“Ah, you can have it. I don’t need any of those old cans. Probably kill you with botulism anyway.” He looked at Grawrn. “You better keep your eyes open. People won’t take kindly to an alien with an open carry.”
“I will,” Grawrn replied.
“Take care, you two.”
“Thanks for the lift,” John said.
6
They traveled southwest for weeks, skirting highways and the outskirts of abandoned settlements and towns. Sometimes they came near communities that were obviously still occupied. Buzzing drones and still-functional electric vehicles whizzed past on the roads.
The man in the truck had said people wouldn’t understand Grawrn. Implied they might attempt violence. John knew what Grawrn was capable of if provoked, but a mob of people would probably kill it. John was determined to get his friend to Montana. To safety so it could be with its own.
At night when they camped, John played with the radio, turning the dial, listening for signs of life. Distant squawks and chirps signaled the existence of something out there, but he couldn’t make out any voices. On a whim one cool cloudy night, he tried transmitting. He didn’t know what frequency he should be using, so he just picked one at random and pushed the “Talk” button.
“Hi. This is John. Anyone out there?” He spoke into the little hole labeled “mic” and waited. “I’m out here, we are traveling and could use a place to stay. We’re going to Montana. Anybody out there wants to help me and my friend, we’d be much obliged.” He clicked off and waited. No reply came that night.
*
They traveled for weeks. Every day, John would hand-crank the radio as they walked, building a charge in the battery. Every night he’d try a variation on the same words. He began to worry the man had given him a dud.
They were straddling the border between West Virginia and Virginia high up in the Appalachian Mountains, walking the Blue and Gray Trail they’d hooked onto from a town called Brandywine, when they came to a peak with a squat stone tower. Old camp sites where people had made fires were still there. A worn metal circle in the ground declared it a US Coast and Geodetic Installation named High Knob Hill.
“Seems like a good place to set up,” John said, and began pitching his tent. First the tarp, then the stakes. The cloudy sky was taking on a chill as they approached September. “We’re gonna have to start thinking about where we’re going to settle for winter soon,” he said absent-mindedly, as Grawrn piled some wood into a circle.
“Not want sleep yet.”
“I know. But in a couple months it’ll be winter again.”
“Sure.”
After they’d eaten some beans and dried meat, they sat around the fire. John was sitting on Grawrn’s crossed legs like he was in an enormous chair. It was warm and the fire was making him sleepy.
“You never said if you were a boy or a girl Kyooli,” John said through a yawn.
“Not exactly same. I nyartleth. Raise young Kyoolitan.”
“What’s a Kyoolitan? Like, children?”
“Almost. Some become children. Some do not. Like animal. Nyartleth make Kyooli from Kyoolitan.”
“Er, what makes these Kyoolitan?”
“Boy and girl Kyooli.”
“And you’re… different?”
“Third.”
John grimaced. “So, are you a he or a she?”
“Third.”
John’s radio crackled and a voice interrupted them. “Hello. Is John there?”
John tumbled out of Grawrn’s lap and rolled onto his blanket, grabbing the radio. He stabbed the talk button. “Hello? Hello, this is John. Are you there?”
Static, then the voice. “Hello, John. My name is Pierre. If you can hear me, you are getting closer. I would like to offer my assistance in your journey if you could do me a small favor.” He spoke with a slight accent John couldn’t place. It sounded different to his ears. Fancy.
John looked at Grawrn and they shrugged. “What kind of favor?”
A pause. The fire crackled. Then, “I could use your assistance rescuing me.”
*
They ventured southwest through the mountains towards Roanoke, not really knowing what to expect. For days they traveled, alongside the 617, through the thick trees and brush. It was barely a road anymore, winding through the hills of West Virginia, the blacktop cracked and pitted, sometimes with trees growing out of the middle of the road. They descended the hills, hiking the trails in the cold and wet fall weather. The trees changed, dropping their leaves all at once. They woke up one morning to find they’d been covered in a light snow. They left the highway and descended the mountains south and east as Pierre had instructed.
