Ascendant Unrest

by Matthew S. Cox

  “So you think.” Vanessa scowled.

  “Nah.” Genna shifted Maya to her left side and approached Vanessa. “That ain’t it. Your forgettin’ got nothin’ ta do with this girl. You forgettin’ that shit you set loose killed my son.”

  “Oh, crap,” muttered Sarah.

  Vanessa stiffened. “We have programs to provide low-cost options for minors.”

  “Yeah well. That must be new.” Genna glanced down, rage clear in her expression and the subtle shaking of her body. “I did everything I could for him, and yo’ goddamned Authority dragged us out inta the street. Asked me who they should kill first. Did I wanna watch him die, or did I wanna make him see me die. ’Less your ‘low-cost option’ is a motherfuckin’ bullet, you full of shit.”

  Genna’s fist flew like a lightning strike.

  Vanessa spun from the hit, her chin leading the way around in a spiral dance. She pirouetted twice and fell into a stack of video recording equipment, taking it down as she crashed to the floor on her chest.

  “That was for me,” said Genna.

  Maya gave her a quizzical look. “Wasn’t that for―?”

  Genna grasped the Authority assault rifle hanging across her chest. “This is for Sam.”

  “Whoa!” yelled the blueberry. He raced from his position by the sofa and grabbed Genna’s arm, pushing her aim off Vanessa. “We came here to get your daughter back. Not assassinate anyone. And not in front of the kids. You think Maya wants to watch her die?”

  Vanessa moaned and pushed herself up a little, rolling to sit.

  “Killing her won’t bring Sam back. I don’t want to watch that. Please don’t.” Maya looked at Vanessa. They locked stares for a moment; the woman seemed surprised. “She may be heartless, but it feels wrong to kill her. I don’t want her to die.”

  Genna shoved the blueberry off her arm, staring at him. “You know how long I spent dreamin’ of finally gettin’ this chance?” She raised her rifle at Vanessa.

  “Mom. Please don’t,” said Maya, cringing away.

  “Wait,” yelled the blueberry.

  A loud buzz came from the ceiling, followed by hissing as plumes of mist sprayed down in a grid pattern. In under a second, shin-deep fog covered the floor. The cloud rose at an alarming pace, the gaps between falling columns shrank, stealing visibility.

  Amy ran for the front door but tripped over something, probably Benson.

  “Try and kill me if you want, but you don’t have much time. Small lungs won’t handle this toxin for more than a few seconds,” said Vanessa, sounding weary.

  Growling obscenities, Genna scooped Maya up in her arms and whirled in place. “Sarah?”

  “Here. I’m―” Sarah’s voice cut off to choking.

  Maya’s eyes burned from caustic fumes that stole the breath from her throat. She put a hand over her mouth, coughing and gagging.

  “I got her,” yelled the blueberry.

  “Now! Need that ride,” shouted Genna before looking around and muttering, “Damn that bitch. Lost her.”

  “Forget her,” said a male voice from something electronic near Maya’s head. “Get the girls out of there.”

  Maya gagged on mucus, barely able to see anything but blur. Head spinning, she held on, choking and sputtering. Snot streamed from her nose, making it even harder to breathe.

  A sudden gunshot made her jump. Genna leaned back and kicked at something. The crunch of boot on broken glass sounded over and over. Maya grabbed at her neck, fighting for air, half aware of a warm breeze washing over her. Her throat closed up, refusing to let her inhale.

  Genna grunted. The pale blurry mass of fog-covered carpet shifted to a long, sparkly stretch of mirrored windows going downward. Weightlessness. Swinging.

  “Hang on, baby girl,” yelled Genna.

  A rush of sound came on as if someone had turned the volume of the world back up. The roar of a mini-copter’s rotors thundered overhead. What had been a gentle breeze grew to a punishing downblast. She rasped, gulping air, hoarse croaking noises vibrating in her head with each breath. Blurry vision came into focus; a long streamer of gooey snot trailed from her nose, falling away into the oblivion of an eighty-story drop.

