We’ll have to take a boat.”
“Oh, helm, no.”
“Helm?”
Sirena spoke over him, loudly, her eyes squeezed closed, hands waving like a traffic controller. “No, no, no. I am not getting on a boat.”
“I’ll be with you,” Nor promised, flipping roles from their disagreement not moments before.
Humans were so volatile, even lab-grown ones, it seemed. He and Henley could agree on that; she’s worked with the external side of computers and he with the internal.
“It won’t be like the last one.” Nor bent down to look in Sirena’s eyes.
She snorted, looking up at Ace who was appalled to see tears streaking from her eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered. Her green-blue eyes darted to the side as if she could see the water through the hordes of hungry and dirty people milling around them.
Ace wished he could simply leave them all here. “Fine. No boat.” He stormed down the street, snagging a few of the fireworks as he passed. The seller didn’t even call out, too depressed, slumped behind his wares.
“What’s that for?” Nor was suspicious.
“Signal. When we get to the other side.”
“Do you think that’s safe?”
Ace spared a glance at Nor. He wasn’t being facetious. He was honestly concerned.
“We’re in a drought.”
He wasn’t the slowest person Ace had ever met, simply ignorant. “The other side is more lush,” he told Nor.
“When you were last here, right? Which was how long ago?”
Ace took a deep breath. “We’ll have to take the current conditions into consideration when we arrive. There is no way to know until then.” As far as he was concerned, the discussion was over.
“What if it’s not? What if everything you’re taking me to isn’t there anymore?” The experiment was jogging behind the two long-legged men to keep up, so her voice was breathy and broken up. Henley asked questions all the time. Somehow this was more annoying than when she did it. Ace didn’t bother to reiterate his statement.
“We’ll have to walk. We need to move fast and spontaneously. So we’ll have to split up and meet on the other end of the bridge.” Ace was looking forward to that peace.
“What?”
“It makes sense,” Nor explained on behalf of Ace. “It stops us from being targets from overhead prey.”
“You think the drone will catch up to us?”
“I think they’ll send more.” Ace’s tone was dark. It was a certainty; “think” was putting the probability mildly.
Sirena blinked. “Then, why don’t we just wait here where we have cover.”
“You want to stay here forever?” Ace’s retort was sarcastic and intended as rhetorical.
“Maybe,” the experiment replied. “There’s food, and we can hide, and… and water to wash in.”
Ace stopped and turned, startling some people who’d been following in his wake. He finally noticed his ability to be an obstacle as irate scowls adjusted course to detour around him like a stream around a rock. “You want to stay.”
The girl was looking up at him calmly, resolutely. “Yes.” She nodded. “Yes, I think so.” She gazed around her. “The smells of the fisherman and the… being around people, but none of them know me. It’s the kind of place where I’m comfortable.”
Ace glanced around in disgust, definitely smelling the grotesque odors of low tide and dead fish, seeing too many grimy bodies all mashing together. His brows raised. “I thought you said it was bad to split up when we left his brother behind.” He tilted his head at a speechless Nor.
She nodded. “But we won’t be split up. We’ll all stay.”
“Rena—”
“Except Buster,” she added, cutting off Nor.
Ace’s chin jerked back. When he’d been the one deciding to leave them it hadn’t felt so… so… cruel. The girl raised in a petri dish didn’t have Henley’s tact.
“You’ll go on ahead until you get to… wherever it is we were heading. And then you send help back for us before sending it on to Reed and Jen. It makes sense. I—I stand out too much. And Nor can protect me while we’re here. You’re the only one who knows what’s on the other side anyway. What if we split up on the bridge and never find each other on the other side? This way, we stay put; no one gets lost.” Her hand scratched at her collar bone. Was that a nervous tic? She needn’t be worried. She had laid out her argument beautifully, and Ace could see little fault with it, at least when compared with his meager idea.
“Rena—”
“She’s right.” Ace was the one to cut Nor off the second time. “You’re smarter than I thought.”
“Um, thank you?”
“You’re welcome.” Ace looked around. “All right, let’s set a meeting point, and each day at noon when it’s likely the busiest, you’re to come out and stand—” He stood taller looking over heads.
“At the firework stand,” Nor suggested. He shrugged at Ace’s look. “A signal, right?”
Ace nodded slowly. “All right. The firework stand. I’ll come—”
Suddenly there was screaming and shouting. Ace looked around wildly, but it was a sea of scrambling bodies and limbs, people running every direction; he couldn’t even pinpoint the source of the fear.
