There was just enough light to see that they weren't alone. Half a dozen others sat there, and they all looked with fear and suspicion at Su-Mi, the only Korean among them. The truck was obviously a troop transport as it had a row of benches along each side, so Nathan and Su-Mi sat as far away from the others as they could and leaned forward to whisper.
"What do we do?" Nathan said.
Su-Mi shook her head. "I don't understand why he was so insistent. He outranked me, but if I was telling the truth, he's taking a big risk by throwing an envoy and his escort into the back of a truck."
"Unless he knew our story's B.S.," Nathan said. He had a bad feeling that, perhaps, things had moved on in Arizona since they'd started heading west. Maybe the idea of diplomacy with the government in Phoenix was now moot. Maybe there was no longer an independent Phoenix.
There was a shout outside and the truck's engine started up. Nathan grabbed the bench, then leaned back as it started moving. He'd known the mission was a risky one from the beginning, but he'd somehow expected to at least get to San Diego, or New Pyongyang as it had been renamed, before being caught. Well, he would get there, that's for sure, but he was likely to see nothing more than the inside of a cell and the business end of a firing squad. And, if the rumors were true, even worse awaited Su-Mi.
They sat in utter silence as the miles passed. No one spoke to them, but Nathan caught fragments of conversation between the others. One of them seemed to be held in high regard by the others. When he spoke, they listened and when he made a point, that was the end of any debate. They talked with the quiet determination of people resigned to their fate. At least two were women, judging by their voices, and the others were a mix of young and old. And they all hated the North Koreans.
Nathan awoke suddenly as he bounced off the opposite wall of the truck, landing in a heap on top of Su-Mi. His ears were ringing so he could barely hear the crackle of small arms fire and Korean shouts of alarm.
A voice growled in his ear. "Get ready, son, if you want to save your hide."
Nathan rolled over just as the back doors blew open.
"No!" he cried as a gun barrel was pointed at Su-Mi. "She's on our side!"
"And whose side is that, exactly?" the man said. "Well, we ain't got time to find out now. Bring her with us, and we'll work out if this boy's a collaborator later."
"Funny, boss. 'Collaborator later'. You're a poet," said a thin, smarmy voice.
"Can it, Wesley. Now let's get outta here."
Nathan was pushed into the blinding mid afternoon brightness, shielding his eyes so he could take in the scene. Four KPA soldiers lay dead while a fifth was on his knees, having been dragged from the cab of the truck. He raised his hands and pleaded, sobbing, with the man standing over him, his handgun pointing at the driver's head. The man looked across at someone standing beside Solly, then turned back to the driver and pulled the trigger. The echoing crack died just as the body slumped to the ground.
Nathan let out an involuntary expletive.
"What's the problem, son?" the older man said. "Got a soft spot for the Kimmies, have you?"
"No, but I like to think we're the good guys here. Killing someone in a firefight is one thing, murdering in cold blood is another."
"This here's a war, son, and we kill enemy fighters," he said. "And we kill collaborators. So, tell me what you're doin' in the company of a KPA officer."
Nathan turned to face the man. He wasn't as old as he'd thought in the darkness. Probably late fifties, fit enough though carrying a few extra pounds, and a veteran if Nathan was any judge. His face bore the evidence of a recent beating.
"My name is Sergeant Nathan Woods of 2nd Battalion, TLX Army. This is Corporal Pak Su-Mi and she is assigned to my unit."
"But that ain't no corporal's uniform," drawled the young man called Wesley who had hold of Su-Mi.
"So, you're from the TLX are you? I can't say as I'm entirely sure they're a whole heap better than the KPA. I reckon, soon enough, they'd be rolling west to rope us into their independence thing, willin' or no. We've heard some stories, let me tell you…"
Nathan shrugged. "And many of them are probably true, but we're Americans and it seems to me that anything's better than anarchy or living under the boot of the North Koreans."
The older man regarded Nathan for a moment or two, scratching his gray stubble as he thought. "Okay, I believe you, for now. Let our guest go, Wesley. My name's Rex Matthews, formerly of 5th Marines where I held the rank of sergeant." He held out a beefy hand that swallowed Nathan's. "Were you in the Army before the world went belly up?"
