Robinson Crusoe 2246: (Book 3)

by E. J. Robinson

  “Jaras? Is that you?” Saah asked again.

  This time, Robinson answered. “Yes, father. It’s me. No need to worry. Go back to sleep now.”

  Saah sighed and his eyes closed. Robinson lifted the axe, but Saah spoke again.

  “I was dreaming about the time you broke your arm at the Pate. You were rushed to the healer’s house where your mother set it. Do you remember?”

  Robinson did. He had been there that day. He and Slink had carried Jaras home.

  “I remember,” he said.

  “I dreamed I broke something too, only she couldn’t find it. My bones had gone soft as meal, and I couldn’t move. Then Tessa came in wearing the white and healed me with her touch. Do you think she likes it at the healing house?”

  Robinson’s arm shook. Then it fell to his side.

  “I’m sure she loves it.”

  Saah nodded, and he took another heavy breath. “I would like to see her again.”

  Robinson’s chest had gone tight. Every part of him—every instinct he’d cultivated since arriving on this continent—said kill this man, but for some reason he couldn’t. He could only think of his mother at that moment and what she might think of him slaughtering an unarmed man.

  “Soon enough,” Robinson said. “Rest now, father. You have a busy day ahead.”

  Saah murmured and closed his eyes. Robinson pulled Saah’s blanket up to his chin and was surprised when he patted his hand. Little did he know it contained the vial, which Robinson had just taken. It was what he’d come for. Part anyway. He thought of Friday. She would view this tiny mercy as a foolish weakness. But he was who he was.

  When Robinson exited the farmhouse, Robinson told the mute sister it was done. Scout chirped from the branch, but Robinson couldn’t leave yet.

  “We can’t leave those people inside the barn,” he said.

  After the mute sister grudgingly parted with a third arrow to draw the thing beneath the soil away, Robinson slipped back into the barn and retrieved the big can of acetone before pouring it around the barn. He was just about to light it on fire when Scout shrieked wildly at the door. The mute sister looked out and dropped to a knee just as an arrow struck above her.

  Viktor bolted up from his cot as the mute sister began firing arrows back toward her assailant. Robinson had no time to think. He leaped for the ladder instead, scrambling to reach Viktor before he raised the pipes to his lips. He was too late. The shrill note rang through the barn, and instantly Saah’s army of augmented settlers came alive, storming the sliding doors as their murmuring wails broke the night.

  Cassa wasn’t shocked the girl evaded his arrow. He knew Crusoe’s lover was one of the mountain warriors and very skilled, but her bow work had only been marginal. What he didn’t expect was for her to charge him, her blade coming fast enough to force him backward. It took a moment to get her timing down. He was about to counterattack when the girl unexpectedly stepped out into the moonlight. His world fell away.

  In the barn, Viktor screamed hysterically as Robinson charged him. Robinson shouted for the pipes, but the Master’s army was all Viktor had left. He refused to lose them now. As he scrambled back, his boot struck the leg of his cot and he tumbled over it, knocking the table lamp off as he and it fell to the pen below. He felt the lamp break underneath him and smelled the acetone a moment before everything burst into flames.

  The mute sister didn’t know why the masked figure wasn’t fighting back. She’d felt the lactic acid building up in her own muscles and knew her movements had slowed, and yet the man did nothing but parry her blade again and again.

  When the pipes blew inside the barn, she knew it was only a matter of time before more help came. She heard the roar of animals, followed by a whoosh before smoke began pouring out. Crusoe still hadn’t emerged.

  The sentry came from the south, the hooves of his horse shuddering in the mud as his crossbow came up. Without cover, she readied herself for the strike when the masked figure suddenly stepped in front of her. The bolt released and punched him in the chest, catapulting him back into her as they both fell. While falling back, the masked figure fired his own weapon, killing the sentry.

