“A day, maybe less. Disgusting stuff, full of bones and whatever else the beast found inedible.” Tindall frowned, and over his shoulder I saw the first hint of dawn lifting night’s veil.
“Tindall, you’re welcome to stay and join us if you want. We’re a free people, and Beba will care for you until I’m back. If you need anything, ask.” I stuck out my hand and he took it, grateful and sagging with exhausted relief. “I only need one more thing from you.”
He pointed without hesitation. “Due west, then south at a massive collection of cacti that run along a ridge with three springs. It covers four klicks, easy, and my—what was left of our town is just past that. The Cleaner was headed west. Due west.”
Silk smiled, waving to Andi and Mira. “I’ll get the rifles and go-bags. Andi, bring the truck?”
“You stay here and run the place,” I told Silk, but she shook her head.
“I don’t like it,” Silk said with emphasis.
“Neither do I, but with this many scared people?” I left the question unanswered, because the answer was Silk’s presence. She was as good as her name. People followed her orders and were happy to do so.
“I can shoot, Jack. I’m not a fucking administrator. I’m your second,” Silk said.
“I know you are. I need Mira for her gun, and Andi as backup and because she understands tech better than anyone else. But, if you want to go, then you will, and I’ll be happy to have you. Lasser can run things,” I said.
“Well, shit. I thought you were going to put up a bigger fight,” Silk said, grinning. “I’ll stay. Call me when you’ve put this thing down, and not a second after the shooting ends, you understand?”
“When it hits the dirt, I hit comms. You have my word.” I kissed her as Andi drove up. Mira stood in the back of the truck, holding her rifle.
“I’ve got our bags. We have food and water, too,” Mira said.
“Be careful,” Silk told me, her voice urgent.
“I will. We all will.”
“Keep him alive, girls. I’ve got to go supervise brickmaking,” Silk said with a mock frown.
“See you. We’ll make it in one piece,” Andi called out, sliding over to let me drive. She began flipping through maps on her tablet, while Mira got comfortable in back, pulling her wide-brimmed hat down in preparation for a nap. She was a true soldier, that one.
“Southwest, lad, and step on it,” Andi said.
She plotted a reasonable course, though some of the territory was completely outside our scope of operations.
As we went west, The Empty was easy driving, being moderate gravel and sand with occasional dunes. Scrub and grasses broke the area, with open sections of what passed for pastureland.
“Drop a pin on the places where cattle can live,” I said, as Andi began doing just that, tapping her screen and adding notes. She took pictures, too, building a detailed map of the area we passed through for use during our inevitable expansion west.
“The grasses are enough to graze, but then again I’m not a cow girl,” Andi said.
“Cattle. They’re cattle.”
“Whatever.” She dismissed my correction with an airy wave, making another mark as we went around a low place with signs of water. “Spring?”
“Maybe. Looks good enough to check out some time,” I agreed.
“I think the land is changing,” Andi said.
“How so?” I nodded toward the bones of a large creature with a horned head, the skeleton bleached white and scattered over tens of meters.
“More water. I see more flowers, too. Looks like a hard rain would change everything overnight.”
“I think you’re right. It’s just on the cusp of being easy to tame. Still wild, but not as bad as the deep Empty, to the north. That’s killing country, but this seems like how I remember parts of Texas,” I said.
Andi just grunted, putting her feet on the dashboard and watching the kilometers roll by in desolate silence. After two full hours of good traveling, I spotted smoke on the horizon, a wispy curl of black billowing from an unseen source.
“Fire,” I said.
Mira rapped on the roof of the truck. She had risen from her nap, looked ahead, and seen the smoke, too.
I eased to a stop at the crest of a small ridge, the ground covered in spiny grasses and a pair of defiant trees spread ten meters apart like a gate.
Mira jumped down then stretched her back, groaning. “Good sleeping. Bad riding.”
“You okay?” I asked her, smiling as she went through a range of contortions while cursing softly.
“I am now. What’s the fire?” she asked.
