“I mentioned we were doing recon, but this is the second time we’ve done it. The first was from the air. We have technology, very old, that lets us fly at considerable altitude. Have you ever seen anything that could fly? Manmade?”
He made a sound of surprise, then shook his head, but stopped in the middle of his motion. “Wait, yes. We saw balloons and a glider, but in the distance. The only reason I knew what we saw was because one of the pilots traded with us, must have been six or seven years ago?”
“Seven,” Elsie confirmed. “Up north. Ballsy fucker. He said they launch from a cliff, and the balloons are run on hot air. Craziest thing I’d ever heard, but they were high enough for us to see them on the horizon, at some distance.”
I filed that information away, because those were the kind of people we would need when we truly began to expand. “We fly too, but ours are powered by engines, and we have a camera that records our path. We saw some people, far to the northwest, and we’re going to make contact.”
“The River People?” Elsie asked.
“River? No, more like a forest. Are those the same people?” Andi said.
“I don’t know. We met traders on a deep run to the east, said they were going all the way to the biggest river in the world in order to take a ship downstream. Why, I have no idea, because the coast is an absolute killing ground, according to everything we know,” Elsie said.
Just like that, our world got bigger.
I cut my eyes at Andi, because I was about to ask a question that might reveal we knew more about the world then we were letting on. Our identity as people from a time before the virus wasn’t common knowledge, but it wasn’t exactly hidden, either. It was more of a need-to-know basis, but since I was revealing our cache of technology, I decided to let him know the rest.
“Stanger, have you ever heard of technology from long ago being found? Or, ah—people?” I asked.
He paused, looked at me with a level gaze, and said, “Maybe. Hightec, sure. It’s my business, or at least it was until we found cattle and realized they were a lot less dangerous than a collapsing ruin filled with snakes.”
“Andi, pull up a tube,” I said.
She flicked her fingers, and in seconds, a short video began to play. I was stunned when she leaned forward to show Stanger and his people the screen.
It was Andi. Being put into her tube.
“This is me, about two thousand years ago. I was pumped up with tiny machines and put into suspended animation, and now I’m here, with you,” she said.
“Bull. Shit.” Stanger crossed his arms, but Elsie gave Andi an odd look.
“Not just me. Jack, too. He went in before I did, and was found by two scavengers working the western Empty. It was dumb luck they found him, but here he is, and here I am, as I said. In the flesh, and better than when I went under. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Jack, give me your hand,” Andi said.
“Fine. I hope you appreciate this, dammit,” I groused, but I held my arm out. Andi pulled her knife and cut me without hesitation, causing Stanger and his people to leap back, gasp, or both. Once again, only Elsie remained impervious to the event.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Stanger asked, his voice incredulous.
“Watch,” Andi said.
So they did. In seconds, the shallow cut began to close, and I flexed my arm, giving Andi a dark look. She grinned and turned her hip to me, as if I were going to spank her. Not really my thing, but for this, I might make an exception.
“They’re called nanobots, and there are millions of them in my blood. Tiny machines too small for the human eye to see, developed just before the virus went crazy and burned down what we had for a civilization. Andi has them, too, but because I care for her as a person, I won’t cut her with a knife.” I smiled toothily at her, and she bowed slightly, then flipped me the bird. “I love you too, dear. As I was saying before my woman—don’t look at me like that, you’re mine and you know it—decided to use me as a demonstration, the ‘bots are what let me sleep all those years. Well, that and the technology of a tube cooled with liquid helium and nuclear power, but those are lectures for the second day of class, so to speak. The point is, Andi and I are from the past, but we’re here now, and we are going to drag this place kicking and screaming back into civilization whether it wants it or not.”
It took a long, awkward moment of silence for my words to sink in, but one by one, I saw faces shift from doubt to questions. That was good.
Elsie spoke first, like I knew she would.
“How many people were put in these tubes?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Andi? Dear?” I asked, grinning at her. “Care to chime in on this?”