  The mute sister shoved the man off her, his mask dropping to the dirt in the process. She grasped around for her blade but couldn’t find it. Her eyes had gotten splashed by the spray of blood when the man had been hit. She couldn’t understand why he’d saved her. Then he rolled over. Half the man’s face and skull had been ravaged by fire, yet she would recognize the eyes of her brother anywhere.

  She opened her mouth and bellowed an inhuman scream.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Behind the Mask

  Saah was half-drunk and half-asleep when he stumbled out of the farmhouse. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Black smoke was billowing out of the barn and already flames were licking the roof. In front of the barn he saw Cassa lying next to what appeared to be a girl, yet he wasn’t moving. Why isn’t he moving? Saah yelled his name twice. Cassa never moved.

  From inside the barn came a powerful jolt as something rammed the rear doors. Over the roar of the flames, Saah could hear his army trying to escape. Three of his men appeared out of the eastern fields, sprinting toward the barn.

  “No!” Saah screamed. “Wait!”

  He fumbled for his pipes too late. A giant tentacle burst out from the earth and snatched one of the men and his mount. He screamed as he was lifted high in the air and thrust back down toward the rising maw in the dirt. The other men kept running.

  “The rear door!” Saah yelled. “Release my army before it burns!”

  Inside the front half of the barn, Robinson threw a woolen blanket over Viktor to staunch the flames. The moment he pulled it back, he knew the man was dead. The smell of burning flesh seared his nostrils. He tore the pipes from his throat and scuttled away.

  The barn quickly filled with smoke. Robinson ran for the open door, but a burning beam fell, barring his way. Behind him, he heard the army pounding on the sliding doors. The metal hinges started to buckle. He blinked back tears, coughing, looking for any way out. The loft was already a raging inferno. Near his heels, the alpha slammed against her cage, clawing at the wooden floor and growling as the flames moved in.

  Her actions gave him an idea. He pulled his pistol. What had Pastor said?

  The blue chamber fires a sonic blast equivalent to a running kick to the chest.

  If there was no door, he would make one.

  Robinson thumbed the blue button, aimed at the side of the barn, and pulled the trigger. A cocoon of soundless energy burst from the pistol, the recoil jerking Robinson’s hand as the wooden slats of the barn cracked in a four-foot-circle. They didn’t give. Robinson pulled the trigger twice more. This time, the slats burst open to the outside.

  Robinson lurched toward the hole but wavered and fell to his knees. He was coughing raggedly, and his vision started to blur. Not now, he thought. Not yet. He scrambled toward the door, felt a cool channel of air, and breathed deeply. He was about to stagger out when he heard the alpha slam rattle her cage again. He looked back and saw the desperation in her eyes. Then she looked at him and whined. It was a foreign sound coming from her.

  All the pain she had caused him. All the attempts on his life. He swore he’d put the dog out of her misery, but even he couldn’t allow her to the burn to death.

  Robinson aimed the pistol toward the Alpha and thumbed the second button.

  The green chamber fires a blast with twice the velocity and impact of a normal forty-five caliber pistol.

  Robinson felt his throat tighten. At the last second, he shifted his aim. The jolt ran through his arm a scintilla before the sonic blast struck the pen’s lock. He leaped outside without waiting to see if the alpha made it out alive.

  Saah grabbed a shovel from the garden, tossing it to the men at the barn’s rear doors. The fire was now raging on the opposite side. Saah could hear the screams of his army as they slammed into the doors again and
again.

  The shovel wielder smashed the lock again and again. The sound came before a rumble of earth as another giant tentacle burst upward and snatched the shovel wielder off his feet, pulling him high into the air. Saah blew a frantic signal for the creature to relent. The thing either couldn’t hear the notes over the roaring fire or was already seized by bloodlust. The man screamed once before disappearing down a gyre of razor sharp teeth.

  Saah grabbed the shovel himself and struck the lock. It broke, and the doors swung open as his army spilled forth like a crushing tide. Saah blew his pipes again, but at least a dozen of his warriors were already aflame. While some obeyed his commands to make for the groves, at least half their numbers spilled into the field. Most were retching smoke when tentacles took hold of them. Saah was afraid he was about to lose everything.