They’d been walking through the barren trees, John complaining about the sores on his feet, when a buzzing caught their attention. A small hexcopter buzzed past then circled and came back, whirring above the treetops.
John and Grawrn did their best to hide, but the drone found them and hovered there, blowing leaves at them, blinking a light.
“Hello? Are you John and his traveling companion? It’s me, Pierre. I’m not far now.” The voice was projected by speaker, but he spoke normally.
“You better not be trying anything funny,” John yelled over the roar of the rotors, hefting his gun at the small hexcopter, cameras and various unidentifiable bits of hardware hung underneath.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Now if you’d follow me, please, I only have limited range in this vehicle.”
Grawrn growled at it and they set off down the mountainside.
After a rushed descent, they crossed an old road and passed through neglected fields; coarse hay and weeds impeded John’s progress, so he walked behind Grawrn, who hewed a path with its sword staff. Eventually, they came to the bank of a river, cold water rushing from the mountains around a bend. “I’m over here,” the copter said to them, rain steaming off its rotors, then sped away.
“Wait!” John yelled and they resumed their pursuit.
The hexcopter dove on over a high chain metal fence, razor wire running along the top. Warning signs hung from the fence, their messages faded and worn almost to the point of unrecognizability. Grawrn shrugged and hacked a hole through the links like it was nothing more than an old bed sheet. They crossed through the field towards some squat concrete buildings. Cracked blacktop roads criss-crossed through the empty facility. A blackened aircraft tower stood, if only barely.
“Not much further,” their aerial companion instructed, and led them to the edge of the river and stopped, hovering. “I’m down here.” The drone spun in the air and shone a beam down the side of the river embankment.
John and Grawrn crept up to the edge and peered down.
A grey capsule supported on orange inflatable pontoons bobbed at the edge, a red light blinking on the pointed peak. It was maybe six feet across and half as tall.
“You’re in that thing?” John asked.
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose. Hurry now, before I’m swept away on the current.”
John shimmied down the embankment; Grawrn slid on its butt, then stood up in hip deep water. Claws punched into one of the pontoons and it deflated, partially sinking. “Now not float,” it said.
“Good, good, you’ll need some ropes. See those tow hooks on my canopy?”
John crept around the edge. “Where’s the door on this thing? How do we get you out?”
The drone touched down and balanced precariously on edge of the river. “I can’t get out. That is me.” The light on the drone blinked, lighting up a patch on the capsule in green laser light that read. “HMCS-HALIFAX. COMPOD. 0001. PROPERTY UEF/FCF. EARTH.”
*
They spent the night securing the pod in the cold rain. The little hexcopter guided them into the complex of buildings to a supply shed where they found ropes and, to John’s complete delight, a seemingly endless supply of all-weather gear. Boots, clothing, jackets, parkas, hats, helmets, all in huge abundance. All in army green, perfec
tly preserved. John replaced his worn hiking garb with all-new fatigues and a camouflaged water-repellant parka. He completed the ensemble with a woolen hat and yellow goggles. Grawrn struggled to get its head through one of the parkas, but it only barely covered its shoulders like a scarf.
“Once I’m secured properly, I can point you to a vehicle you can use to transport me to my new housing,” Pierre informed them as they tied off the ropes around a sturdy tree on the bank of the river. They were covered in mud, but John didn’t care. He was used to it and had a limitless supply of fresh clothes to choose from.
He smiled at Grawrn, who yawned at him, blinking behind its own pair of yellow goggles strapped around its head.
“All tied,” Grawrn said as it pulled on the heavy nylon rope, watching the tree bend.
“Good. Now follow me up to the hangar. There’s an all-terrain vehicle we can use.”
They worked through the night, not caring about the cold or even noticing as the rain turned to snow. John was fascinated by the talking space pod and kept asking him questions as they worked. “How did you get here in this river?”