  Genna pulled her up and over the landing skid, pushing her onto the hard metal floor before crawling in behind her. Lying on her side, Maya convulsed, clutching her gut. Genna plucked her up and belted her into a padded seat. The blueberry appeared, rising into the open doorway on a winch line. Sarah clung to him, her hair a wild thrashing mass of red. Genna helped them in, easing Sarah’s semiconscious body from his arms and laying her in the seat next to Maya. Snot bubbled at her nose. A few seconds later, she erupted in a coughing, gagging fit. Slime exuded from her face in a stream.

  The blueberry scrambled in and pulled the side door shut with a loud thump. “Damn. That wasn’t exactly clean but, we’re out.”

  As soon as the door shut, the mini-copter tilted hard forward, accelerating.

  Maya coughed and spat to the side, an endless flow of goo dangling from her nose. Her eyes and throat burned so bad she wanted to scream, but she had no air for it. Every time she tried to suck in a breath, she wound up choking on mucus.

  Genna collapsed in the rear-facing seat to the right of the cockpit access. The blueberry took the other side and removed his helmet, revealing a thirty-something man with light brown brush cut and a big grin.

  Barnes.

  Maya reached for Genna; trapped by the seatbelt, she couldn’t get up. “Mom!” Speaking offended her stomach. She bent forward and hurled all over the floor.

  Within seconds, Sarah snapped out of her stupor and followed suit, spitting up bile and phlegm while wailing, “It burns!”

  “I know it’s been a couple years,” shouted Pope from up front, “but I don’t think my flying’s that bad.”

  Maya held her head. Despite being woozy, sick to vomiting, and suffering a punishing headache, she shivered with joy.

  26

  Fight or Flight

  Once the helicopter stopped climbing, Genna unbuckled herself. She perched half a butt cheek on the edge of Maya’s seat and took her hand, patting her back while she coughed up the last of the bile and phlegm. Genna swiped a three-foot-long tendril of snot away from Maya’s nose and tossed it to the floor.

  Sarah moaned, “Make it thoph,” a few times while hacking up trails of slime. Her nose looked like a raw egg-white dispenser stuck on full blast.

  “What’d they hit you with?” yelled Pope over the engine.

  “Smelled like CS. Feels like they mixed it with a knockout agent too. Bitch is a piece of work, but she ain’t stupid ’nuff to use anything lethal inside her own house. Shit. Dammit. She faked me out.” Genna’s eyes had reddened from the pacification gas but grew darker still with fury.

  Maya held up her bare feet. “It worked.”

  “What worked, baby?”

  She laughed, despite crying. “You kidnapped me again.”

  Genna looked at Barnes.

  “No idea.” He shrugged.

  Sarah grinned.

  “Shit, hold on,” said Pope.

  “What?” Genna’s smile died.

  “Ascendant drones coming on fast. This Skysprite can’t outrun them.”

  “I got it.” Genna grabbed the Authority rifle. “Barnes, cover your side.”

  “Those R-11s won’t work.” Barnes nodded at her rifle. “Those drones have Gen-4 carbon fiber Kevlar weave. You’ll burn a whole damn mag taking one out and there’s at least six of them. Need a lot bigger than 4.7mm.”

  “I could always flip them off.” Genna slid the right-side door open. Mirror-windowed skyscrapers hurtled by outside, the reflection of their little helicopter seeming to hang still against a shimmery chrome backdrop. “You got a better idea?”

  “Yeah. I got an idea. Take the stick,” yelled Pope.

  She aimed her rifle out the door for an instant before growling and rushing to the cockpit. The copter bobbed and swerved. Seconds
later, Pope crawled into the back with his sniper rifle.

  Barnes’ eyebrows went up. “Okay, that’ll make a hole.”

  “Why are―?” Sarah screamed when machine gun fire erupted outside.

  Gravity upended as the copter plummeted in a sudden, sharp dip. Maya gurgled, her headache throbbing. More gunfire went off behind them; orange streaks flashed in the air outside the door, gleaming on the silvery windows.

  Pope sat on the floor, one boot braced against the doorframe. He perched his rifle in the crook of his left arm and put his eye to the scope before yelling, “Ready.”

  The copter rotated a quarter turn to the right, angling his door to the rear as it glided sideways between two rows of skyscrapers. Maya’s jaw dropped open at the cloud of three-fanned Ascendant drones chasing them.

  Crack.

  Pope’s body jerked back as a long shell casing came flying out of his rifle and clattered to the floor.

