Cut Off

by Robertson, Edward W.

  Ness glanced over. "Like what?"

  "Like...people. Ones I knew before. I'm not alone in that box, man. We have to get out of here."

  "This is what you signed up for."

  "I don't remember signing a contract to be incarcerated in a diaper. It smells like a trout's vagina in there!"

  Ness didn't bother to hide his irritation. "Calm down and get your head on straight—or settle in for a long stay."

  Sprite jerked his head back as if Ness had stabbed him. "What are you saying?"

  Ness lowered his voice until it was hardly audible over the splash of the showers. "We've got a job to do. When the time comes, we won't have a spare hand to carry dead weight."

  The look in Sprite's eyes deepened. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

  "Real simple: hang on."

  They were changed into fresh diapers and ushered back to their boxes. Some time later, Ness was given more water and sludge. During what felt like the same day, he was removed for a thorough examination, then brought back to his fleshy cell. Hours slunk past one after another until he was fed again, then showered again. A few hours later, the lid of his box lifted, waking him from a light sleep. He stood and held his arms from his side, waiting for the alien to lift him out into the dim room. Instead, it began to sign to him.

  "Sebastian!" he gestured.

  Sebastian spread his tentacles, pleased. "Did you worry?"

  "Only that you'd finish the job without me."

  He tapped his claws together. "Let us get Sprite."

  It crossed Ness' mind to lie—to tell Sebastian that Sprite had been carried away, or that he'd gotten sick or died—but his inside star glared with displeasure. He pointed out Sprite's box and Sebastian coaxed it open with three quick taps. Sprite grunted as he was lifted from the darkness.

  His jaw dropped. "We're out of here?"

  Ness raised his finger to his lips. "Expect we've got some business first."

  "Must move quickly," Sebastian motioned. "Use only if necessary."

  He handed them both a laser, then scurried to the door and waved it open. Ness and Sprite followed him into the artificial hallway. Sebastian hurried along, entering the second door they came to. He stopped at the base of a spiral ramp. "Stay here."

  Ness nodded and repeated this to Sprite. Sebastian unholstered a stunner and moved up the ramp, disappearing from sight. He returned less than a minute later and Ness followed him upstairs, struck by a sense of deja vu as he took in the sight of a control room overlooking a dark jungle, with an unconscious alien sprawled on the floor.

  "Stealing their data?" Ness signed.

  Sebastian set his pad beside one of the alien computers and hunched over. "Yes stealing."

  "You're only finding time for this now?"

  "Not trusted. Have to steal."

  Ness frowned. "Why wouldn't they trust you? Didn't you tell them we were your slaves?"

  Sebastian's gestures grew clipped as he worked on his pad. "Yes but they doubt. Some days earlier, was incursion. Humans. The Swimmer we met in the tunnel signaled ahead. That is why they waited for us above."

  Ness quit blathering at him to let him do his thing. Five minutes later, Sebastian's control-tentacles went still, then exploded into motion.

  He stiffened and turned to Ness, limbs curling toward his body in the gravest concern. "The meaning of this place is to finish the start. To bring a second virus to your humans."

  "A second virus?" Ness signed. "A new one?"

  "A second virus to finish the first."

  Ness' hands dangled from his wrists as he fought to process this. "To kill us? Does it work?"

  Sebastian nodded. "It has worked for three years. But what doesn't work is transmission. How to spread it everywhere when humans are so thin?"

  The answer appeared in Ness' mind as if it had been waiting for this moment. "Trade."

  "Nurture the branches and the vines until humans are once more all of the same forest. Then a single fire burns the whole."

  Ness gestured to the jungle beyond the window. "And they're using this as the hub. To span the Pacific."

  "Yes but more." Sebastian pointed through the window to the dark trees. "The virus is finished, but the reason they wait is that this lab seeks to do more. To embed the virus in the plants. So that it is spread always even if connections of trade collapse."

  "More than that! If it's in our food supplies, we'll actively be searching for it."

