Vargr touched her arm. “Come.”
“Wait.” Boaz held up a finger. “Make sure you can wake her still, before you leave. If she can’t, Maura stays here.”
Chapter 14
The caravan descended eight stories, with Cyn kept in the middle. There were two foot and two wing-soldiers, as well as Vargr and Maura, plus Orm, Toother, and Rutger. They carried no shopping carts filled with supplies, but the soldiers had backpacks filled with whatever the Mercantors thought would make for good trades.
Ridden by Orm, Toother kept mostly to the front. The nanodog was twice the size of a tiger, only he had cream-colored curled hair, like a deadly poodle, one with triangular front teeth and baby wings. They were that sparkly nanite blue and sprouted in the right place for wings, if dogs ever had wings, but were far too small to ever help him achieve lift-off.
Toother had been confirmed a he. She’d asked Orm if he was male. Orm’s out-of-control lively blue hair made it difficult not to stare whenever she spoke to the dog rider. He’d outfitted Tooth with saddle and bridle and reins, though her impression was that the nanodog went wherever he did due to some non-verbal commands, since the reins were never pulled on.
Eight stories down they struck a museum—huge rooms filled with exhibits of dinosaurs and Egyptian artifacts, an exhibit of the historical local fauna, and a specially gathered exhibit dealing with the excavations in New Zealand. Faded brochures, abandoned handbags, toppled wheelchairs, and lost shoes lay spilled across the floors, as well as a few desiccated skeletons still dressed in the clothes they’d worn when the Lure hit them. It was a macabre reminder.
Not that any of them needed reminders.
Cyn did, though. Sometimes her lack of memories made her feel as if this was all that had ever existed. She stepped around the skeletons they came across and was thankful for her second chance. As would be Maura.
The woman had responded again to her removing the influence of the Lure, and as long as she stuck close to Cyn, the effect stayed in place. That was gratifying. She’d found a use for herself, something more than just being a mysterious escapee from the top story. She could control the Lure to some extent, though she also guessed this had alarmed Boaz.
If she could control it, he’d probably made the leap to wondering if she was related to Ghoul Lords. Win some, lose some. Hopefully this biotechie in Worshipper could examine her blood and pronounce her a beaster, or similar.
Not unexpected to Rutger, their splendiferous-horned caravan leader, this was the route he’d used to reach Mercantor, and a trainway nearby led across the gap to his own Mercantor Quarter.
The trainway was adjacent to the museum, to allow visitors easy access. On the way out, they passed a small dinosaur skeleton, and she gazed up at this monstrous creature that had been extinct for millennia only to now watch this small party of not-quite humans go by.
“Makes you wonder if we are the next ones to go extinct, doesn’t it?” Maura said. “Serve us right. We’ve done it to so many species. Bald eagles, elephants, tigers, and all the little creatures most people barely noticed are gone.”
“Yes.” She twisted her mouth. “Terrible.”
“We have been awful custodians of our planet.”
A somber note on which to leave. What future lay ahead for the last people on Earth? Could she even count herself as human anymore, as Maura did?
The trainway outside consisted of three rail lines, and on the far side was a wall that’d been punched through by some sort of explosion. Concrete lay in pieces and blocks. Twisted reinforcing curled from the hole, and rubble was strewn across the rails. Through the hole she glimpsed the charred remains of cars. She could still smell smoke and ashes.
“Happened a lot in the tunnels in the last days.” Vargr nodded at the mess. “I’m flying ahead to check for problems. Be good and stay safe.”
He winked at them both then launched himself into the trainway where it crossed the void between the quarters, as marked by red signs and lines around the circumference of the tunnel.
She watched him fly, admiring the sweep of his wings, the run of muscle slab over muscle, the wind he created with each flap, and the pretty motes leaping along the feathers. If she had to be bond-mated to someone, at least she’d snared a pretty one.
