Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two)

by Timothy C. Ward

  Nedzad searched the corpses stretched along the wall until he found the fallen flag stand. He stepped carefully between the bodies and knelt down at the flag. He felt along the base and up to where the cloth connected with the pole. His thumb pressed on the hard shape of a key. The flag was tight enough to make it difficult pushing the key out. As he closed it in his palm, he noticed a shadow of movement to his right.

  The boy with the hole in his head was standing between him and the door, along with seven or eight others.

  “What’s the key for?” W said into his earpiece.

  Nedzad stuffed the key in his pocket.

  “Okay. We’ll get it.”

  The group stepped closer.

  “Say hi to Jules for us.”

  Nedzad fired his DL into the closest charging body, then let loose rapid shots through head, neck, ear, face…taking down half of the moving dead. Their continued progress pushed him back from the door. Glancing around, most of the dead in the room were rising to their feet. One with a missing leg at the thigh fell under the shove of a more able body behind her.

  Nedzad hit his dive button and fired into the gut of a skinny guy close enough to prevent his arm’s full extension. Aside from the static discharge of his weapon and the hum of his suit, the only noise was the shuffling of clothes. No screams of pain. No sounds at all from the mouths of W’s toys.

  Something flew at his face. He dodged. A young man he’d shot in the face tore a chunk of his cheek and began balling it as he reached back to throw.

  Nedzad fired at the man reaching for his face, his blast severing fingers and landing center forehead. The body dropped.

  Two came at him from straight on while another lanced in from his right. He didn’t have time to charge his shots long. He released one into a woman’s chest that failed to slow her. He turned to run and tripped over a young man throwing himself under Nedzad’s legs.

  Hands clasped his body from back to feet. A sharp bite pinched his butt. Nedzad hypercharged his suit. A splash of dispersed weight followed him through the floor.

  18 - Cool (3:22 am, Saturday)

  Soon after Cool finished his canteen’s supply, his throat became especially dry. His head felt strange—a weird floating sensation that staggered the response between movement and thought. “I’m not feeling good, Dixon. Are you sure there is going to be water in there?”

  Dixon winked as though that was only one of the secrets he held. “I am, but even if not, I will find some.”

  “How? Have you been here before?”

  Dixon tilted his head as though Cool had just asked if he had a jug of water on his back and had forgotten to mention it. “How long have you dreamed of what Danvar has to offer?” Dixon gave him two seconds to think about it, then whipped around and practically skipped to the door leading into the hospital. “If you’ve given up hope that it has water, then I can’t wait to see your face when we arrive.”

  Dixon waited while Cool and his mom helped Jeff to his feet, put his arms around them, and walked to the open door. Viky and Carroll went in first, their steps on the concrete echoing down their progress. Viky had transitioned from friend to protector mode. Carroll did a good job pretending to own the same courage, but still gave Viky a two step lead. They could be walking into anything. What if the campfire whispers were right and the sand kept the souls of the Old World’s dead from reaching the sky?

  What if Jeff died before they made it back up?

  Cool hugged him tighter. “You’re gonna get better, Jeff. I know it. We made it this far for a reason.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not like that, little bro,” Jeff whispered. “But I’m not giving up.”

  Cool released his brother to help him enter the doorway. The stairs led fifty feet or more up at an angle. Viky’s flashlight held on a point she neared.

  They eventually made it to the top, exiting into a concrete spanning open space as wide as the court house. Most of the area was cordoned off by hanging sheets, and it smelled of old leather, fermented fruit, and quenched dung fires. Not unlike the poorest area of Shantytown.

  “This is a hospital?” Cool asked.

  Viky trained her flashlight on the wall and words that read EXIT. The break in the dirty gray concrete formed an arch over a spill of sand deep into the entrance.

  Dixon glanced between his map and Viky’s path around the sand spill. He pointed to their left. “This is only a garage. The hospital is that way. We can check these quarters for supplies, though.”

  The group fanned out while Dixon walked along the wall to the far corner of the room.