  Ness' head swam. Since Shawn's death, he hadn't particularly cared about the fate of the survivors. But perhaps that was because his interest hadn't been tested. He'd been operating under the assumption that, with the Panhandler burnt out, and the invasion stymied, things had entered a new equilibrium. You might have the odd tribal struggle here and there, but nothing that could once more put the whole species at risk.

  Apparently that was all it took to wake his long-slumbering humanity.

  "Can we stop it?" he signed.

  "I may have a way," Sebastian replied. "Must be fast. Even if, this night could be our final."

  "Humanity might be a sack of dirty..." Ness searched for the right sign, but he'd forgotten what they'd decided on. "Anuses. Who get what they deserve. But seeding Earth's plant life with death is against every step of the Way."

  Sebastian did his best to grin, but without proper lips, and with hard plates instead of teeth, the expression was a ghastly snarl. "Then I shut down their system—and we bring death here instead."

  He turned back to the computers, tentacle tips flying. Images spun across the screens.

  "Get ready for battle," Ness said out loud.

  Sprite glanced back at the exit to the ramp. "They're onto us?"

  "Not yet. Which means we better kill a hell of a lot of them before they get wise."

  His face tensed. "You figured out what's going on here."

  "It's as bad as bad gets. All that wheeling and dealing in Asia wasn't about the aliens feeding themselves or getting rich. It was about growing a produce network among the survivors, then seeding the produce with the new virus they've been sitting on."

  Sprite blinked, laughing stupidly. "That is nasty business. Are we sure these guys aren't Romulans?"

  Minutes later, with Sebastian still working on the system, Ness cocked his head at a high-pitched whine. At first he thought it was coming from the computers, but the sound drew him to the window. He glanced over his shoulder. Sebastian was ensconced in his work. The whine intensified rapidly. Before Ness could speak up, a fiery glow sparked from the jungle, outlining a jet. Sebastian whirled. The vehicle soared into the night.

  "Was that you?" Ness signed.

  "No!" Sebastian's sense-pods swiveled frantically, then swung to point at the alien on the floor.

  It bolted upright, exposing a pad glowing in its tentacles. Sebastian galloped toward it, knocking it down and signing at it a mile a minute. It didn't move, either to reply or to act. Sebastian produced a pistol and sliced off the clawed limb holding the pad. The alien scrabbled back, drawing its stump to its chest, tentacles thrashing. Sebastian gestured more and it stilled itself except for a few minor twitches, then began to reply.

  "I'm getting so sick of asking this," Sprite said, "but what is going on?"

  "Nothing good. Watch the ramp."

  Sprite nodded and moved to the exit through the floor, covering it with his pistol. Sebastian and the alien continued to converse. Without warning, Sebastian leveled his gun at the Swimmer's head, claws wide with rage.

  "It launched the jet," Ness signed. "Didn't it?"

  Sebastian's pincers moved toward the triggers of his laser. "The jet brings the virus with it. It goes to New York—and it is too late to stop."

  25

  The canoe skimmed over the water like a four-oared dragonfly. Maui shrank behind them with alarming speed. Ahead, the Big Island resolved from the blue haze, but not as quickly as the other island seemed to fade. Tristan often had to slow her paddling to match the others, w
ho weren't as proficient as she had become. Morning sunlight glanced from the waves, which were so blue they looked like you ought to be able to mix them with tequila and serve them with a pineapple wedge.

  "What do you keep looking back for?" Alden said. "Did we leave the oven on?"

  "Shut up," she smiled.

  The waves climbed, pitching the canoe up and down. Alden returned his attention to rowing, but the outrigger was keeping them steady. The waters calmed halfway to the isthmus extending from the northwest side of the island of Hawaii. Another few miles and Tristan was further from Maui than she'd been since arriving on it. She quit looking behind her and began to watch the shore, wary for signs of life, assessing the lands. The southern exposure was brown and spotted with shrubs. She steered them to the north side, which was as vividly green as Hana. A high, mountainous ridge created a spine into the body of the island.

  The isthmus was speckled with houses. A highway banded it roughly two miles in from the coastline. Small towns sprouted from the road. She had no interest in settling there, but it could be useful for foraging.