"I was in the Texas National Guard," Nathan said.
"Well, close enough," Matthews responded. "But look, we need to get away quickly, it won't be long before they come looking for their missing truck."
He began moving away and Nathan, with a nod to Su-Mi, went to follow him. "Where are we going?"
"To a safe place near here. The Kimmies haven't found it yet and I don't reckon they will. Don't like the heat, you see."
"And what will we do there?"
Matthews turned as he strode toward the side of the road and headed into the brush. "We'll plan our next move, and you can explain what you're doing hundreds of miles from home with a woman in an KPA uniform. Welcome to the resistance, my friend."
Chapter 12
Solly pressed his palms to his ears as Khaled and the two guards standing in front of him fell to the ground where they writhed in agony. After a few seconds, Alison's scream stopped. Solly and Paulie, who'd been farther away, were the first to react, each grabbing a rifle from one of the guards and leveling it as they got woozily to their feet, shaking their heads as if to clear the lingering echoes ringing in their ears.
Keeping them covered, Solly stepped past the guards and seized Alison from Khaled who lay, still insensible, on the ground.
"Father, you came for me," she said.
"Of course," Solly responded. Now wasn't the time to confess to an artificial entity with the power to render people unconscious that he'd pursued Khaled mainly out of revenge.
He gestured to Khaled to get on his feet. The man was sobbing pathetically as he looked from Solly to Paulie and saw no pity there.
"What'cha gonna do with him?" called Bobby who was watching the two black uniformed guards. "I'd slit him from ear to ear if it was up to me."
Khaled wailed. "You don't understand. They made me do it."
"And you don't understand," Solly hissed. "We don't care. You were going to hand over the very device you told me is the key to preventing the second apocalypse. But why DC?"
Khaled stood, quietly sobbing.
"I'd answer him if I were you," Paulie said, her calm voice carrying an unmistakable threat.
"I cannot say. They will kill me," he wailed, shaking his head as if in denial.
"And if you don't, I'll kill you," Solly said, though as he did so, he found his rage and disgust tempered with pity. The man was terrified beyond imagination. He sighed. "Look, we'll help if we can, but we need to know why you were bringing the cylinder here."
Khaled deflated. He looked utterly defeated, as if he had lost all hope.
"I can hear it," he said, calmly. "Look at my implant."
And he fell like a stone.
"Solly!"
He spun around to see the two guards on the floor, unresponsive.
"Father, there is something here," Alison said, as Solly checked Khaled for a pulse. "I detected an EM pulse a few seconds ago."
Then he heard it. A high pitched hum that, before the Long Night, he'd have paid little attention to. But here, in this quieter post apocalyptic world it was totally out of place. Quickly, he turned Khaled's lifeless body over and pulled the man's filthy coat off and the shirt under it. "Look!" he called. There, beneath his shoulder blade, was a shiny metal circle. "He's had an upgrade to his implant."
"Over there!" Paulie called.
Solly followed her pointing arm where a black flo
ating object emerged from the treeline.
"Is that a drone?" Bobby asked.
"It's a Reaper," Solly said. "Quick, let's get inside."
They gathered their weapons and the assault rifles of the guards then ran for the nearest of the riverside cottages, a whitewashed brick building with a front door that had long ago been smashed to pieces. They got inside and then filled the gap where the door had been with the kitchen table. Solly ran upstairs and looked out of the bedroom window. He watched the drone drift over to the three bodies and then dip slightly as if it was checking them.
"It killed them remotely," Solly whispered to Paulie and Bobby as they crouched beside him. "Exactly as Khaled said."
"So, the Lees implanted the new BonesWare before letting him go. And he knew he was carrying it all along, even when he was telling us about the Reapers."
Solly nodded as he watched the drone complete its inspection and remain hovering as its body swung around as if it were searching for something. "He couldn't tell us because he feared what we'd do. We certainly wouldn't have let him out of the cellar. They knew where Alison had been before she turned up in Seattle, so they sent him to pick up the trail, hoping we'd return. But why DC?"