“I don’t know either because we were separated from each other. I was in a . . . facility, by myself, with no one else tubed for redundancy. Usually the military—we had a lot of military back then—loved doing things in twos and threes just to make sure the whole project couldn’t be lost. I’d be lying if I didn’t think there were more people out there waiting to wake up, but I’m also convinced that not everyone who went into cold sleep survived. Earthquakes, floods, fires; stuff like that would have picked them off here and there no matter how well we were tucked away for our long nap,” Andi said.
“And that’s where the, ah, computer came from?” Stanger asked.
“This?” Andi held up her tablet. “Yes, but it’s not even close to the most important thing we have.” She gave me a pointed look, and I nodded. “We have means to power things, and build things, and build more computers, if it comes right down to it. We can fly and shoot and heal, but we can’t do it without more people. At first, it’s going to be grunt work. All of it, and it’s going to suck ass.”
“Big time. I was a marine, and most of my life was either waiting or digging or running. Now, we won’t be doing any waiting at all. It’s only work, but the nature of it is changing drastically. In mere months we’ve built a place that your kids can run around and be safe,” I said.
“Kassos,” Elsie said, moving forward in our timeline with her question.
“Yes. That’s on the list, but not for a while. There’s a lot between here and there, if you get me,” I said.
“I do, but—even with what you say you can do, Wetterick alone is a big bite,” Stanger said. He wasn’t dubious, just concerned.
“I agree. I have a lot of reasons to want to stay alive, which is why, when I move on The Outpost, it will be in a way that Wetterick’s people will never expect,” I said. “I want him gone, but I don’t want his people killed and buildings torched. We don’t have the resources to casually throw away The Outpost without trying to save it for our own.”
“Lot of work went into building that place. Not Wetterick, of course, he wouldn’t do a damned thing to get dirty, but there were other good people there,” Stanger said.
“I know. Lasser is with us, and Silk shares my home,” I said.
“Lady Silk? She, ah, used to run her own business there. I know of her,” Stanger said carefully.
“She’s with me now, and it’s okay. I know what she was, and what she owned. The Hannahs are with us now, too,” I said.
“She’s . . . with you?” Stanger said, cutting his eyes at Andi.
“It’s rather crowded in bed, though Mira loves her rifle more than Jack’s body. It’s rather embarrassing for all of us,” Andi said, smiling.
Elsie snorted in delight, while Stanger and everyone else in earshot looked like they would rather be anywhere else.
“I see,” Stanger said, though he quite clearly did not, but he was too experienced to let his face give anything away.
“It’s a good place, Stanger. Get going,” I said, clasping his arm and smiling.
“Right.” He shook himself slightly, perhaps thinking of Silk. I slept with her every night and still felt that way. I understood.
I heard a distant call just then, raw and angry, and before anyone could stand except for Andi,
I rose, aimed my rifle, and snapped off a shot nearly vertical. Lowering my weapon, I barked, “Everyone back. Incoming.”
“What—oh, shit,” Stanger said, then began hustling people away from our area.
The dinobird creature hit with a thud, spurting blood from its beak and flopping once, the exit wound from my round evident in the massive hole between its shoulders. “Nasty things. I imagine you have to watch for them with the cattle?”
“Cattle? Try the kids. They’ll take anything not tied down, and they’re only getting worse,” Stanger said. “Nice shot. Now what are we going to do with it?”
I rolled the creature over with the toe of my boot. Its tongue was stiff, deeply veined, and purple, the teeth around it like needles. “We start by firing up your ovens. Who wants dinobird for supper?”
Stanger slipped a well-worn knife from his belt and lifted the animal by its snout. “I could eat.”