Andi shrugged. “We’re in the general area of Nakusa, but your guess is as good as mine.”
“No coincidences out here,” I said, checking my weapons.
“On foot from here?” Andi asked.
“We’ll drive up to that outcropping and park. Try to hide the truck,” I said, pointing to a huddle of rocks a klick away.
“Good idea. How far would you say the smoke is?” Andi asked.
“Four klicks? But there’s more than one column. I see something far off, and we’re only thirty or forty klicks away from the edge of our farthest reach, and the refugees were on the run for sixteen days. That means something is heading in our direction,” I said. Mira got back in and I pulled away at a slow pace, easing the truck to a hidden position behind the rugged rockpile a moment later.
“This it?” Mira shouted from the back.
I opened the door and held out a hand. “Come on down. The hunt starts here.”
Mira took my hand and jumped, landing without a sound. “About fucking time. I’m ready to go,” she enthused.
“Easy, big shooter. We need to make sure this is the right place,” Andi said with a laugh.
“We’re in The Empty. It’s all the right place for monsters,” Mira answered. She was right. I shrugged as we slung our packs and started walking in unison. After a moment, we had fanned out, five meters apart and scanning the area out of habit.
“Notice that?” I said softly.
“Right. Nothing,” Mira answered.
The Empty was devoid of sound, a state that was unsettling at the subconscious level. There were no blood chickens overhead, no scrabbling insects, and no whine of distant canines stalking us like permanent shadows. The silence was oppressive, and I found myself fighting the urge to whistle tunelessly as we walked.
The ground began to rise, and the smoke got close enough that we could smell an acrid combination of charred timber and chemicals; a sure sign that houses were burning.
“Stop,” I said.
“See anything?” Mira asked. We were face to face with an upslope that crested some ten meters away, with nothing but blue sky overhead.
“Put your hand on the ground,” I said.
Mira knelt, spreading her palm flat on the hot gravel. “Holy shit.”
Andi looked puzzled, then followed suit. In a second, her eyes went wide and she pulled her hand back as if scalded. “What the fuck is happening?”
I pointed with my chin. “Just over there, which means when we crest this hill, the hooting starts. If this thing has eyes, put rounds there. If it has an open mouth, put them there. Do not waste shots. I don’t know how big or fast it is, but we want to hit it at maximum range, with all the effect we can manage.”
“Got it,” Mira said, cool and professional.
Andi swallowed then gave a decisive nod of her own that turned into a smile. “Fucking bugs. I came to the future for bugs.”
“And me. Don’t forget how much you crave my touch, my voice, and my—”
“If you say dong I’m going to shoot you,” Andi said.
“I don’t use that kind of language, thank you very much. The proper term is shaft.”
“Eww. And in case you didn’t hear me the first time, eww,” Andi said.
Mira shrugged. “I kinda like it. You’re on your own, sister.”
“Thanks for aban
doning me in my moment of need,” Andi said, checking her rifle again.
“Can’t help it. I like sex as much as eating, and you know how I feel about that,” Mira replied.
“As much as this conversation thrills me—because who doesn’t love talking about their dong—we have a giant, carnivorous bug to kill, and I’m almost sure it’s right over there. Take a sniff,” I said.
Mira lifted her nose. “What the fuck is that?”
“Are we near a landfill of baby diapers? Sweet Jesus,” Andi said, waving a hand in front of her face.
“I’d say we’re at the right place. Shall we?” I asked. I peeped over the top, bringing my rifle to bear.
And I stopped. Stared. Blinked to clear my eyes, and then stared some more.
“What is it?” Mira asked in a stage whisper. Andi was silent, but alarmed.
I peered back over the crest again, then lowered my weapon and slid down, so the three of us were eye to eye. “It’s—it’s a big fucking bug, alright. A lot bigger than I expected.”
“Yeah?” Andi asked.
“It’s going very slowly,” I said.
“And?” Mira asked, impatient at my short answers. I was still trying to make sense of what I’d seen, as my mind had no frame of reference.
“It’s safe to take a look. Let’s all peek over. Don’t shoot just yet,” I said.