  The further they paddled, the greener the highlands got. The coast gentled out, the old farms half colonized by saplings and shrubs. Within a matter of a mile, all the homes disappeared. The coast climbed until steep bluffs hung over grassy beaches no more than twenty feet deep. Waterfalls spilled down the forested bluffs straight into the sea. Mists gathered against the mountains.

  "Is that as inaccessible as it looks?" Ke said.

  "That cuts both ways," Tristan said. "No beach access."

  "You mean we may have to walk a mile to take a vacation?"

  Tristan pulled her paddle from the water and glanced between Alden and Robi. "What do you two say?"

  "It looks like Up," Alden said. "Pretty fucking cool."

  Tristan quashed the urge to scold him for his language. Robi eyed the verdant cliffs. "It looks good. But who says we have to settle for the first warm body we find?"

  Tristan laughed and resumed paddling. Less than three miles later, a valley sliced through the cliffs like it had been hacked out by a cleaver. The opening was a quarter mile across and flanked by high walls. A stream gushed across the beach.

  Robi half stood in the canoe, rocking it. "I want that."

  "Bet you're not the first," Ke muttered.

  Tristan quit paddling and got out binoculars. "Count two sheds. Make that three. No smoke. No fishing nets that I can see. Looks uninhabited."

  "Do you see the way this valley is shaped? The moment it rains, we'll be marching all the animals to the canoe two by two."

  "The floods can't be that bad. Look how old some of the trees are."

  He had a long look through his binoculars. "Want to check it out?"

  Tristan guided them to the edge of the valley, pushing the canoe through the surf to a pebbly beach. They dragged it clear of the water.

  "Pop quiz," she said. "How should we approach this?"

  Alden thumbed his chin. "Two cover from shore while two explore?"

  "Sounds good. What if we see anyone?"

  "No need for a fight." He checked the safety on his pistol. "If they seem friendly, we can ask them about the area, what land they've claimed, and be on our way. If they're not friendly, we skip the questions and go straight to the leaving."

  Tristan nodded. "I'll go with the advance team. Who's my partner?"

  "Me," Robi said. Ke paused, then nodded.

  Ke and Alden set up behind a spur of rock, bracing their rifles across the broken black stone. Tristan walked forward, Robi at her side, a pistol in hand. Wind stirred the grass bordering the black sand. A line of palms and koa fronted the beach, quitting eighty feet into the valley in favor of tall grass and shrubs. The first shack sat five hundred feet from the valley wall. Halfway to it, Tristan stopped to beckon Ke and Alden into better firing positions. They jogged into the trees, found an open field of fire between themselves and the shack, and knelt down to cover it.

  Tristan advanced slowly. The shack was dingy, hardly fifteen feet to a side, with shaggy grass clogging the clearing that had once been maintained around it. No obvious cultivation. She whistled, waited, then advanced. It was as empty as she'd suspected. So were the two others by the stream running down the far side of the beach. Following it from the beach, she discovered it wasn't grass carpeting the center of the valley. It was a taro field.

  As the day progressed, clouds pushed in from the north. Mist settled over the valley, which had a tumbling waterfall between two bluffs, trails leading into the hills to right and left, and a rampart of forested earth at its rear. Food, water, escape routes, sea access, and a defensive overlook: it was hard to believe the valley was uninhabited. Yet their search revealed no one.

  As sunset neared, Tristan and Alden went back to the canoe while Robi and Ke headed to the shacks near the stream to stomp down some grass in preparation for their bedding. The surf washed up the shore, rattling pebbles over each other.

  "This place is crazy," Alden said, gazing over his shoulder at the V-shaped valley. "It's got everything, doesn't it?"

  "Except for a bath."

  "We've got a stream, don't we?"

  "I meant a hot bath."

  He grinned, stepping over a slew of grapefruit-sized rocks. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you sooner."

  Tristan could just make out the blue shape of Maui miles and miles across the sea. "We couldn't have known."

  "You did."

  "None of this might have happened if I hadn't started fucking around with the aliens. That's what broke everything."