  Cool and his mom helped Jeff walk but, as they neared a tent, Cool looked at his mom, got an okay-but-hurry-up face, and left them behind. He pushed aside the curtain and saw empty wrappers and a few bars of food still intact. The first one he bit into was a fruit and oat bar with an alcoholic aftertaste. His dry throat only got worse with the crumbles of food scratching down with each swallow. Set behind a pillow, hiding under a folded blanket, were two bottles of water. He took one, unscrewed the cap and poured half of its contents down his throat before he thought to breathe.

  “Found water!” he gasped.

  His mom bent over to part the curtain. Jeff half fell, half sat, inside the entrance. He looked down and leaned his weight onto one arm keeping him upright.

  “Here, too,” said Carroll.

  “Nice!” said Viky, nearby.

  Cool opened a bar for Jeff and extended it under his brother’s nose. “Tastes like oatmeal and raisins.”

  Jeff tipped his head to examine the morsel, then shifted his weight to his other arm, propped himself up, and snatched the bar. He shoved it all at once into his mouth and chewed. He mumbled something akin to thanks and accepted the three-quarters full bottle of water from Mom.

  Sticking out from under the other side of the pillow was a piece of paper. Cool slid it out. It was a map with a line drawn from a tower with an X near the top to a building in the middle, marked as Denver Health. Another section far southwest was circled with multiple question marks and Xs at the end of paths that had no end. Farther west was a blank section with Fort Pope written in the middle.

  “They’re here for us,” Cool said.

  “Let’s go.” Carroll nodded toward the tent flap.

  He tried showing her what he’d found, but she brushed him off, letting the tent flap close between them.

  Cool ignored her and joined Mom helping Jeff to his feet. While his brother staggered out of the tent, Cool slipped the map in his pocket. The secret added a degree of respect in his status among their group.

  “Hey!”

  Cool turned around the edge of the tent to see a young man in a dive suit aiming a pistol at Dixon, his stern face lit by his own red dive light. “Don’t move!”

  Cool ducked behind the tent flap. Everyone else was exposed.

  19 – Star

  Star let the dive suit dangle off her lap and fall into a heap beside her chair. The boy in the corner owned maturity and innocence like an answer to a million nights in prayer. “Fish?” Her voice choked out. “Please.”

  She sobbed and leaned forward, reaching for her dead son in the disbelief that he was no longer gone.

  The boy released a smile like that on the faces of all the children Star hated for not being her own, majestic in joy, as though unpolluted by the world around him. “Yes, Mommy.”

  The words pierced her heart. Stored air poured out in a moan of uncontrolled euphoria. She’d dreamt many nights about how his voice might sound saying that word. Mommy. Until now she’d been robbed of the honor. I don’t deserve it. I let you die.

  “No you didn’t, Mommy. It’s no one’s fault. Not that you know anyway.” Fish stood and lifted a blue fingered frozen treat to his lips. He bit into one tip as blue water dripped between his hand and the thin wooden stick that held the treat together. Had Oya given him that?

  “Who’s fault?” Star rested on her knees and raised her hands. Her hear
t beat in anticipation of his forward steps.

  His lips wore a sad line. “The Gov did it.”

  “How?”

  “He’s the one who put the desert here. His mines cast all this sand into the air. They keep the rain from blessing us with the water we deserve.”

  “How do you know?” Her knees began to ache as her weight pressed into the wood.

  “W told me.”

  The name, even not knowing it, evoked fear. Worse was how her son spoke it with reverence.

  “He brought me back, Mommy. We can live together and help him make the world as clean as Daddy’s comics show it.”

  “Who is he? Who is W?”

  “The new Warren. He came back.”

  Star fell onto her backside, shaking her head, speechless.

  “Do you want to live with us, Mommy?”

  Us? Was he giving an ultimatum to join W’s family or lose her son? “Please…” was all she could say. She didn’t care how or what she’d do after, she just wanted her son in her arms, breathing and calling her Mommy.