“A bit of luck, actually. I was reactivated sometime after the evacuation. I think an emergency system in the facility I was being housed in turned me on when it flooded. I’d have been trapped if it weren’t for the self-inflating pontoons I was equipped with in the event I suffered a water landing.” It talked a lot, which suited John just fine.
“Where were you?”
“A former naval facility outside of Norfolk. It had been a test facility for the FCF. All abandoned now, of course. Nobody in the FCF or UEF stayed behind after the evacuation,” the drone said as they winched the pod out on the end of their line. The transport’s electric motor whined as it pulled the heavy pod up the bank. The buzzing hexcopter supervised beside them.
“Figures,” John said, spitting into the mud.
The pod came up over the edge of the bank, covered in mud. They continued hauling, and winching the thing up onto the back of a flatbed trailer, the ramp lowered. John tied another set of lines to it through the rings and used the winches on the trailer to pull it up, then locked it down with strapping. He patted the side of the pod and climbed into the driver’s side of the APV. The interior looked like some of the pictures he’d seen of the automated tractors he’d looked up online on his parents’ tablet.
A pang of remorse hit him in the gut thinking about them, but he pushed it down. He wasn’t done yet.
Grawrn climbed into the back of the APV and the suspension bounced as it got settled.
“Where to now?” John asked.
“I can direct you to a bunker where you can get cleaned up and have something to eat. Sadly, I doubt the accommodations are top-of-the-line. This base wasn’t exactly designed for comfort,” Pierre said through the APV’s radio system.
“What is this place, anyway?”
“It used to be the Radford Surface Ammunition and Vehicle Plant. It was never properly decommissioned, however.”
“Good thing for us.” John smiled at Grawrn and held up a hand for a high five.
Grawrn gave him three.
7
The journey west was considerably easier. Pierre told them what they needed to do. They moved his capsule onto the back of a Consolidated General M2078 Mobile Assault Platform. It had the connectors needed to power the capsule seemingly indefinitely, and enough space inside to accommodate John and Grawrn in something close to comfort. They loaded it up and set out on four smart tracks that tore up the countryside with ease. The nuclear power plant didn’t require charging or any maintenance that John could see. Pierre assured him he could take care of it.
They tracked back north, through the Midwest. Grawrn stayed awake throughout the trip. They ate K-rations out of the stores and sat and talked.
“So, what kind of name is ‘Grawrn’, anyway?” John asked.
“I thought you wanted me to repeat what you said,” the bear-like alien said over a mouthful of peanut butter. “Never bothered to fix.”
“Really? What’s your real name?”
“Doesn’t matter. I am Grawrn now. Family.” The bear smiled and deployed a tongue, licking the sticky peanut butter off its lips.
“Grawrn?” Pierre asked. “I still don’t understand how we should refer to you. In the third.”
Grawrn tilted its head. “I am third.”
“Yes, but are you a ‘he’, a ‘she’, an ‘it’?”
Grawrn shrugged and stuck its muzzle back into the jar of peanut butter, tongue scooping out the last of its contents.
“I kinda think he’s a he, but he says he’s a ‘mother’. A nyartleth,” John tried to explain.
“I am not familiar with that term,” Pierre admitted. “The Kyooli arrived while I was still deactivated. We will see if we can shed a little light on the matter once we arrive in Montana.”
“Agreed,” John said.
*
It took them nearly a month to reach their destination. The blighted interior of the country provided little food or shelter, so they remained inside the M2078 MAP for most of the trip. One day, during a particularly intense blizzard in Nebraska, John asked Pierre about what he was.
“So, what were you doin’ there? Why were you… I dunno. Shut down?”
“I think I’d seen something my superiors didn’t particularly care for,” he explained gently. “An alien race capable of manipulating and controlling humans through their endocrine systems.” He fell silent for a moment, as if remembering.
“You were in space?”
