by Peter Clines
“What?”
“Yeah. You’re kind of a local legend by association, if that makes sense. There are stories about you two fighting mobsters, robots, sea monsters, saving the world.”
St. George turned his head. “Sea monsters?”
“Yep. So says the gospel according to Kaitlyn.”
“But I’ve never even met the guy until today.”
“No one seems to care,” Barry said. “It’s like he’s pulling a Jonathan and editing himself into all of your life and history.”
“A who?”
“Jonathan, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They did an episode where he cast a spell that made him the most important person in town, so he became the main character of the show. They even redid the opening credits so it was all—”
“Barry.”
“Sorry. I just thought you’d remember that one. I mean they fully committed to—”
“Barry!”
“Right, sorry. Anyway, Nautilus’s told everyone he’s best buddies with the Mighty Dragon, and now everyone’s so deep in the fandom they kind of gloss over some of the more…well, evil stuff he’s doing. He says something’s for the greater good, so they all go along with it.”
St. George turned again so he could see his friend in the corner of his eye. “Yeah, but this? This has to be too much.”
“You think they had cages for a dozen kids just sitting around?” Barry shook his head. “From what Kaitlyn and Colin told me, this is standard procedure whenever a new ship shows up. They’ve both been in the cage at some point before, him twice, her once. Any newcomers give in because nobody’s going to risk getting a bunch of kids hurt. Then they become part of the community, drink the Nautilus-flavored Kool-Aid, and everybody’s happy.”
“Jesus,” muttered St. George. “How does he get anyone to go along with it? Parents let him do this to their kids? Hell, why don’t we hear all the kids crying right now?”
“The kids don’t think there’s anything weird about it,” Barry said. “This is all normal for them. They think it’s a game. It’s what they grew up with. Figure any kid under the age of ten has spent at least half his life out here.” He gestured at the two children curled up against him. “Heck, these two have never even seen dry land. They were born out here.”
“So you think this is some kind of cult?”
“For some of the adults, yeah, but I think the kids just don’t know any better.”
St. George looked across the nighttime deck. Two of the guards were talking in low tones. He thought one of them, Mitchel with one l of the cowboy mustache, might be staring at the cage, but he couldn’t be sure.
Then Mitchel set off memories of Madelyn glaring at the man, and then the image of her being torn in half. The look of terror on her face. Her limbs sagging as her spine came apart. The sound of wet meat hitting the ship’s deck.
He shook the thoughts from his mind. “And all this stuff about being dead? And Los Angeles being destroyed?”
“Yeah, I heard some of those stories, too. Translating from little kid, it seems like most of these ships decided to stay at sea when the ex-virus broke out. A couple of them formed a little fleet. They got food drops from helicopters for a while, but then those stopped.”
“When was this?”
“She’s three and a half, George.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Anyway, they were starving, and when people died they started turning into exes anyway. Not clear how the virus got out here. And that’s about when Nautilus showed up and told them that they’d nuked all the big cities to stop the spread of the virus. They had to stay out here until all the radiation cleared. When fuel started running low he helped them push the ships together like this.”
“He pushed the ships together? By himself?”
“According to Kaitlyn, he’s the strongest man in the world when he’s in the water. What do you think?”
“He’s no lightweight.” St. George rolled his stomach muscles, then shifted his jaw back and forth. “So nobody saw or heard the nukes? He just showed up and told them it happened and they all believed him?”
“Well,” Barry pointed out, “there was Hawaii. And it was the CDC’s fallback plan, right? And a plot point in at least a dozen movies. Is it really hard to believe they’d believe it?”
“I guess not.”
They sat in the cage.
Barry lowered his voice a little more. “Did you ever hear anything about him being all, y’know, delusional? ’Cause everything I’m seeing and hearing says Nautilus let his Aquaman syndrome drift all the way over into a full-on Napoleon complex, if you know what I’m saying.”
St. George shook his head. “I knew of him, but I’d never met him or even seen any interviews or anything. What about you?”
“I’ve been trying to think about it,” Barry said, “but all I remember is making a joke with someone. Banzai, maybe. I wasn’t sure if he took his name from the submarine, the shell, or the gym equipment. Banzai’d seen a picture of him online, and she said it might’ve been all three.”
St. George managed a grim smile.
“Honestly,” said Barry, “if Madelyn hadn’t recognized him, I’m not sure I would’ve.”
The smile faded.
Barry moved his own head, careful not to shift the two children. “You okay?”
A thin wisp of smoke came out between St. George’s lips. “Madelyn.”
“Ahhhhh.” A few moments of silence passed between them. “Did you ever tell her?”
“About what?”
“Her condition. That she’s not a zombie, she’s an android made out of a big pile of nanites trying to copy a dead girl.”
St. George snorted and felt the chemical scratch in the back of his throat. “There was never a good time,” he said. “Half the Mount’s scared of her. Every day she’d wake up with her memories messed up. How do you add on to that with ‘by the way, you’re not even a real person, you’re just a robot’?”