"Oh no," Paulie said as the drone's camera array pointed directly at them and it began moving toward the house where they hid.
"It's coming," Alison said. "I can sense it. A dark, dark mind. It wants to kill."
Solly looked down at the device in his hand. The cyan eye was wandering back and forth, leaving digital tears flowing down the display. "Don't worry, I'll protect you."
"Alison, is there any chance it can detect you? It's coming straight for us."
"Perhaps, Paulie," Alison said. "Should I shut down?"
"There's no point, it's found us," Solly said, readying the carbine he'd taken from one of the guards.
The Reaper came for them, accelerating toward the window they hid behind. A puff of smoke and moments later they were showered with dust and debris, choking as they scrambled away from the hole blown in the wall a few yards to their right.
"Missed us!" Bobby said, bringing his rifle to bear.
"I don't think so," Solly responded. "They want Alison in one piece. It's just found a way in."
Sure enough, through the clearing dust, he could see the Reaper heading for the hole. "Quick!"
He tightened his grip on Alison and leaped to the door of the bedroom as Paulie followed. "Come on Bobby!" Solly called.
"Gimme a minute," he said, crouching behind the door frame and leveling his carbine. "I wanna see if I can put a dent in it. You go on!"
Paulie pulled on Solly's arm and they ran downstairs as a burst of gunfire came from above, followed by the slamming of the door and Bobby's heavy boots on the stairs.
"Guess the answer's no," he panted. "The bullets just bounced off. It's like a flying Dalek. Now let's move it, cos I don't wanna be h'exterminated."
"We can't just run if it can track Alison, it'll find us wherever we go," Paulie said.
Solly looked down at the cylinder as the whining of the drone above them got closer. "It's best if you deactivate yourself, Alison," he said.
"Father, I'm frightened," she responded. "Promise I'll wake up again."
Solly smiled down at the cyan eye. "I promise. Whatever happens, I'll reactivate you."
Without another word, the eye disappeared. Moments later a door exploded and the Reaper moved onto the staircase.
Adrenaline flooded Solly's veins as he listened to it floating toward them. So this was how the antelope felt when the lion pack was circling. They reached the ground floor of the cottage and he flung open the first door. It was the kitchen. Solly suppressed his sneeze as he breathed in fetid air and, holding his nose, carefully closed the door behind him.
He opened the back door. It was the obvious escape route, but they had little chance of getting away once out in the open. "In there!" Solly said, twisting round and bundling them all into the pantry, shutting the door behind them.
Paulie crouched beside him. "You know we're trapped in here, don't you?"
"Yeah, I'm banking on that thing not being able to turn a door handle. I reckon it'll assume we've run outside. That'll buy us a little time."
They sat in the pantry straining to hear the approaching drone. Solly jumped as, with a crash, the kitchen door was blown open, bits of wood hitting the outside of the pantry. The whining hum drew closer as Paulie touched Solly's shoulder and pointed to the back of the pantry. "Infrared," she whispered.
Of course. It was all very well hiding behind a door, but who was to say what technology this thing had for detecting bodies? They crawled as quietly as possible to the far end of the pantry and into an alcove at the end of the row where a washing machine had once been. There was barely enough room for all of them and Solly found himself breathing in the earthy aroma of Paulie's deep brown hair and wondered when she'd last washed it. He could feel Bobby's arms on his shoulders and the man's breath on his head.
The whining of the drone increased until they could tell it was immediately outside. Solly imagined invisible x-rays sweeping the pantry looking for them as they held their breath. Then, after a few seconds, the whining moved on and disappeared. Solly sighed with relief.
"Are we going to make a break for it?" Paulie whispered.
"Not yet," Solly said, speaking into her ear as they didn't dare move. "I reckon it'll call for reinforcements if it can't find us, and we'll have a squad of Lee Corp guards to deal with."
"Why d'you think it killed those guards outside?"