A loud grumbling engine that was all too familiar rose over the screams, followed by the sound of a swarm of bees. It wasn’t bees though. If Henley had been there, they’d have heard the drones earlier. As it was, they careened around the side of a nearby grocery store, at least a dozen of them, startling those below who were also darting out of the way of the truck as it trundled to a stop just down the road from where they were now, near the fireworks man who had ducked behind his stall.
“In here,” Ace said, herding Rena and Nor into a store just behind them. The chaos on the street was only barely muffled through the thin windows, most of which had been taped up where they’d been smashed, likely by previous looters.
“Don’t take anything,” the cashier said as they moved past the counter, gun pointed at them.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Ace said absently, taking stock of the small room, in search of another way out. “Back door?” he demanded when he couldn’t quickly identify one—the place was a mess, poorly cared for.
“I said, don’t take anything.” The cashier came around the edge of the counter, and Ace stopped moving, raising his hands slowly as the barrel approached.
“We intend you no ha
rm nor theft. We simply want to pass through, empty-handed.”
Rena whimpered. Ace wasn’t sure if it was in reaction to the gun or in smothered contradiction to his words. He was thirsty and hungry. She must be, too.
“Don’t move.” The gun wavered slightly with nerves, which was not good. If he pulled the trigger, there was no surety which target the bullet would penetrate.
Ace glanced at the door where bodies were now running uniformly away from the direction they’d arrived, heads covered as though the drones were dropping something. With all the dust everyone’s feet was kicking up, Ace was uncertain if there was some biological or gaseous agent being used to subdue or even harm.
“It would be safer for you to let us go, calmly and peacefully,” Ace told the guy.
“I know what happens when everyone goes mad on the streets,” the guy said, wildly, eyes popping.
In support, someone thumped into the window as they were shoved by the stampede.
While the gunman’s eyes were averted to the scene, Ace took a step away from Rena and Nor, who were frozen as the gun swiveled back and forth a few centimeters each way.
“I’ve seen the movies. Looters. Thieves. Vandals. People just take. It’s my livelihood; how do you—”
His words stopped short as Rena darted under his outstretched arm and delivered first a rapid punch to the nose then a knee to his groin. He folded over groaning, and Nor jumped in wrenching his arm behind him until he relinquished the weapon.
Flat on the floor, he spat to the side and tried to roll over to throw Nor off his back.
Nor pressed his knee harder into the guy’s spine, leaned over and said, “Sorry. I promise we won’t take anything.”
“Much,” Sirena corrected.
Nor spared her an unimpressed glance then brought the butt of the gun handle down into the guy’s head, which dropped with a hollow-sounding clunk to the tile.
“Rena, we don’t really have time—” Nor started, glancing out the window while standing fluidly and putting the gun into the back of his pants.
“Already got it,” Rena said, returning quickly with a few waters cradled in her arms.
Nor gave a pitiful head shake to the cashier. “Poor guy. Your punches aren’t gentle.”
Sirena laughed. “Think I bruised my knuckles though. No boxing gloves, and his nose is a lot bigger than yours.”
Nor grinned back. “I knew you’d be great to have on my side. Let’s go. There must be a back door somewhere here.”
Sirena headed around the counter, nonplussed.
Nor turned back to Ace. “Coming?”
Ace slowly lowered his hands. Having a team had just saved his life. No matter how prestigious the degrees from BSTU, of the knowledge they filled his brain with, self-defense was not one of them. He gave his head a shake to re-center on their task and took a step over the prone body.
Nor let him pass, then reached over to the shelves to swipe a few more items and followed.
Rena, who was waiting on the other side of the counter, cocked her head.
“Protein bars,” Nor explained.
Her eyes rolled.
“Muscle power,” he protested.
She lifted one of her hands from the water bottles, silently letting it drop in a snub, then turned to head into the darker recesses behind a shelving unit next to the counter.
“Let me go first,” Ace said, feeling like he wasn’t contributing, which was not a role he had held before. Group projects had always involved him issuing orders and then eventually taking over every subset when his team members were too slow or incompetent to successfully complete what was needed.
The fragile windows shattered. Ace wasn’t sure if it was more humans slamming into them that had caused the fracture or something more sinister, but all three dropped to the ground, crouching as shards flew overhead.
“Go, go, go.”
One handed, the other still tucking the waters to her chest, Rena crawled. Nor followed her rear into the dark, and Ace took up the actual rear.
A second later, Rena grunted, then her arm appeared, sliding up a wall. There was a click, and bright light framed a doorway. The two crawled toward it.
More glass crashed and bits trickled from above. Ace dropped his chin, blindly crawling, his palms pressing painfully into the sharp glass pieces. One hand hit on something soft.
He glanced up. It was a shoe. Two shoes sat discarded on the floor. Shoes that Ace had nearly run into when he’d dashed into the motel bathroom at Reed’s unexpected arrival and found them protruding from the bathroom window.