  Through the smoke, Saah saw a figure limping away from the barn and knew without a doubt it was Robinson Crusoe. Only he could cause this much destruction. He blew a tone, commanding his creatures to kill before pointing out the boy.

  On the western side of the barn, Robinson limped to the mute sister only to find her huddled over the man named Cassa, who lay in the dirt, a bolt sticking out of his chest. He was about to pull her up when he saw the man’s exposed face. He couldn’t have been more stunned. All that time it had been the mute brother hunting Robinson and Friday by Saah’s side. He struggled to grasp why, then it struck him. They must have both thought the other was dead. It was the cruelest irony.

  Blood bubbled around the wound. It had punctured his lung. Still, when Saah’s call for death rang out, Robinson didn’t hesitate.

  “Get the horses!” he shouted. “It’s the only way to save him!”

  It was this second order that spurred the mute sister into action. She scrambled to her feet and ran through the gates.

  Scout flapped her wings wildly as Saah’s army lumbered towards him. Robinson’s pistol barked, the sonic blast hitting the lead augmented human and catapulting him backward. Robinson waited a half second for the gun to recharge and then fired again. There’s too many, he thought. It’s only a matter of time.

  The mute brother tugged Robinson’s sleeve. When he looked down, the injured youth was using his good arm to point to the center of the field where the tentacle creature lived.

  Robinson understood. He aimed and fired. Soil and gore kicked skyward as the creature howled, its tentacles lopping around, mowing down bodies. Robinson continued to fire. This time the blast took off a tentacle. The beast howled. This time, the rumble of earth nearly knocked everyone off their feet as the creature used every tentacle to propel itself out of the earth.

  It had been too dark in the house to see the beast clearly. Robinson had gotten only a glimpse of that many-mouthed demon, but its abhorrence paled into comparison to the thing he saw rise in front of him. Its body was hoary and shapeless, mutating with each lumbering movement as if it had no bones. Robinson couldn’t see any eyes, but it had a mouth—one horrifyingly enormous orifice filled with at least three layers of gore-filled teeth. The flames behind it made it look like a demon from Hell.

  Robinson watched in disbelief as the creature swooped up people two at a time, gnashing them into pieces before tossing the rest away. A shrill note broke him from his trance as Saah, at the opposite end of the field, pointed in Robinson’s direction.

  As the creature lumbered toward them, the earth shook, as did Robinson’s hands as he depressed the red button on the pistol, having little idea what was about to happen.

  And the red? Robinson had asked Pastor.

  Let’s just say if have to topple any buildings, his friend had replied with a smirk, it will give you your start.

  Robinson pulled the trigger and felt the pistol vibrate before it fired like a cannon, the recoil kicking the pistol back into his face and bloodying his lip. Unfortunately, the blast hit one of Saah’s fleeing soldiers, turning his body into one unsightly spray of mist.

  The creature roared as it picked up speed. Robinson tried to fire again, but the readout was slower this time—nearly two seconds. His target had crossed half the field before Robinson fired a second blast. This time the shot missed high and to the left, shredding several of the trees in the grove beyond.

  A frantic Scout flew at the creature in hopes of distracting it. It bought Robinson half a second at most. He fought back the rising bile in his throat and wished he had time to dry his hands, but the mute brother was mumbling something as the beast closed the distance in several earth-shaking steps, its hideous maw opening wide and roaring—

  BOOM!

  The third shot sent tremors up Robinson’s arm, and it immediately went numb, yet his aim was true. The sonic blast hit the creature in its amorphous core. At once it was there—a tangible mass of power and force—and then in an instant it disintegrated into a shockwave of flying viscera that coated everything in sight.

  Robinson heard the rush of hooves over Saah’s furious shrieks. By the time the mute sister reined up with the three horses, Robinson already had her brother on his feet and was propelling him up into the saddle. A few ranging soldiers closed in, but by the time they reached the gate, Robinson and the twins were gone.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Value

  “You purposely cleansed the girl despite explicit orders to the contrary,” Lysa said. “How do you explain yourself?”