“Oh yes. I was the Ship’s Assistant aboard the displacement ship, HMCS Halifax. An FCF vessel under the joint forces of Canada, the United States, Japan and Mexico. We … I lost them all. All hands…”
“Holy… How’d you get home?”
“An automated communications drone carried me in this capsule back to Sol system. I was recovered by the FCF Dumont near Jupiter and brought back here.”
Grawrn spoke, crouched low in the back of the gun control pod near the rail gun’s auto-loader. “Is hard. Remembering. Seeing your friends and family die.”
John looked at his friend with sadness. “Yes,” he agreed. “It stays with you.”
“We mustn’t let that deter us, though, eh?” Pierre said with what sounded like renewed enthusiasm through the tank’s onboard speaker system. “We will perservere. We have a great deal of work ahead of us. Meeting the Kyooli in Montana, then, I hear, there are cities to the south of us. Caracas, Venezuela and Bogota in Colombia have been taking people from North America. Refugees, I suppose.”
“What’ll we do down there?” John snorted at the implausibility of it.
“Help the people. There’s work being done at the launch facility in French Guyana. We need to clear the skies so we can reclaim space and return to orbit. It will take years. Decades, really, but we can do it.”
“Then what?” Grawrn asked. “What is point?”
“Rejoin our friends and families. Up there.” They couldn’t see it from inside, but Pierre raised the forward turret and pointed his gun skyward in the howling blizzard outside. “We still have thousands of years before our sun expands into a red giant. Plenty of time to reboot the Earth and civilization.”
*
That was a long time ago. Those first memories of meeting Grawrn and Pierre in my old country home back in Vermont. I’m an old man now, but I still remember those summers in Montana with Grawrn and hir people. They didn’t really accept hir at first, accused hir of going “native,” I guess. We won them over eventually, though.
Pierre was true to his word. He helped us get there and waited around, even fired his gun a few times at the raiders stupid enough to try to attack the clade. We stayed there a few years before we got the wanderlust again and decided to take Pierre up on his offer to go south.
It was a hard road, but it got warmer as we moved south through Chihuahua and the Durango. The M2078 was a capable platform and it
held up well, only breaking some edges on one of its tracks.
Bogota was unimaginable. A vast city sprawling under the mountains. People of all types and colors lived there under a tacit agreement to get along. Sure, there was still crime and occasionally violence, but the people sorted it out. It was the last best place on the western land masses. Florida all the way up to the Carolinas was wiped out by floods and covered in ocean. The Gulf of Mexico invaded the midlands. California and Baja were gone. And that was just North America. In the east, old Africa was scarred, cut in half from the Ivory Coast right through to Tanzania. Two continents now, North and South Africa.
Northern Asia didn’t fare well. The freeze came across the Arctic and turned Russia down through Mongolia to ice. Rumors of domes in China around some of their cities turned out to be true. They maintained a lot of their tech and had begun helping with the cleanup of our skies.
I never did make it into space, but I did get to see a rocket launch out of the Deux Branches facility that Pierre and I helped build.
In the end, I settled down. Met a nice girl named Lupe from Argentina and had a couple kids. Now we’ve got four grandkids, at last count. We have a nice plot out in the forest, grow some cassava and have a few cows. It’s not easy, but we love it.
Grawrn even came out to visit with some of hir little Kyoolitans. They’re like puppies, all floppy and enthusiastic, but haven’t developed their big-boy brains yet. Grawrn nursed them into full-fledged baby Kyoolis out there on the farm and we watched ‘em grow into the most amazing people together. They live with us on the farm and we’ve promised we’ll all go up to Montana to visit one day.
Pierre’s too busy to hang out much anymore. He’s too busy overseeing the Orbital Reclamation Project. The junk in orbit was getting too shredded up to let anything get through, so the first batch of launches were literally designed to explode and punch holes in the debris. He says he’s on a one-hundred-year time-scale, but we’re already able to get some satellites up there.
Explorations: Colony (Explorations Volume Four) Page 18