We all scooted up and over as one.
“What in fucking hell?” Mira said.
Andi snorted. “I shoulda stayed in the tube. I knew it. I knew that sooner or later, I was going to see something like this.”
The Cleaner, which I now understood to be well-named, was about a hundred meters away and proceeding at a snail’s pace. That was because it was a snail, of sorts, if armored and equipped with a long snout that was extended and slurping up the remains of a large, dead animal I couldn’t identify. The Cleaner was a cheerful blue and yellow stippled pattern, oblong in shape, and easily the size of a delivery truck. It was glistening with ooze—which gave it that lovely smell—and behind it there was a grotesque trail of debris gleaming in the sun.
“That’s fucking gross,” Andi said with feeling.
“Yeah. And . . . it’s armored. Well-armored,” I added. The blue and yellow plates covering almost all of the creature interlocked like medieval scale mail, leaving only the eyestalks, mouth, and slimy bottom exposed. As we watched, its stubby back end swelled, lifted, and expelled a noxious pool of clear slime, filled with bones and sand and even tree branches that had been sucked up into the snout.
“I’m gonna puke,” Andi said, and turned her face away. “I never was good at changing diapers.”
“I might join you,” I said, wincing as the Cleaner moved ever closer to us in its sedate, gliding motion. “See those bright scars on the shell?” I said. There were score marks at random spots on the armor plates.
“Bullets,” Mira said.
“Exactly. Someone has been shooting at this thing, and it didn’t do shit. That means our rifles are no good. Unless we find a weakness. Or Andi volunteers to get sucked up inside it and use her knife while heading through its belly,” I added cheerfully.
Andi grimaced. “No thanks. I’d rather die.”
“Same,” Mira said.
“Well, there goes my brilliant plan.” I grinned and turned back the creature, watching its body move with a pulsating rhythm.
And then I saw the lines. They were only visible when it advanced, and there were only two exposed from underneath the armor.
“See that?” I said, drawing my swords.
“Jack,” Andi said, her tone grim. “I appreciate the whole alpha male thing. Really, I do, and I think I speak for all of us girls that we’ve come to accept the fact that you’re good at doing crazy shit. However,” she said, holding up a finger like a scolding teacher, “killing that thing with swords is not on the menu. Ever. We can’t have you die because we couldn’t wait on a drone to rake that thing into goo.”
Mira shrugged. “I’d like to see him do it. I know what he’s aiming at. There are muscle connectors exposed when it moves. They flash—just right then, see them?” Mira asked Andi, who twitched in surprise that she had missed the huge stripes.
“Oh,” Andi said in a small voice. “Still, are you just going to walk up to it and start cutting?”
“Not quite. Mira, can you hit those eyes?” I asked her. The eyes were about the size of a grapefruit, despite the size of the beast, and moving on stalks that were two or three meters long.
“Sure,” she answered without hesitation.
“Okay, pop ‘em,” I said.
She drew her rifle, breathed out, and fired, all in one smooth motion. Before the report of the first shot faded, her rifle cracked again and the second eyes blossomed into mist. She’d missed the first, and it began to withdraw into a bony protrusion. She aimed to fire but I held up my hand.
“No?” she asked.
“You might put a round in the body and make it go apeshit. I don’t know how fast it can move, but I need it doing that,” I said, which was to say nothing, since the creature had stopped moving.
I jumped the crest, swords out and pelting to the side. I was going to come in from an angle, in hopes that the beast would move again, exposing the muscled bands for a big target to cut apart like a can of cranberry sauce. I gagged a little, realized I’d ruined Thanksgiving for myself, and kept running, my boots pounding the gravel as I swept wide, swords flashing in the brilliant sun. The Cleaner then farted, shuddered like a ship coming to a halt, and began to turn in a slimy, ponderous motion that was a hell of a lot faster than I anticipated.
The remaining eye waved in my direction, and the mouth lowered and opened like a flower made of mucous, questing toward me in hopes of turning me into a smile trail.