We did just that, and when the stars came wheeling up, I knew I’d made a good choice with Stanger and his people as I stared into the fire’s coals, now cherry red and gray. The day closed soft on all of us for once, and I pulled Breslin aside for another quiet word. He listened, said nothing, and then nodded as the night sounds began to rise on the soft wind. In time, sleep found me, and I put a hand on Andi’s hip, her warmth a talisman under my touch.
19
Breslin wasn’t happy about acting as an escort, but he understood the importance of his role, so he agreed and made himself comfortable with Stanger’s people. I slept under the stars with Andi, wondering what awaited us in the forest.
The forest.
The phrase alone was alien to me after a short time in the rolling open of The Empty, but in truth, I was more curious about what existed under the forest. If life itself had been broken apart, then there was no limit to what we could expect. For that reason, taking more people made less sense. Andi and I worked well as a team, and in a pinch, we would be considered a bonded pair, which was true.
“Ready?” I asked her. The only answer was a smile in the dark. The sky was still black, the stars burning bright as a crescent moon hurried away behind the distant horizon, it’s job as a guide done for the night.
We moved smoothly to our truck, the only motion around us a pair of sentries who waved quietly. The low murmur of cattle drifted to us from the left, where they were tucked together in a small area between the wagons. Had I not known where and when the scene was taking place, it could have been a typical night in the American west.
But there was nothing typical about our reality, and I took the wheel in hand, turned the power toggle, and drove away north at a crawl, leaving the lights off until we were well away from camp. Andi looked back once, smiling at the sleeping people and cattle, and I knew she felt a sense of peace that they would be brought in from The Empty, where they could thrive.
“That was the best thing that could have happened to us,” she said.
“Did you see all the kids? Three pregnant women, too, and even a few dogs with the cattlemen. I feel like I hit the lottery. Twice,” I said.
“Three times if you count Mira,” she said, earning a bark of laughter from me as I cut the wheel to avoid the form of a collapsed cactus nearly eight meters long. The barrel was a mass of jagged thorns, split open to the sky and already swarmed by insects and small animals eating their fill of the juicy interior.
She brought her tablet to life and began watching a loop of the forest footage, then slowed it down until it was a frame by frame crawl.
“What are you thinking?” I asked her. She was an engineer and did things with a purpose.
“We—the military—never even went to the toilet without a plan. We wouldn’t know of the virus without a plan for after, if everything went to shit, and so, there must be orders. I’m wondering if we’re looking at one of those orders made real,” she said.
“The Joint Chiefs left instructions for after the house burned down? I wouldn’t put it past them, but this feels like the opposite to me. Like something got even further away from the original intent, mostly due to necessity. Never forget, the sneakiest bastard in the world is a desperate human. It’s also the most dangerous animal. Ever. That woman looks human, but she isn’t from our neighborhood,” I reasoned.
“Obviously.”
“Neither are the animals we’re seeing, and if that woman has been underground for any length of time, the world will have changed beyond recognition for her, too. Despite how different we look, we’re in the same boat. The world wants us dead, and we both have to figure out a way to survive,” I said.
“Common ground. That’s a good start.” Andi looked at the video again, tracing the outline of the rifle. “For a weapon, it’s almost art.”
I glanced at the image. She was right. There were sweeping curves along the stock, and what appeared to be a reticule, not sight. The construction had an organic feel to it, like the gun had been grown rather than assembled. I’d seen things like it before, but only in fantasy novels where physics didn’t matter.
“Nanobots,” I said.
Andi stared at the image, nodding silently. “I think that’s it. This wasn’t made by human hands. It’s machined, but to specs we can’t understand. The stock is long, but the barrel is short. You wouldn’t have nearly the range for accuracy, but you sure could shoot fast. I don’t see a clip, either.”
“Look at the stock. Think that could be an internal mag?”
“Huh.” She titled the image back and forth, but the resolution could go no higher. “Makes sense. I don’t get the feeling this is some antiquated one-shot. Not with this degree of work and design. The color is bizarre, too—it’s not wood. I don’t know what it is, or even if it’s metal at all.”