  His hands shook. The popsicle fell. He strode forward on his adorable legs until his soft mound of weight and momentum was caught in the pocket of her stomach.

  She squeezed him so tight his words muffled warm through her shirt. She let him out for air, kissed his sweaty forehead, and pressed her cheek into his. She didn’t care how loud she sobbed. Now was not the time to fear what debt W would claim for the gift she’d have turned the world upside down for.

  20 - Nedzad

  Nedzad fell onto the top of a storage cage, his hypercharged suit cutting through the fencing. The erosion of metal slowed him down enough to roll head over feet into the next area. His landing pushed a plastic tub off its stack. His back hit the edge of the tub below. His momentum rolled sideways. He swung his feet under him and absorbed the landing without tipping over.

  Lights flickered on from the ceiling in panels above each of the storage spaces lining the room. His was near the right half of the room.

  From the hole above rumbled the mass of bodies colliding into the narrow space and falling into the room. Nedzad backed up, bumping over boxes, and scanned the fence door. A Master lock hung on the outside, looped through the holes between door and fence.

  Bodies landed on piles of boxes, knocking them onto the floor and into each other.

  Nedzad’s DL was on a box in the cage next to him. His only way in was climbing the sagging fence absorbing the weight of raining undead. Two were already on their feet and moving toward him. Nedzad kicked the nearest in the gut and swung a box into another. With them out of his way, he jumped onto the fence, grabbed rungs over his head, and pulled himself up. Undead eyes watched him climb as they rolled off boxes and tubs to find a way to get him down.

  In the cage with his DL, ten undead had found their footing and were climbing the sagging fence or standing on the fence with him. He wasn’t getting in there to retrieve his DL. Worse, those on the fence with him created holes in the metal as their touch melted and caused it to peel back on itself. The gaps they made would soon be wide enough for them to fit through. He’d be surrounded in ten seconds if he didn’t dive through the fence and leave his DL behind.

  Hands collected pieces of metal and sections of tubs and balled globs in preparation to throw.

  Nedzad focused his suit’s EM, leaned off the fence, and lunged sideways. The fence bowed and broke free, dropping him to a free fall fifteen feet above ground. He twisted and placed his feet in time to squat into his landing. He spun and ran as undead threw small wads of M-MANs through the fencing. He swept his hand back behind him, throwing a gust of EM like an invisible bubble deflecting the shots before they hit him.

  While those on the fence ripped holes soon to be large enough to fit through, Nedzad faced the twenty meters left between him and the door exiting the room. The cages whined under the tearing weight of the undead. Ten meters to the door, something pelted him in the back. More wads of thick goo splat on the floor and wall in front of him. Nedzad reached for the source of impact below his left shoulder blade but felt nothing. On the ground a few steps behind him was a dark puddle barely lit by the light panel missing two of its three bars. One of the charging undead threw another ball of M-MANs. Nedzad whipped his arm up, buzzing with EM, and deflected the oblong capsule to splash into the fence behind him. Nedzad continued turning and cut left into the short corridor between a cage and the exit. Clumps of M-MAN balls splat on the wall and sprayed through the fence. The door knob turned in his hand, and he entered the next room. Its lights turned on from a high ceiling as he slammed the door shut.

  The walkway skirted the right side of a room filled by large oval tanks with signs painted Filtered Water. Thick tubes ran up from the five hundred gallon containers up along the ceiling stretching to the back of the room. On the tank’s fronts were faucets and handles behind which were painted directions to release or close the valve. If the undead were moving outside of the rules of the living through blood and whatever spirit caused life, then they moved via some form of electricity. Lacking time to further probe his idea, Nedzad pushed on one of the handles, releasing a surge of clear water onto the floor. He ran right. The door to his left burst open, slamming into the brick wall as a stream of undead poured into the room. The floor darkened with water in a spreading pool from the surge under the open valve. The thin layer it produced on the ground would do little to slow down the masses coming through the door.