“Hey,” Barry said, “machines need love, too.”
“D’you remember how many times Freedom had to tell her about her parents being dead? What was the final count? Four times? Five?”
“Something like that, yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
“I just…if I had to tell her she wasn’t even human anymore, I wanted it to be at a good point for her. When she’d have time to process it.”
“So to speak.”
“Yeah,” said St. George. “So to speak.”
“You do realize you’re still talking about ‘her’ parents, right? You know she’s still a person. In all the ways that matter.”
“Yeah. I wish a lot of other people had realized it.”
“Still, you should tell her soon. She’s going to figure it out sooner or later. Or figure out she’s a hell of a lot more than a random dead girl, at least.”
St. George tilted his head to his friend. “What do you mean, tell her soon?”
Barry turned his head, too, so they were eye to eye. “Oh, frak me,” he said. “I thought we were on the same page here, George.”
“What?”
Barry chuckled. “You’re such a lovable idiot sometimes. You never got around to reading Swamp Thing, did you?”
“What’s your point?”
“Think about it.”
“About what?”
“She’s already dead,” Barry said. “Remember? And even if she wasn’t, you can’t kill an android by tearing her in half.”
“OKAY,” SHOUTED AL. The brown-skinned scavenger banged on the side of Mean Green with his fist until they all stopped talking. The movement made his chain mail rattle. The other scavengers switched back to leathers in the cooler months, but Al wore the chain mail year-round. “We’re heading out. Everybody shut up and pay attention.”
“Sir yes sir,” shouted Taylor from the truck’s liftgate.
“Just told you to shut up, not shout,” Al said with a glare.
Taylor grinned and looked
around at the other people in the Hot Zone. The scavengers weren’t smiling. Neither was Gus Hancock. The battlesuit didn’t even have a mouth, just speakers. Pierce just glared at him.
“Just trying to lighten the fucking mood,” Taylor muttered.
Everyone shifted their attention back to Al, and he tugged the brim of his hat down. He’d been one of the scavengers since the early days of the Mount, and Eden was his first command position. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was lean and well-muscled, the kind of build that came from a life of physical labor. Iron gray streaks ran through his black hair, and his eyes were dark circles on either side of his hawk nose.
“So we’re all on the same page,” he said, “we’re going to go fast out of the gate as soon as it’s wide enough. Cesar here cleans up any exes, makes sure the gates are closed, and then he joins us in the back.”
“Can’t you just keep up?” asked one of the scavengers, the big woman named Keri.
Cesar shook his head. “Running uses too much power. We’d get there and the suit’d stop dead.”
A couple people nodded their understanding.
“Anyway,” said Al with a glare at Keri, “Cesar gets in the back, we go slow for a few blocks, try to draw some of them away from the fence.”
He jerked his thumb at the dozens of exes pressed against the western wall of the Hot Zone. Their fingers stretched through the fence to grasp at the air. Some tore their lips on the chain-link. They stared at the crowd of scavengers with dead eyes. Their chattering teeth echoed in the air.
“We’re going to start about six blocks down and work our way back. We’ll go over the rules again there, and then you all split into your teams. Try to keep it as quiet as we can—let’s not attract a ton of exes. Everyone got it?”
The crowd gave off a collection of nods and murmured confirmations.
Danielle watched them from the gate at the north end of the Hot Zone. They’d set up the rectangular area to function as a four-way airlock. Gates on each end shut it off from the two sides of the garden. Then the gates on either side could open, depending on if a truck was heading back to the Mount or out to scavenge Encino for supplies.
Cold sweat burned her eyes, and she forced a hand up to wipe it away. Not even noon, the air already bordered on hot, and she had four layers of clothing wrapped around her. Almost all the clothes she had up at Eden. A few of the guards and scavengers had given her odd looks, but none of them had said anything.
With the width of the gate and the cars parked on the other side of the chain-link, the closest ex was almost fifteen feet away from her. It stood in the road that led back to the Mount. A dead man, short but with a lot of muscle that had withered away over the years. Dried clumps of gore decorated a tight beard, trimmed close to the jaw. Its clothes were casual, but blood spotted the T-shirt and jeans, and one of the blazer’s cuffs was torn and frayed. Something brown with age was smeared along the lapels, just below the beard.
The ex stared at her over a car and through the fence. Its dry chalky eyes never blinked, even as each snap of its jaw made the bearded skull tremble. Its fingers reached across the car’s roof and flailed a good two feet from the fence.
She wondered if there was something behind the eyes. Was it a mindless ex, or was there real hatred or anger? Legion, maybe, lurking and watching her and waiting for a chance to get some stupid revenge.
She took a breath and ignored the dead man. And the thunder in her chest. She forced herself to stand there with her arms tight across her chest and watch the scavengers leave.
Al yelled out another command, and the last few people climbed into Mean Green. Gibbs gave the battlesuit a thump on its skeletal arm, traded a few quiet words with Cesar, and limped back toward Danielle. His toes clinked on the pavement. “Didn’t think you’d still be here,” he said to her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that. I didn’t think you’d still be here. Figured you’d’ve headed back to the building by now.”
