“You’re the one who convinced me to come here, who brought this world the help they needed to make it this far.”
It felt incredibly odd to be touching the raknoth like this. In all their time together, he couldn’t recall having ever touched Alton outside of sparring sessions.
“You’re the reason the rakul are going to lose, Alton. And so am I.”
He let his hands fall from Alton’s shoulders but left one extended, open and waiting to seal this insane pact.
“I’m scared too.” Haldin glanced at Elise, bolstering his resolve. “I’ve never been so terrified. But this is it. The others will keep us safe as long as they can. But this is how we win.”
He’d never seen a raknoth look quite so human as Alton reached, slowly at first, and then fell upon Haldin’s extended hand with both of his own, his alien eyes wet with unspilled tears.
“Okay,” Alton whispered.
Haldin gave him a solemn nod, his jaw clenched tight in a futile attempt to prevent the tears from welling in his own eyes.
“I…” Alton searched for some time and finally gave up with a shake of his head. “Thank you, Haldin.”
Then he sagged limply against the wall like his strings had simply been cut, just like that.
It was time, then.
Haldin looked longingly at the corridor hatch, not so much seeing the smooth, purplish surface as the realm of possibilities that lay just outside it.
Even with the darkness descending, even with this planet so completely, utterly screwed, there was still life to be found out there. Moments of pain and joy, triumph and sorrow. There were his friends. There was his mortality.
But this was how they won. He was sure of it.
So instead of heading for the hatch, instead of saying his goodbyes to Johnny and Franco and the others, he crawled delicately onto the bed and laid down next to Elise. He took her hand, careful not to shift her body, and enjoyed the simple feeling of her hand in his—the calloused warmth, the faint but unmistakable pulse of human life pumping through her veins.
Would it feel the same on the other side?
Would it ever feel this way again?
At the foot of the bed, Alton’s body gave a hard twitch, then another. A horrible wet crack split the air, like the world’s largest egg beginning to hatch.
Haldin’s gut churned with apprehension and barely contained nausea, his pounding heart and electrified nerves screaming at him to get up, to run, to get the hell out of there.
“I love you, Elise,” he whispered.
Then, with her hand grasped tightly in his, he laid back and closed his eyes to wait.
1
One month, she’d said.
Glass shattered, and a maddened scream split the air, only distantly recognizable as human.
Jarek hit the pavement in a half-crouch and pushed on without looking back, Fela’s powerful legs pumping beneath him, pounding the ground as he fled the first of the horde with his cargo tightly clutched.
Three weeks ago, the sounds of the shrieks that spread through the streets behind him would’ve curdled his blood and given him a proper case of the heebie-jeebies.
Now, though…
Now that furor hordes seemed to be howling after them wherever they ran. Now that he’d seen more grown men and women tear each other to gory pieces more times than he wanted to count… All he could do was push on. It was all any of them could do right now.
That didn’t stop the heebie-jeebies.
One month of this madness.
He could’ve taken them, of course. In small numbers, their fists and mindless rage weren’t exactly fair matches for Jarek’s armored exo.
In horde quantities, though?
Jarek had tried to avoid putting too much thought into it, but he was pretty sure Fela wouldn’t render him invulnerable to them going Wookie on his ass and pulling him limb from limb if they managed to catch him and swarm him to the pavement.
So he kept moving.
“Talk to me, Mr. Robot. Good news only.”
A deliberate moment’s hesitation.
Then, “That’s quite the lovely sunrise, sir.”
On top of his crisp English accent, Al’s tone was cautious, searching.
Jarek held his tongue, waiting for the digital construct to finish his sweep.
Everything else aside, his friend wasn’t wrong. It was a lovely sunrise. The scrabbling feet and bloodthirsty calls of the horde just put a bit of a dimmer on things.
“No enemy ships detected nearby, sir,” Al said after longer than usual, “though I’ll remind you my eyes aren’t as good as they once were.”
Jarek grimaced and adjusted his cargo, shifting the enormous bag on his back and wrapping the straps of the second half-full duffle tighter around his left hand.
Between the Net inexplicably failing last week and the secondhand sensory array Pryce and Al had cobbled together on Fela’s faceplate after a raknoth warlord had clubbed off the first one, Jarek imagined Al’s senses felt about as unencumbered as he currently did trying to sprint with a giant sword and a couple of oversized duffles awkwardly strapped to his form.
That said, Al’s words at least offered some mild assurance that the rakul themselves weren’t about to drop down on his head. It was something.
Jarek cut left down a wide alleyway, thinking to shake some of his pursuers, and nearly ran headlong into one of the wild-eyed berserkers. The man bared his teeth and sprang forward.
Gently as he reasonably could, Jarek kicked the guy in the chest and sent him sprawling to the pavement ten feet back. As far as he could tell, the berserker’s coughing and sputtering were probably more a matter of mechanical fact than pain or discomfort. Those would come later, when the furor passed and the poor bastard hopefully regained control of his mind.
For now, though, Jarek turned and leapt over a brown picket fence and into a heavily overgrown backyard.