Feathers jarred loose were fluttering down. One of them landed near her foot. The blue motes had died already, sadly. She picked it up, thinking to keep it as a memento—which was silly considering she had the real deal front and center most hours of the day—and was surprised by the weight. How did he fly with wings made of feathers like this?
Cyn tucked the feather into a pocket in her new, many-pocketed and very practical leather jacket. Along with her black jeans, her diabolical gray, button-front shirt, and a belt with a large skull-and-crossbones, she figured she was all set to do some awesome stuff on this trip.
She could kick butt, kick beaster butt even. A few cockroaches scurried past and as she strode forward, she squashed one under her boot.
“Looks like they were right,” Maura observed, stepping gingerly around the bug corpse. She too had found some jeans, as well as a blue T-shirt, and had even, from the looks of it, used a knife to crop her white hair into a shorter style. “The roaches are still around even if humans are almost not.”
“How is your memory of the invasion? Because I can barely recall it.”
“That bad? I remember it pretty well. Or at least I think I do.”
“We have a long walk along this trainway. A full day before we find Rutger’s place. Tell me about it.” The questions she had to ask Maura would wait. Boaz wanted someone present to record her answers.
“Sure. I can do that. Thank god I found some good shoes for this walk.”
“If it gets too much for your feet, ask one of these to carry you.” She jerked her head at their followers.
The rearward guard paced along behind them.
“Hmmm. Sexy ones too, hey? I like the one you caught. Vargr.”
“He’s okay.” She smiled. “How did they take over, the Ghoul Lords? Why didn’t we nuke them or send armies in? Was the Lure strong even then?”
“Yes it was. They somehow knew to take out the governments and defense system operators first. Planes fell out of the sky when the pilots flew near the top story. The army was the first resort and you can imagine how well that fared. That first day they landed all over the planet in one enormous flood of white wings. Drones and satellite images showed them as these tentacled beings with sails like manta rays floating and diving through the stratosphere. No flying saucers, so that wrecked a few people’s expectations.”
She laughed derisively.
“They had enough numbers to flood a lot of the Earth with the Lure from Day One. Planes fell, cars stopped, people just got up and climbed, abandoned their jobs, their kids. The children mostly never made it to the top. It was a terrible butchery of a kind. Dr. Nietz came up with some sort of electronic insulation, but even that must have failed. He had ideas that man. He was in New Zealand when they came. If he’d stayed where he was, miles underground, he might have survived.”
“I vaguely remember his company having a toe in a whole lot of different things. Moon landings? Archaeology. Genetic research.”
“Yes, and AI, and probably flower arranging. The media loved it when he made those announcements. I will launch my own shuttle, create new understandings of the planet’s distant past! I never really got to meet him, not until the last day I can remember, and that day is pretty much a fog.”
“I get that, only the fog for me covers all of my past.”
“Tsk. We must correct that.”
“Keep going…”
Vargr flew back and said the way ahead was clear for as far as he’d travelled. He fell into place on Cyn’s other side and seemed happy to simply listen.
The guards accommodated Maura’s lack of night vision by carrying old electric lanterns with the setting on low. The light cast swung to and
fro up the walls and over the tracks. At regular intervals a gridded square of tiny portholes high above let in spears of natural yellow sunlight.
It gave Cyn a surprisingly normal feeling to walk through this shattered land chatting to Maura, with Vargr ambling along, wings folded, his bare chest shining with sweat. Flying must be hard work. Roaches and rats made skittering sounds all around, though the charred remains of explosions and the blackened walls receded as they went further into the wide tunnel.
Her heartbeat slowed when they crossed the red line showing where the trainway entered the skyscraper on the other side of the void, and she realized she’d been imagining the tunnel cracking, crumbling, and falling into the chasm beneath it.
Was this the calm before the storm? If it was, she was still going to enjoy the stroll and the chat. She’d squash a few roaches, kick any rats that tried nibbling on her, using her lovely steel-toed boots, and she’d wonder how a man could fly when his weight was enough to leave dents in the softer surfaces he walked over.