  21 - Rush (9:35 pm, Friday)

  Rush jogged north from the Armory on LL3 with a fully powered dive suit and Poseidon. He sucked a nutritious meal through the tube protruding from his collar, noting a taste like beans, and thankful for noticeable nourishment to his fatigue.

  “Now to that office,” W said.

  The door on the left blinked yellow in Rush’s visor. He opened the door to a small office. Behind the desk the carpet had an oblong stain of blood, a backpack in the corner and next to the bookshelf a silver briefcase.

  “Who’s blood?” Rush asked.

  “Take the bag and the briefcase”

  “Who’s blood?”

  “The sentry Warren had killed.”

  “The one Nedzad mentioned?”

  “She died, yes.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Is she like Charles?”

  “Yes. You need to move. There’s water in the kitchen.”

  “What’s in the case?”

  “An easy way to rid the world of your threats.”

  Rush lifted the backpack and briefcase and left the office. Blinking yellow arrows guided him around a corner to the hall bordering the kitchen.

  He peeked in to see an open area devoid of the table the canines had used to build their bodies. The still room reminded him of the friends he helped escape. He hoped they were doing okay. Jeff had touched the M-MANs. Rush hadn’t taken time to see if he got them all when he pulled him out of the wall.

  If I didn’t, did I just let them out into the world?

  In his hurry to get them out before the canines saw where they went, he may have unleashed a force he had no idea how to wrangle back in. His visor clock said 9:39 pm. He guessed Jeff had left a little over two hours ago. He could only hope against logic that if the M-MANs made it out, they could still be small enough to contain. That was why he had to understand W and hopefully a way to shut down its programming, with or without the help the nanos provided. Without plasma in his veins, he lacked the strength to locate and connect with the M-MANs in the boy’s blood. That was as good an argument as any to dose up.

  The hall blinked between him and the doorway where Jeff’s arm had been inhaled by M-MANs.

  Rush followed instructions through turns in the hallway, down to LL4 and ending at a doorway.

  “Set the briefcase on that table,” W said.

  The room had a machine in the back corner with long arms and eight arms, each equipped with a differen
t type of tool, from screwdrivers, to molding torches, and shafts with ends he guessed could have any of the bits stored in the cabinet to the left. On the right was a computer tower with blinking lights and a screen showing Warren’s smiling face. He was back at the table at the Honey Hole, as though that were his office and he hadn’t forced Rush to set off bombs that made the tavern collapse under sand.

  Fans blew air into the room from vents in the ceiling.

  Rush set the briefcase on the table lining the adjacent wall. The machine slid along a track built into the ceiling. In one of its hands was a small metal block. The machine whirred as its hand turned over and set the block on the briefcase. The block broke apart. Its pieces crumbled onto the briefcase surface and melted. On both sides of the block, the case peeled back until the top layer rolled over to expose six black wasp-like bugs resting on ridged foam.

  Rush took an impulsive step back. He’d been stung by a wasp before. More than one.

  The rest of the case melted away, leaving only the wasps on the table.

  “The power source is not here. Rush, you need to find it,” W said.

  “Where is it? What does it look like?”

  “It’s a small silver apple. I’m searching… Nedzad. It was in the safe. Nedzad has it.”

  “Where’s he?” Rush asked.

  “Above you, Lower Level 1. Below the kitchen. I’ll—

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Something you need to stop.” The door clicked behind him. “Go now.”

  22 - Cool (3:26 am, Saturday)

  “Don’t!” the diver shouted, hidden by the curtain that kept Cool out of his sights. “You in the weird dive suit, take your visor off.” The diver sounded Dixon’s age but lacked fear in his command.

  Cool had plenty to spare.

  “You two, come on.” The diver commanded.

  Dixon’s dive light didn’t project through the curtains surrounding Cool, spilling only under the few inches between ground and curtain. Cool slowly bent to see his group walk toward Dixon and the diver. He might be able to pass through the makeshift rooms, if careful and quiet enough, and flank the diver. He carefully crawled toward the threshold.