  One of the drones twisted side to side before it fell into an ass-over-nose tumble toward the road.

  Crack.

  Another drone went into freefall.

  Barnes aimed out the door as well.

  Maya clamped her hands over her ears, as did Sarah.

  The assault rifle chattered, rapid fire from the much smaller caseless bullets more like a growling bear than a gun going off. Sparks danced around the drones. One developed a smoke trail but kept flying. Tracer streams flew past the helicopter from multiple .50 cal machine guns. Genna evaded with a sudden two-story drop. Gravity seemed to cease existing for an instant. Most of the incoming fire went high, but a clank or two came from overhead and something started buzzing a warning tone in front. Maya grunted as a stiff climb crushed her into the seat. Another barrage of fire went below them.

  “Shit!” shouted Genna. “Hang on.”

  The helicopter rotated to face forward. One more crack from Pope’s rifle triggered a distant boom and a flash of bright white.

  “Hah,” yelled Pope. “Hit the battery. Those Gungsu drones used to go off like a fireworks display if you hit ’em in the right spot.”

  Barnes laughed. “Yeah, but those fuckers usually didn’t swoop in low enough to shoot.”

  “Not with a tiny little rifle like that.” Pope winked at him.

  Genna pitched the copter into a hard left dive, skimming down an alley so narrow Maya screamed, expecting the rotors to clip the walls. The high-pitched whirr of drone fans rose to a peak and fell off as their pursuers failed to negotiate the turn. Seconds later, the buildings vanished, revealing an endless wasteland of broken houses, old suburbs reclaimed by nature.

  Another barrage of gunfire went off outside.

  An explosion of white fluff flew from the seatback between Maya and Sarah, and angry buzzing/beeping erupted in the cockpit. Sarah screamed and lapsed into coughing again. Scared mute and rigid, Maya stared at the hole behind the padded seatback, where a .50 cal round had warped the metal forward. She turned her head to the right and blinked at the sparking, smoking hole in the console up front.

  Genna pivoted the copter sideways again. Pope fired twice in two seconds, and Barnes offloaded another long burst. The middle drone dropped like a rock, and the one on the right side of the formation entered a wild corkscrew spin, careening into the ground like a missile five seconds later. The last drone kept flying but glided in a pin-straight line, no longer following them.

  “Nice shot,” said Pope, eyeing the spinner.

  “Thanks. Fans don’t have much armor.” Barnes winked. “Looks like you blew out the antenna on the last one.”

  “Yeah.” Pope sighted on it. “No sense leavin’ a job half finished.”

  Crack.

  A distant plink echoed back.

  The final drone burst into a smoking, sparking mass, and tumbled out of the sky.

  “Hey Gen, we’re kinda low,” yelled Pope.

  “I know,” shouted Genna. “That’s because we’re crashing.”

  “Oh.” Pope sprang from his firing position to a seat and strapped in.

  Maya screamed and shut her eyes.

  Sarah fumbled to grab her hand.

  A few long seconds later, hard deceleration pulled Maya forward. Only the seatbelt across her hips kept her from flying into Pope. The engine shuddered, shaking everything with such fury it seemed the little craft would break apart. Metal ground against metal overhead along with the whining, labored protests of the engine. Snaps and clanks came from everywhere. Broken branches and leaves flew in the open door.

  The small helicopter jammed to a hard stop and dropped a few feet to the earth with a splintery crunch. Maya flew forward as the crash tried to catapult her out of her seat, but the seatbelt caught her. Rebound whacked her head into the padded seat hard enough to leave her seeing stars. On top of the headache from the gas, the impact made her heave a few times, but she had nothing in her belly to throw up. She floated through a few seconds of pain and nausea before she regained the ability to see more than a blur.

  Engine noise cut out to the faint growling of gears overhead, which quieted after a moment. Only the buzzing and bleeping alarms from the cockpit broke the stillness. A wall of leafy green blocked the right side door. Maya peered past Sarah out the left window, down a street full of debris and broken telephone poles, lined on both sides with battered houses.

  “Not bad,” said Pope.

  “Ehh. Could’ve been smoother.” Genna grunted. “Had a choice between house or tree.”

  “Always choose the tree,” said Pope.