Chapter 15
They stopped at nightfall to rest and set up camp on one of the platforms to the side of the trainway. Rutger said they were not far from his Worshipper tribe—only another half a day’s travel to reach them, but the beasters preferred to travel by night. Even though the day was not visible, the waxing and waning of the Lure ruled them. Luckily Maura showed no sign of succumbing unless Cyn drifted too far from her. It wasn’t easy restoring her wakefulness, so she stayed close to the woman.
What would happen when she had to leave her? It was a subject neither of them discussed, yet she was sure Maura was afraid to be a mindless zombie-type again.
A few clothed skeletons on the platform were quickly swept aside with a broom she found propped against a wall. No doubt the broom had been left there years ago. Cyn had wielded it. She refused to be intimidated by old bones.
A train had crashed here and slewed across the tracks, ploughing along and taking out parts of the brickwork wall. The carcasses of the last carriages lay rusting and twisted on the tracks. The front of the train had disappeared into the motorway on the other side of the wall. From the sounds, water was cascading into the building somewhere in that direction.
Same as at the museum, stalled vehicles showed through the holes. This was how the rats must have survived, at first—they’d eaten the dead in those cars and inside the train. Nothing seemed to have been cleared away. The accident would’ve been late in the invasion timeline.
Rumbling and intermittent flashes of lightning gave an instant weather report. It was storming outside. The flashes lent color to the tops of the cars and trucks and frightened the rats caught in the light into freezing.
That mess beyond the wall gave Orm’s Toother a hunting ground. With Orm on his back, the nanodog scrambled through, leaving bits of fur caught on the jagged edges of the hole.
Two of the foot-soldiers climbed through after them to investigate. They came back with a report of a waterfall pouring past the building’s edge where the train engine had rammed its nose through. Rainwater from the storm. The beasters had washed up in a pool of the run-off.
The thought of getting a bath vied with a fear that something might pounce and shove her into space. What was life without risk? Risk was the spice of life nowadays. Maybe she’d try it out, if others went too.
They lit a campfire using splinters of wood, cotton clothes, and other unknown objects as tinder. She wasn’t asking what they were. Bone didn’t burn well, thank god. Was it immoral to use it if it did? Philosophy wasn’t her area of expertise. She figured not. With all the plastic and synthetic about, no one was judging what campfires were made of.
Besides… she held out her hands to the warmth, inhaled the scented smoke… it felt good to sit and watch the flames. Cyn grinned to herself. Maybe civilization was burning things? The right things.
Rutger rested a boot on a sturdy brown suitcase and overlooked the lounging group. Only Orm and one winged guard were missing.
He looked more like the leader than what he truly was—the outnumbered representative of another tribe. His horns were twice as wide as his head, and as grand as a twirling ballerina. Seen this close, the blueness on the horns seemed to vibrate the air about them. Specks drifted outward, only to be extinguished as if they were embers dying in the cool air.
She wanted to reach out and touch them, to see if her eyes lied.
God-monster they called him. She could understand why. He had the look of a ruler or a god and, when seen from the right angle, the look of something beyond reality.
“My tribe is gathered beside an edge of a scraper where our quarter looks over an old game reserve. They should remain there for a month. Nature refreshes the spirit, and the view is spectacular.”
That had resembled a tour guide’s summary, though he possessed a deep, sexy, and cultured voice. Listening to him was as potent as swigging whiskey, with the molten glow sinking through you like radioactive rain. Falling in love with a beaster’s voice seemed wrong. At Vargr’s enquiring quirk of brow, she only raised her own. According to him, she couldn’t or wouldn’t fuck another.
And really, Rutger seemed a dangerous man to be lusting after.
There were other priorities, such as making sure she was tested and found to be something beasters liked and did not want to kill. Being dead was not good. Her red nanites had better behave themselves for this biotechie with the blood skills… or whatever it was he did. If he was a he? Maybe there were more women among the Worshippers?
She’d had aspirations to go searching the bottom stories of the scrapers for evidence of her previous life, but everything was conspiring to say, hey, that’s fuckin’ dumb.