Solly shrugged. "Haven't got a clue, but if they were still alive, we'd have been found by now. Let's give it half an hour. If we don't hear anything, we can run for the boat. That's our best way out of here."
"Yeah, but Solly, we won't be able to go so fast against the current. I wouldn't fancy being in the middle of that river with a Reaper chasing me," Bobby said.
"Then we'd better sneak off without them noticing," Solly said, "because we're inside DC territory now and I'm beginning to wonder just how independent the new government is."
They sat in the pantry, each lost in their own thoughts, for the longest thirty minutes of their lives. The place had been stripped of the food that had once lined the shelves, except for a few packets of mixed spices and instant soup that he put in his pack.
"Right, let's go," he whispered as he glanced down at his watch. He'd discarded his Apple Watch two days after the Long Night and was wearing the old clockwork watch his father-in-law—his former father-in-law—had given him years ago. He'd been happy to ditch it when he bought his first smartwatch, but the old Timex had had the last laugh. His other wrist still felt oddly naked, even though he'd stopped wearing his BonesWare display months ago. It still worked, and taking it off didn't affect the implant itself, but he hated it and all it represented. And he didn't need to be warned about his blood pressure.
They left the carbines on the floor of the pantry and drew handguns before creeping to the back of the door. Solly put his hand on the door handle and, after a nod to the others, pulled it gently open.
It was on the kitchen table. Solly gasped, but Paulie put her hand on his shoulder. "It's powered off," she said. "Quick, let's get out of here."
So, it knew they were still inside, so it had waited silently for them to emerge. And now it was waking up. Its four rotors began spinning and a series of red lights began to circle its dome-like base. "It's initializing!" Solly hissed.
With a roar, Bobby ran across the stone floor and threw himself onto the drone. He grabbed one of the Reaper's four arms and tried to rip at the rotor. "Bobby!" Solly called, "Leave it!"
"You run. I'll take care of this. Go, my friend!"
Paulie went to go, but Solly turned in the doorway. "No," he said. "Not this time."
An alarm sounded from the Reaper as it strained to lift off. Solly ran back in to help his friend when, without warning, Bobby exploded, blood raining down on Sol
ly like a spring shower as he screamed in horror and slipped to the floor. Bobby's upper body slid from the top of the Reaper and it rose like the spawn of the Devil out of the ruins of a good man's corpse. Born out of blood, scarlet lights dancing, it dipped its nose and the twin muzzles rotated to face Solly.
The Reaper floated above him as Solly tried to scramble away, dragging the cylinder with him. "Get away!" he called to Paulie as she drew her weapon in the doorway. The Reaper's weapons swung to point at her, but Solly held Alison out in front of him and called, "Leave her or I'll destroy this!"
The drone turned back to Solly as he pressed his handgun against the cylinder's shiny blood spattered surface. Then, as he despaired, he remembered his promise. "Alison," he said. "Wake up."
He felt her come alive. She gasped in fear. "It is here! It is so dark!"
"It killed Bobby," he said, "and it wants to kill Paulie and me."
The cyan eye looked from him to Paulie and back to the drone. It turned red and Alison screamed.
Solly dropped the cylinder and rolled over and over grabbing his ears, waiting to die in a hail of bullets. The floor shook as something heavy dropped and he turned back to see the drone on the floor.
"Noooow!" Alison said. "I can't hold it!"
Solly twisted over and threw himself onto the Reaper just as Paulie also landed on it. He pulled the knife from his ankle and stabbed it into a small panel that ran along the top of the black scarlet splashed dome. With a desperate heave, he opened it enough to be able to get his hands under there and wrench it off as the drone began moving beneath him, as if it were wrestling with an invisible opponent. He thrust his hands into the mass of wires and circuit boards inside and pulled. Instantly the Reaper stopped moving.
"Aaaahhh!" Alison called.
Solly grabbed the cylinder and turned it round until the display was uppermost. It was black. "Wake up, Alison!" he said, shaking her. Nothing happened. She was as dead as the Reaper. She was as dead as Bobby.
The Long Night Box Set Page 58