From what he’d seen, Syracuse, like most northern cities, had been largely abandoned for some time now. Ever since the Catastrophe, people had had enough on their plates just to survive without willingly adding contending with the winter cold to their lists.
It was exactly what Jarek had been counting on when he’d ghosted into town at the crack of dawn. He’d even stuck to the outskirts as much as possible, just to be safe.
Canned food. Oil. Batteries. Solar chargers. Anything that might help them survive. He’d stuffed his bags as quickly as he could, determined to not spend a minute longer than necessary in the abandoned ghost town.
A harsh baying from the alleyway gave him an unneeded reminder that Syracuse was hardly abandoned now.
“What say we blow this party and get back to our merry men, buddy?”
Behind, the picket fence rattled with its first thudding blow.
“That seems most advisable, sir.”
Aided by Fela’s considerable strength, Jarek easily hopped the fence on the other side of the yard and took off once again, weaving through crumbling buildings at a hard northwest clip.
The sounds of his frenzied pursuit faded into the distance over the following minutes until the most prominent sounds were his labored breathing and the rhythmic pounding of his armored feet on the asphalt.
Pissed beyond all Earthly reason, they may have been. But, try as they did, the furor victims couldn’t match his Fela-enhanced pace, even encumbered as he was. It was exactly why the group had agreed Jarek should make the run solo when they’d pulled up a few miles outside town in the first hints of the coming daylight. Not that anyone minded sitting out and letting Jarek do the heavy lifting.
No one but Mosen, at least.
That glinty-eyed bastard only saw Jarek’s usefulness as a threat to his authority in the group. Why Mosen cared so damn much about that authority was still a bit perplexing to Jarek.
Maybe the guy had simply spent too much time immersed with the raknoth and their draconian pecking order. Or maybe it was just Mosen’s way of trying t
o feel in control of the situation.
If it was the latter, then Mosen was even crazier than Jarek had already thought. Out of the many things they collectively were, in control was not on the list.
The rakul had seen to that. And then some.
The three-mile trek back to their temporary hideout fell quickly to Jarek’s amped nerves and racing thoughts. Quickly enough, in fact, that he wondered if they shouldn’t have holed up further out of town. At the very least, he probably should have taken off in a different direction and looped his way back around.
“No pursuit detected, sir,” Al said in his ear, apparently sensing his hesitation as he finished tromping across a field of wild grass that might’ve once been a golf course.
“Thanks, buddy.”
He pushed into the last little woodland divider separating them from the dilapidated apartment building they’d decided to bunk in for the day. A tiny weight tugged at the back of his mind, whispering frightening thoughts and forcing him to glance back over his shoulder, across the grassy expanse.
“Keep an ear out anyway?”
“Of course, sir.”
Jarek closed his eyes, consciously let out a long breath, and forced himself to turn for the apartments. There wasn’t anything left to do now but to load the new supplies, divide the food as best they could afford, and get some rest while they could.
They still didn’t really understand whether there was some pattern to the furors, or exactly what goal the rakul were driving their puppets to pursue—outside of mindless violence. From what Jarek had observed, though, he doubted the horde would track him this far.
Plus, more likely than not, they’d be moving on from the apartments tonight anyway.
For all they knew, the rakul could be orbiting the planet, watching them night and day with technologies Jarek couldn’t comprehend, but logic still dictated that traveling under the cover of night was probably the smart move. Especially for a band of squishy meat sacks like them trying to avoid the notice of the ridiculously powerful intergalactic conquerors that may or may not be currently tracking them like alien bloodhounds.
He ducked under a low-hanging branch, suppressing a shudder at the thought of bloodhounds and the memory it kicked up of the thing that had chased him and Michael out of HQ almost two weeks ago.
As if he’d needed more material for his never-ending vault of nightmare materials.
Along with the thought of their flight from HQ came the sudden and inevitable pang of aching worry, like a glob of churning ice water in his core. It was a sensation he was almost growing used to in a horrible kind of way. The same one he had every time any little thing reminded him of—
No. Not now.
He had hungry soldiers and a not-so-distant horde to worry about right now.
Later, when he could lay down to rest with some degree of certainty he wouldn’t wake up to snarling teeth and wild eyes… then he could have his worry-streaked pitty party.
But until then…
One foot in front of the other.
And again.
And again.
The ship was still there, right where Al had parked it that morning, under the partial cover of the encroaching tree line. Jarek considered stopping to leave what extra supplies they wouldn’t immediately need inside but decided it wasn’t worth the time or organizational effort right now.
Most of what he’d scavenged had been food anyway, and they weren’t nearly so flush on food as to think today’s haul would last longer than tonight. Turned out, keeping a platoon of hungry men and women fed wasn’t a walk in the park when food was scarce to begin with and a pack of super-monsters had you on the run.
It wasn’t like anyone had had time to pack rations for this lovely little adventure of theirs.
Whether or not the rakul knew it, if the hordes or the beasts themselves didn’t catch and kill their group, the running—and the hunger it was driving them to—might.
A glance at each corner of the apartment building ahead showed that their lookouts were posted and watching him. He hefted the duffel in his left hand and shot a casual salute their way.