Maura, for starters, who’d said she knew Cyn. Even said only once, even if her name did not register, it was a potential clue. And the monsters out there were more real now she’d seen Toother. She’d need an elephant gun to take one of him out.
The Lure was also a problem she was not sure she could beat.
Yup. Her brain kept serving up roadblocks.
Maybe she’d been a bit crazier after fleeing the Ghoul Lords than she had thought? As long as these guys did not want to cast her out, she’d stick with them. Plus, Maura needed her, had sort of adopted her. Cyn blinked into the campfire. Correction, she herself was human. Really.
Never forget that. A little bit of nanomachine did not make her non-human.
A few screeches made everyone look up.
“Rats,” one of the guards muttered. “Toother.”
The squealing came from the other side of the partly demolished wall. It was so dark there that she could see nothing except some debris from the train and the tops of cars.
“How does a nanodog that size get enough food from rats?” She nodded toward the wall.
Vargr bit off a chunk of whatever meat they were frying, chewed, and swallowed. “Not sure. Not just cans of soup though. Toother might be feeding but Orm went scouting too. He heard something, sensed something. The man may not be a biotechie, but he has that weird biotechie sense.”
“What weird sense?” Cyn hunched forward to spear a piece of meat from the frypan with a fork. If it was rat, she was determined not going to think about it… much. She bit down. Tasted meaty. Tough, but it was certainly food. Her stomach grumbled, reminding her of the lack of anything healthy and green it’d been given for ages.
That game reserve Rutger mentioned would have land you could grow crops on—once the Ghoul Lords were gone. If they ever did leave. Apples, oranges, lettuce, broccoli. She’d never thought she’d fantasize about eating broccoli.
“Orm can feel electronics and shit. The biotechies do too, only better. It’s how they see the nanomachines in our blood. Or so I was told. He’s been helping Thadd figure out the weapons the ghoul guards use.”
“Oh?” She turned the bone in her hand, squinted. Rather big for rat. The damn things must be growing. Was it evolutionary or something else? “You mean the thing we w
ere shot at with the day you found me?” She recalled the bolts sizzling past.
“Yep. Those. Fuckin’ evil. The few we’ve captured have Chinese writing on them. Not alien. Those came from us.”
“That’s startling news.” Voice dripping cultured honey, Rutger turned from where he’d been staring toward the source of the noises. He stepped over the suitcase and sat beside her on a cement block, gingerly, as if worried it’d crack under his weight.
Curiously, she heard and saw part of it crumble, the dust and pieces rolling out from under him. Dayum. Weightwatchers would love to sign him up.
He was on one side of her, and she had Vargr on the other. Sandwiched between them, she really felt tiny. It was strangely delicious. Her breath was sucked away. Whoah.
A little trapped, squeezed between two men, two beasters, she swiveled her gaze left, then right.
Breathing optional. With her eyes stuck wide, she waited for him to speak.
“Do you think their weapons are ours then?”
Rutger had spoken, again.
She looked down. His boots had skulls on them too. A match with hers.
“That’s the general thought.” Vargr waved his food toward Rutger as punctuation. “Gotta admire those GLs for taking up our stuff and using it against us. The Chinese must’ve brought those out as a last hope in the war.”
“Yeah.” Rutger frowned. “So we can adapt them too? Use them?”
“That’s the notion. Fucking good if we can. The battery packs run on something like lithium, but they go forever.”
“Huh. Has anyone tried drones since the war petered out?”
“No. You mean stick them together? Fire on them without us being there? Missiles would be better.” Vargr sounded wistful. “Drones and guns though, we could do that if the weight to power ratio was—”
Vargr was cut off by a crack and rumble as Toother burst through a gap with Orm still riding him and ducking as he leaped. More of the wall crumbled. After a quick wriggly shake, the nanodog leaped over the new rubble, landing on his forepaws and trotting toward them. In his mouth he carried some multi-legged creature that wriggled.
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