  “Yeah.” Genna chuckled. “Tree kinda objected though. Got a knife on you?”

  Pope moved to the cockpit. Maya stared at a crumbling house overgrown with bushes and ivy, wondering what it must’ve been like to live in this place before war ruined the whole world. A handful of decades-old cars sat on either side of a street crisscrossed with mossy cracks.

  “Aww, shit,” Pope grumbled.

  “It looks worse than it is. Armor took most of it. Hope they don’t keep the rental deposit on this bird.” Genna chuckled.

  Maya pulled open her seatbelt, leapt over the slick of vomit, and scrambled to the cockpit, where Pope sawed at a broken tree branch that had pierced the front canopy and impaled Genna’s left shoulder. A larger branch speared the wall next to her head hard enough to dent the metal. The nose of the copter rested against the trunk. Cracks spider-webbed the canopy, but the reinforced plastic hadn’t disintegrated.

  “Least I took care of camo-ing the heli.” Genna gritted her teeth as Pope snapped the wood and pulled it loose. An inch or so at the tip had turned red.

  “I hate splinters,” said Pope, tossing it.

  “Heh.” Genna pulled herself out of the pilot’s chair and plucked Maya off her feet, carrying her to the side door. After a quick look around, she jumped down to the road. “You okay, baby?”

  “Yeah.” Having Genna back overwhelmed her all over again, and she clung, unable to do much but cry happy tears.

  Barnes carried Sarah from the copter and set her on her feet outside. “They’re probably not going to be happy about us losing the heli.”

  “It ain’t totaled,” said Genna. “They can fix it.”

  Pope took a knee by Sarah, giving her a once-over. “You awright?”

  “Little sick. It hurts to breathe.” She patted herself on the chest. “My lungs are on fire.”

  “Me too,” muttered Maya.

  “Take big, slow, deep breaths,” said Pope. “Let clean air in and bad air out.”

  Maya spent a moment breathing as instructed, looking around at what had to be Dead Space. At least the cannibals, dosers, or whoever else lived out here wouldn’t be so scary with three adults watching over her. Especially three adults with big guns. She frowned at her shiny, purple dress. “I should take this off. It stands out too much here, and I can’t run in it.”

  “Naw, don’t you worry, baby. We got you covered.” Genna patted her back.

  Barnes took point, heading s
outh. Pope picked Sarah up and carried her, walking alongside Genna.

  For a while, Maya held on. A mixture of adrenaline from the helicopter chase and joy at having her mother back kept her shivering. Long-abandoned houses, all overgrown, surrounded them. Bushes and tall grass had taken over once-nice lawns. Every so often, a rusting swing set or a collapsed deck hinted at the world as it had been before the war. More often, charred barrels, tents, and barricades made of old cars reminded her of the world as it had become.

  In the distance, a pale boy of about eleven climbed up to stand on a fallen chunk of concrete wall, watching them. Shaggy brown hair hung halfway down his chest, his only clothing a scrap of bath towel serving as a loincloth. Behind him, a man in a skirt made of hubcaps, license plates, and tattered denim leaned on a spear. They seemed more curious than hostile, no doubt attracted by the crash. A hint of burned rubber and wood smoke tinged with charred meat wafted by on the wind.

  “Was that really you?” Maya lifted her head from Genna’s shoulder to look at Pope. “Right before the drones got us, I thought I saw you.”

  “You did,” Pope mumbled. “Didn’t want to risk a pissing contest with the Authority in the middle of the Sanc. Especially with machine guns floating over you two.”

  “How’d you find us?” Maya blinked.

  Pope grinned and patted Sarah on the backside. “Her butt did most of the work.”

  Sarah’s head popped up, eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

  Maya gasped. She’s got a chip!

  “Vet’s kid. You got a locator chip.” Pope chuckled. “Didn’t take but about ten minutes for that Zeroice guy to get into the system and give us a fix on where you were.”

  Sarah stuck a hand inside her skirt and grabbed her rear end, looking confused. “Why’s it in my butt and not my hand? Don’t they put chips in the back of your hand so you can like wave them at stuff to pay or open doors?’”

  Pope cringed. “Umm. Well, you got it as a toddler most likely. Small hands and―”

  “So no one cuts your hand off and uses it to fake being a Citizen,” said Maya.