Henley. Henley had been here. And gone.
And she was shoeless.
◆◆◆
The great thing about BSTU’s lack of subtlety was just that. By instilling fear, they had started wide-spread panic. With the threat coming from overhead and quick at maneuvering, cars were driving into people in their attempts to flee while pedestrians didn’t know which way to turn. Moreover, others were doing the hard work for the trio of removing obstacles.
In the parking lot they emerged into behind the store, a woman opened a car door, about to get into the driver’s seat when a man carrying two small, screaming children darted past, looking around him, and in so doing, he blindly plowed her right over.
Was that what “the Bus” looked like in the halls?
Nor hadn’t spared a moment to wonder about the woman or the kid who the guy dropped in their collision and scooped right back up. Nor was already sliding into the vehicle and closing the door before the outraged woman could get to her feet and demand her keys back. Move, he mouthed through the window the woman was pulling herself up toward and slapping with her palms, yelling obscenities.
Rena was already in the passenger seat, buckling in, when Ace darted around the trunk and got in the far back seat, in case the woman might try to slide in the back with him when he opened the door.
“Go.”
“Yeah, like that’s easy,” Nor growled.
Beyond the front windshield, people darted in front of them every which way. Navigating without hurting anyone was impossible.
Ace squished between the seats, slapping the cigarette lighter on. Were all cars old in this part of the country? He had assumed the few they’d stolen were rare, but evidence suggested BSTU was not as pervasive as they seemed, or rather, than they attempted to appear.
“What are you doing?” Nor questioned as he lurched the car forward in short bursts when there were breaks in the traffic.
Ace didn’t answer, willing the car to heat the little stick faster.
“Barnacles,” Rena hissed, plucking at her shirt.
“What?” Nor asked, horrified. “Are you hurt? Did you—”
She slapped his hand away. “Just water. Some glass must have punctured one of the water bottles.”
Nor sighed out. “Christ, don’t scare me like that. If it’s just a wet t-shirt contest—”
“Reed’s nervous habits are rubbing off on you,” she accused.
Pop. Ace snatched up the little plug, careful not to brush the driver, and scooted over to his window, dropping the back window down and letting in the cacophony of terror.
Someone jammed their head in the window. “Hey! Can I ride with you? Let me in, man. Move over. You got space.” His cheek connected with the little object Ace held carefully in his fingers, and the teen yowled, jerking away.
Henley would stop to see if he was all right. Ace merely shoved his torso far out of the car, almost sitting on the sill, braced the firework on the roof, holding it still with one hand, and held the tiny black plug to the thin rod poking out of the back.
“Brake,” he told Nor, watching the little spark work its way down toward the base. Right before it touched, Ace let go, slid into the car and rolled the window up. There was a loud crackle, some pops, a big bang and high-pitched whine.
A clear path opened in front of the car. “Follow that firework,” Ace said, feeling like he was in a bizarr
e chase scene in a film.
Nor gaped a second longer then took off, stepping hard on the gas. They couldn’t keep up, of course, but they could maintain a close enough distance to sneak through the exposed trail before anyone bold enough ventured back.
Henley wasn’t the only one who could think of a solution quickly, even if usually, his solutions were more mathematically- and programming-oriented. Ace was proved wrong though; they caught up to the firework quickly, which had smashed through the windshield of a boat just near to the turn onto the causeway and wedged there in the pane. It was now just shooting sparks and fire from its back end.
“Faster,” Ace urged as they were forced to pull up right behind it before turning one way then the other to get onto the bridge. Right as they cleared the second turn, the hiss of the sparks turned into the loud whistle and bang then crackle of the firework exploding. It worked to send most people away from the bridge—the stragglers who hadn’t already been driven that way by the drones.
The drones themselves had split up from their herd and were doing as they had in the cornfields, making wide sweeps of the lingering runners and sinking low around cars to peer, with some sense or other, in the windows. Ace imagined they were fitted with IR if not visual and audio sensors. However, heat signature-seeking capabilities lacked substantiation in a heat wave, especially when there were many bodies the devices could confuse as their targets. BSTU had really missed their chance in the cornfields, thanks to Henley’s strong hearing.
Ace glanced at the shoes tumbled on the seat beside him while Nor weaved his way through abandoned vehicles and others fleeing across the bridge from the interrogation behind them at the port. Would they catch up to her before the drones did?
And how did she lose her shoes?
Chapter Eleven
Henley woke groggily, her throat even more parched than before, her eyes heavy. The rancid smell of her shirt roused her further. She desperately wanted a shower. The rumble of an engine below her tried to lull her back toward slumber.