“I’m fine.”
Gibbs pushed his lips into a line and nodded once.
She made a point of turning her head to stare back at the dead man. Its teeth clicked together and metal glinted in its mouth. One of its front teeth was gone. An implant had broken off and left a thin pin of surgical steel in its place.
The northern garden and the interior gates of the Hot Zone closed behind him. Another layer of chain-link between her and the bearded ex. A guard stepped past Danielle and Gibbs to wrap a chain around the two fence posts. She looped it three times and then spun a quick-link shut on the two ends before running back to her post.
The battlesuit walked to the front of Mean Green and slipped in so it stood between the truck and the seam where the two gates met. It flexed its fingers. The exes reached for the exoskeleton through the chain-link.
The truck’s engine revved.
The latch clicked.
One shove from the battlesuit swung the gates open and knocked a dozen of the undead back. Two right in front managed to stay on their feet. The exoskeleton slammed a fist into each of them and sent them flying. It walked forward and backhanded two more zombies. Then it moved to the side and the truck rolled out, plowing down the exes still in front of the gate. Their bones crunched and snapped beneath the tires.
Ropes and pulleys closed the gates behind them. One ex stumbled inside the Hot Zone, a gaunt and gory teenager with an iPod earbud in its remaining ear. A guard knocked it down with a pole, and another smashed the dead thing three times in the back of the head with the stock of her rifle.
Mean Green rumbled forward a few more yards until the liftgate was close to the exoskeleton. A minute later the battlesuit was in the back and the truck was rolling down the street. They drove four blocks from Eden, a parade of exes trailing behind them, before Mean Green accelerated a bit. The truck turned a corner and vanished. The sound of its engine faded a minute later.
A deep breath rushed out of Danielle’s nose. She took a few steps back from the gate. The bearded ex had wandered off, lured away by the sounds and activity of the scavengers, even though it was on the other side of the Hot Zone.
Gibbs rolled his shoulders. “Want to go back and work on the crossbow?”
She sucked in another breath. “No,” she said. She took a few more steps away from the gate. “No, I’m going to go for a little walk.”
“What?”
Danielle pushed her arms down to her sides. “A walk. Just…” She forced an arm back up and waved at the garden. “Just around the garden. Get another look at the place.”
He looked at her. “You don’t have to do this.”
She clenched her jaw.
“You don’t have to pretend. I know what’s going on.”
She turned from the gate and walked away from him. It didn’t take him much effort to catch up, even with his mechanical foot. “I’m just going to walk around the garden,” she said. “Alone.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
He sighed. “Let’s just go back to the—”
“No!” She glared at him and jerked her head at the utility road that ran around the garden. “I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in half an hour or so.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Of course I do,” she snapped. “You think I enjoy being like this?”
Gibbs shook his head. “No, of course not. I just don’t think—”
Danielle waved her arm at the building to cut him off. Anger made the movement easier. “I’m never going to get better if I spend every minute inside hiding. I’ve got to face this someday, so let me go for a damned walk on my own!”
She took a few ragged breaths while he stared at her.
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t look her in the eye. He swung his chin in a way that wasn’t quite shaking his head.
“I have to do this,” she said again.
“I get it,” he said. “I don’t agree w
ith doing it right now, but I get it.” He turned away and walked across the lawn toward the building.
Danielle watched him go.
Then she took another breath, turned north, and started walking.
Not so much a walk as a shuffle. Her limbs refused to make big movements that would open them up and expose them. Her eyes kept darting to the small group of plots to her right, nestled against the lawn and the building. It was overgrown with corn and sunflowers and what looked like grapevines. They swayed back and forth in the breeze.
Was there a breeze?
The cold sweat washed over her again. Then the breeze hit it. She took another breath and another determined step.
The left side of the utility road was a wall of fences. Chain-link backed by wooden fencing. Literally, the backs of fences, put up by long-dead homeowners who hadn’t wanted to look out at a community garden.
Some of them were still back there, stumbling in their backyards. Danielle could hear teeth chattering. Twice she’d glimpsed a shadow of movement between the wooden slats. Both times it had made her freeze up. She’d had to count off five slow breaths before she could move again.
In the five minutes since Gibbs had walked off, she’d barely gone forty feet.
Danielle wondered if the guards back at the gate were watching her. They were supposed to be watching the fence lines and the street, but she was standing by one of the fences. She was thirty yards from the Hot Zone. Someone must’ve noticed her.
Something thudded against the far side of the wooden fence hard enough that the chain-link rustled for an instant. It got her moving—a wide, serpentine movement that wove back and forth from fence to garden plot, but it was movement.
She sucked in air. Her breathing couldn’t keep up with the thunder of her heart. Both sounds echoed in her ears. White spots appeared in the air in front of her.
No, she told herself. They’re not in the air, they’re just in your vision, and you are not passing out.