The Resistance woman, Chambers, returned a wave and a friendly, maybe even excited, smile.
In contrast, the reaction of the soldiers posted at the other two corners—Mosen’s men—was like an icy slap to the giblets.
They stared at him and his cargo, looking like they’d rather eat him and take his suit than accept his handouts yet again.
So that was a no on the thank yous, then.
Suffice it to say, there was a reason Jarek hadn’t stepped out of his armor in over a week—even after Al had upped the awkward ante and made it crystal clear, just in case any of their assembled forces should have any wild ideas, that Jarek was the only person on Earth the suit would be functioning for anytime soon.
It hadn’t earned him or Al any points with Mosen or the other refugees from Camp Krogoth, but at least no one had tested Fela’s durability with a knife while he slept. Yet.
Jarek stepped into the entryway, pulled the door shut behind him, and paused at the bottom of the rickety old stairs.
“Honey, I’m home,” he called up.
Thanks to Fela’s amplified auditory sensors, he didn’t miss the irritated huff Mosen let out, and he could almost feel the a-hole rolling his eyes.
When Mosen leaned over the banister above, though, his practiced look of smug indifference was fully intact.
“Marvelous. You had me so worried.” The red glint in Mosen’s eyes as he scrutinized the duffels conveyed about as much worry as a hungry alligator closing on its prey. “What do you have for us, sweetheart?”
“Oh, you know”—Jarek slid his helmet faceplate open with a careful thought and started up the stairs—“this and that. Batteries. Bandages. Oil for Al’s squeaky motors.”
“I’m not the one who’s weighing the ship down every day, sir,” Al said out loud through Fela’s speakers. “Or the one who beat it within an inch of scrap metal.”
Jarek might have bantered back, but Mosen had paused from eyeing the duffel to shoot him an expectant, severe look. It kind of ruined the mood.
“And food,” Jarek added, suppressing a sigh as he held the first duffel out.
He had yet to make up his mind on whether or not he, Michael, and the rest of the Resistance soldiers had made a mistake in partying up with Mosen and his faithful Mosenites when they’d unexpectedly crossed paths not far outside of what remained of New York City.
Joining forces had seemed like the smart move. They were all allies in this fight against the rakul, after all, and more soldiers meant more security, more lookouts, less sleepless nights. All objectively good things. But, then again, there were also more mouths to feed—and to listen to.
Mosen snatched the bag from Jarek’s hand, his expression unreadable for a few seconds. Jarek expected him to tromp out, but Mosen hesitated for a second.
“Don’t suppose there’s been any news?” Jarek finally asked.
Mosen showed him a morbid grin. “What? Besides the entire world being fucked out of its mind?”
“Yeah, I don’t particularly need a reminder on that one right now.”
Mosen frowned. “You run into trouble out there?”
Jarek nodded grimly. “Another horde. Or maybe the same one. Shit, I can’t tell.”
Mosen hissed through his teeth. “Well fuck, maybe you could have started with that, Slater.”
“Started with what?” came Michael’s deep voice from the hallway beyond, followed a moment later by his dark, haggard face.
Christ, he wasn’t looking hot.
Not that any of them were, having been on the road for nearly two weeks with little in the way of commodities most of that time.
“Started with the fact that those crazy bastards could’ve followed our Soldier of Charity straight back here,” Mosen growled, shooting a disgusted look at Jarek before whirling for the doorway.
Michael held Mosen
’s eyes with a stern expression and took his time in stepping aside to let him pass.
“Mosen,” Jarek said.
“I need to go tell my lookouts,” Mosen said without stopping.
“Seth.”
Mosen froze at Jarek’s use of his first name, then rolled his shoulders and looked back to meet Jarek’s eyes with frosty amusement.
“Yeah, Papa Slater?”
Jarek did his best to keep his expression peaceful as he nodded to the duffel in Mosen’s hand. “See to it everyone gets their fair share?”
Mosen looked between Michael and Jarek, his amusement only growing. “I wonder what it is you two think passes for fair about any of this shit.”
And with that, he left before either of them could say anything more.
Michael looked worriedly from the empty doorway back to Jarek but seemed to relax a bit when he took in the full bag still strapped to Jarek’s back.
He didn’t have to speak his mind. Jarek knew exactly what he was thinking.
It would be an interesting day, to say the least, if—or, more likely, when—they came up short on rations.
“I take it you ran into another furor out there?” Michael asked.
Jarek nodded. “Kinda feels a little too much like it’s following us at this point. I could’ve sworn that town was deserted, and that was a pretty damn big horde that popped up.”
Michael grimaced. “I hate that word.”
Jarek didn’t need to ask about that one either to know Michael was referring to the word, horde. They’d already had a few discussions about the mindless zombie connotations, and Jarek knew Michael could relate a little too much to the feeling of being made a telepathic puppet.
Speaking of which…
“You can go ahead and say it,” Michael said, apparently picking up on the direction of his thoughts.
Jarek hesitated, opened his mouth, hesitated again, and shrugged. “Fine. Are you feeling okay”—he tapped the side of his head and dropped to a conspiratorial whisper—“you know, upstairs?”
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 84