  "And now we're here," he said, jogging up the hump of land at the side of the cliffs and spreading his arms to take in the valley. "No aliens. No people. Just us."

  She laughed wryly. "Maybe I knew what I was doing after all."

  They launched the canoe and brought it along the shore to the shacks. In the last of the light, they dragged up tarps and blankets to spread in the flattened grass, then brought up the food and water. They ate hungrily, then fell dead asleep, exhausted by the day of travel.

  In the morning, they wandered around on their own for a while, exploring, then convened in the canoe to do some recon further down the shore. Two or three miles past it, an even bigger valley gaped from the mountains. The beach was deserted, but back in the heights, the land was terraced, and the vegetation looked a little too neat to be natural. They watched it for a while, and then, having spied houses on the eastern bluffs, parked the canoe and hiked inland, finding a proper road up to the top. As soon as the land plateaued, mansions appeared.

  "Let's move off the road," Ke said.

  Tristan touched the strap of her rifle. "See something?"

  He pointed through the shade of the trees lining the road. Where the road curved, a car rested lengthwise across the lanes. They left the pavement to walk through the young trees spurting from the grass. At the bend, three more cars were piled behind the first, charred black, tires melted to the ground, then cracked by sun and air. The neighborhood beyond them was burnt, too, but thick grass and brush grew around the blackened splinters of the trees.

  "Old fight," Robi declared. "Doesn't look like the winner stuck around."

  Beyond, a small town nestled in the hills overlooking the sea. All the obvious things had been taken, but the art gallery/supply store had nails in quantity, and by raiding the garages and sheds of the mansions, they were able to round up shovels, hoes, hammers, saws, screwdrivers, and even a few blue tubes of Liquid Nails; they had come here to explore, not to scavenge, but there was no sense turning down good tools. They stacked their supplies into two wheelbarrows, extremely useful objects in their own right, and carted them back down the road to the canoe.

  After some debate, they decided to leave one shack intact and dismantle the other two to build a new structure in the jungle on the rampart at the back of the valley. Clearing a spot in the forest was a bitch, and required heading back to the town for axes and heavy-duty hedge trim
mers. Within two days, they had the brush torn up and piled to the side. As Tristan drew up architectural plans, the others split time trimming the brush into kindling and firewood, setting up water filters, planting melons and squash, and scouting the hillsides and buttes, both for potential crow's nest locations, and for wild fruit and nuts.

  Tristan decided to elevate the house a good foot off the ground to protect it from floods and keep it cool. Leaving the walls open would cut down on work and materials; netting or curtains would keep out the bugs. Setting the posts and getting them reasonably plumb proved so difficult she dispatched Alden and Ke to check the town for sacks of concrete. While they were out, she enlisted Robi's help to brace the boards while she hammered in cross pieces and flooring. By the time the men came back, emptyhanded, the frame was stable enough to support itself.

  Once that was in place, and with three helpers to boss around, the rest of the structure went fast. They rigged a roof of tarps and augmented it with a woven mat of strong, slender leaves, weighting the edges of it all with metal strips. Halfway through, Tristan dumped a bucket of water over it to confirm it was waterproof. She wasn't certain it would survive the worst storms, but it was easily replaceable, and the site was well protected by the jungle canopy.

  With the last length of weaving tied down, Ke stepped back and brushed off his hands. "Sure it's not gonna crush us in our sleep?"

  Tristan shrugged. "You can sleep in the dirt if you'd prefer."

  He narrowed his eyes. "I think I'll risk the crushing."

  In celebration, they threw themselves a feast. This wasn't particularly different from any of their other meals, except Tristan didn't let herself feel guilty for digging into the macadamia nuts. She spent the next two days exploring, found a second outrigger, and paddled it back to the beach.

  By chance, Ke was there to watch her come in, standing shin-deep in the stream. "What've you got there?"

  "A war canoe, obviously."

  He grinned. "Ready to unite the islands, Kamehameha?"

  "Kam-a-what-a?"

  Ke's face darkened with mock disappointment. "You know your shit when it comes to putting up a house or taking down a squid. But you got a lot to learn about island history."