  Pastor looked over the faces of the half-dozen masters that filled the antiquarian room of the Hall of Literature and thought, So this is your coterie. You, Virgil, Lopamudra, Bryce, and the others.

  “The virus was mutating,” Pastor said. “Even in containment, it had reached the point where, had we waited any longer, the nanobots’ effectiveness would be called into question.”

  “It wasn’t your decision to make,” someone else said.

  “We have a deal with Robinson,” Pastor said.

  “In exchange for the second strain of the EBU-GENC2 virus,” Lysa added. “Has he delivered it?”

  “He will,” Pastor replied.

  “You say that, but you have no evidence he’s succeeded. Or if he is even alive.”

  “I don’t need evidence. I know the boy well.”

  Lysa grunted.

  “The fact remains,” Mathias, the once German industrialist said, “you swore the oath and you have violated it.”

  “The oath states we cannot aid or effect change upon those outside the city. The girl is inside, is she not?”

  “For now,” Virgil said.

  “Then I’ve done nothing but help us keep our word.”

  “And if your friend doesn’t return?” Lopamudra, the lithe Indian asked.

  Pastor shrugged. “Well, I imagine Engineering could always use another apprentice.”

  “That savage among my discipline?” Lopamudra scoffed. “Ridiculous.”

  “That savage is smarter and cleverer than half the masters here. She could teach all of you a thing or two.”

  “Enough,” Lysa said. “You disappoint me, William. For two hundred years, we’ve protected you, let you live among us, and this is how you thank us.”

  “Oh, get off your high horse, Lisa. You’ve always needed me to do your dirty work. And you forget I knew you back when you were a snooty, nineteen-year-old rich kid whose only talent was using single syllable words on social media. And suddenly you think you’re God.”

  “There is no God,” Lysa said. “Or if there was, He has been replaced.”

  Pastor shook his head. He could have continued with this farce but didn’t see the point. These masters believed they were heading into uncharted territory, where they alone might expand the boundaries of human existence. What they failed to understand was that the new roads were the same as the old ones. Only the traveler and the scenery changed. Knowledge and skill could take you far, but in the end, the same DNA that prompted our creation also ensured its destruction.

  “He’ll need to be disciplined,” Mathias said.

&
nbsp; “And he will,” Lysa said. “But not in front of the body. Not yet anyway. There’s still dirty work to be done.” Pastor looked up, concerned. “It seems your trip to the Medica was more successful than you intended. Your savage girl’s water just broke.”

  Pastor took off running.

  Friday’s shout’s reached Pastor’s ears the moment he turned into the Medica hallway.

  “Get away!” she shouted.

  Pastor entered the room to see Friday on a bed, struggling with two medical masters. One of her arms had been bound to the bed. They were struggling to bind the other.

  “What is this?” Pastor bellowed.

  “She refuses to let us deliver the baby,” one of the masters said.

  “Not with those!” Friday screamed, pointing to the robotic arms maneuvering above.

  The female master lost hold of Friday’s wrist, and Friday cracked her in the face and sent her sprawling to the floor. Friday then grabbed the second master by the hair, pulling the robotic arm and its scalpel toward his jugular.

  “Free me,” she growled.

  Pastor laughed. “You’d better do as she says.”

  The man freed Friday’s wrist, and she shoved him away. She tried to rise but was seized by contractions.

  “You two,” Pastor said to the masters, “Go.”

  They didn’t have to be told twice. They fled out of the room.

  “Can’t … have baby in … here,” Friday growled as she tried to rise again.

  Pastor put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “But you will. With me. No machines, I promise.”

  Friday locked eyes with him and lay back.

  “The important thing now is to breathe. Big, deep breaths.”

  Friday did as she was told, and after a few more seconds, the contractions relented.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Then what?” Friday spat. “Being stabbed from within?”