“I guess we’ll have to ask her before she uses it on us,” I said.
“Are we just going to camp on her site, and see if she pops up like a gopher?”
“It’s either that or knock on the door. I’d rather meet her in the open, with a chance to communicate that doesn’t seem like an invasion. If I was running defense for a subterranean facility, that’s what would keep me calm enough to talk, and I’m betting they have external security. They’ll know we’re around.”
“At least it’s a nice spot to camp. I see water,” Andi said, pointing to a small ribbon of silver.
“Which means that the land isn’t just different than The Empty, it’s healthy. Looks like it could be a national park,” I said.
“She wore goggles in the vid, so they might be out more at night. I don’t think we’re going to get much sleep,” Andi said, eying the scrolling map on her screen. It was reasonably accurate, being an overlay of our flight data and how things were two thousand years ago. Between the two, we had distance, if not terrain, and I was operating on the idea that the entire route was a shitshow waiting to happen.
“What the fuck happened to the planet, Jack? Not just the ogres and half-assed dinos. The geography is a mess,” Andi said, watching the sun rise into an orange rumor, then burst over the horizon with authority. The desert before us was no longer truly desert; it was something like scraggly grasslands, but with broken rock and the occasional tree fighting for height.
“We saw the satellite data, but that doesn’t tell us how bad it was here on the ground. I’m guessing earthquakes had a lot to do with it, but storms, too, and then a lack of humanity to moderate things. There would be enormous, unchecked fires from lightning and the dry season. We changed this place, and when we were gone, nature changed it back.”
“But new rivers? Where did they come from? In twenty centuries? There weren’t even that many rivers in Oklahoma to begin with, and a lot of those were just glorified creeks. I’ve seen at least four rivers that would be a bitch to cross, and not one of them is on any topo map from our time,” Andi said.
“We need a geologist for that one, I think, but at least one of those rivers was made by an earthquake. When we were turning west on our second leg of the recon, the
re was a massive cliff that hadn’t been worn by the wind or rain. That’s new, at least in geological terms, so there’s one piece of evidence. But that makes me wonder how the woman with the gun has lived underground all this time. If there is that much activity in the earth, it would play hell on any civilization under the surface. Doesn’t make sense, at least not to me.”
I slowed as we passed the enormous ribs of an animal, stripped of flesh and bleached white by the sun. They were two meters long and scored by countless small teeth. In the shadow of the pelvis, a wild dog and her pups took cover from the rising sun as she nursed them. Life went on, even in the physical shadow of death, and the mother dog bared her teeth at the truck, protective even in the face of something fifty times her size.
We picked our way at five klicks an hour, following no path as I avoided everything larger than a baseball. The truck had solid tires and a suspension built for rock crawling, but even so, I knew we had few replacement parts on hand, and a long way to walk if we broke down because I decided to hurry. As the sun rose, the day grew warm, then hot, and then it was directly overhead in a brilliant globe that told me it was time to stop, eat, and take our bearings.
We made our temporary camp in sight of a sinkhole ringed by low scrub trees. The trees had a variety of birds calling in raucous voices that alerted anything in the area to our presence. We put a small canopy up on the roof and sat crosslegged, eating cold roots and salted pork in contented silence.
“Even when barbecue is cold, it’s good,” Andi said.
“Amen.” I swigged from a waterskin and handed it to her, watching the area for any activity. Since it was the heat of day, not much was going on, but after almost getting turned into a two-hundred-pound cat toy, I was on my best behavior.
“What’s your estimate on our time?” I asked when we were done eating. Andi grabbed her tablet and flicked through a few maps, settling on one that compared known data points with what we had already traveled.
“We’re here,” she said, touching the screen, “and we need to go here. I’d say we have nine hours of light left, and if we follow this stream bed—not that one, the one over here—then we pick up enough time to arrive before dark.”
Future Reborn Box Set Page 53