“Nobody said the future would be this disgusting,” I groused, running and planting a foot on the horny carapace just to the side of the eyestalk. I swept my blades down in a crossing pattern, and the eye flew off, releasing a spume of fluid that coated me from head to toe. It felt like oil, smelled like the bowels of hell, and stuck to everything it touched. My gorge rose again, and I stomped hard on the eyestalk’s protective outcropping of bone just as the Cleaner extended again, bringing its mouth upward like a vacuum hose with me as the target.
My left hand slashed down, the steel shearing through the tough membrane for a meter or more, and I rolled, wet and slimy, across the creature’s head to the right side, punching both blades deep in through the white band of cartilage and twisting the tips, trying to scramble the head like an egg in its shell.
The Cleaner went wild.
I was thrown into the air like a rodeo clown on a bad day, spinning fast enough that the world was a blur of blue and gray. When I landed, it was ass first, but I held onto my swords and brought them up in a defensive pose from sheer muscle memory. It was a damned good thing I did, because the Cleaner’s mouth shot forward in a blur, spreading wide like slimy angel wings to envelop me for the kill. I hacked in a furious series of cuts, carving huge strips of white flesh from the mouth until it began to withdraw in a slow motion, sagging to one side. I’d hit a nerve, and the mouth couldn’t retract all the way.
It was the opening I needed.
I was covered in sand, slime, and grit. I was bruised and tingling all over, and I was pissed. In a charge of raw fury, both my swords punched outward to drive deep between the exposed juncture where the Cleaner’s mouth and neck met, shearing through meat and gristle in an explosion of green gore. I ran up the monster’s face, if you could call it that, turning in air and driving my swords back down again to scissor apart at a lump between the eyestalks.
Buried to the elbows in the Cleaner, I felt my swords’ points hit something hard then break through. The monster gave an enormous shudder and fell still, dripping goo from a dozen wounds. In a final fuck you to the planet, it farted again, evacuating its bowels in a grotesque flood that filled the air with a new wave of nause
ating stench.
I staggered, caught myself, and then jumped to the ground.
Mira and Andi ran to me but drew up a few meters away, worry on both their faces.
“I know I stink, but I’m not radioactive or anything,” I complained. I felt hot, sandy, and sick.
“You’re—red,” Andi said.
“Red?”
“Yes, pink and red. Like a sunburn,” Mira said. “What’s on you?”
“He slimed me,” I said.
Andi snorted, but Mira missed the joke, having been born two thousand years too late.
“And now he’s digesting you. Strip naked, Jack. Immediately. Mira, find water, whatever we have. Where was that last spring we saw?” Andi asked, her voice rising in alarm.
“A few hundred meters. Why?” she asked, but was already trotting to the truck.
Andi said, “Jack is being digested. That thing coated him with some kind of stomach fluid. Was most likely a giant gut, that’s why it can eat stone and rock and—everything else.”
“Oh, fuck me,” I said, feeling my skin grow hotter by the second.
“Not with that shit on you,” Andi said. “Naked. Now. Seriously.”
“Don’t have to ask me twice,” I said, stripping in hurried motions. When I was stark naked, I could see the red welts forming on my skin where it came in contact with the Cleaner’s goo. “I can really feel it now. Hurts.”
Andi came closer, breathing through her mouth but determined to help me. “Come with me toward the truck. Save a little time.”
I walked slowly so as not to crack my blistering skin. Mira met us halfway, water can in tow and clean rags from our communal supply bag under the front seat. Both women began dousing me and wiping as gently as they could. Even so, blood streaked the cloths and I winced in pain with every touch.
“I’ve got burn cream here for when you’re clean,” Andi said. It took far too long to remove the digestive fluid, which had the consistency of snot and the aroma of a dumpster fire in August. An hour later, I was still naked, but slathered in burn cream and standing with Andi and Mira as we stared in wonder at the hulking corpse of the Cleaner.
“I thought I knew weird,” I said. “I don’t know shit. You say these things are only around now and then?”
Future Reborn Box Set Page 63