by Bev Prescott
Crouching low, she moved fast, weaving from one tree to the next. Hiding behind a large apple tree about seven meters from the back of the barn, she watched her enemies. Then a third weapon revealed itself: the rope ladder she used to play on as a child! It hung down from the barn’s second-story loft window. With Mags in front of the barn and Super-ghoul-man inside, a plan coalesced in her mind. It should work—providing she could get to her fourth weapon, hidden behind a trapdoor in the barn loft.
Slowly and deliberately, she pulled her hammer from its baldric. Holding it ready to strike, she sprinted to the back of the barn and scrambled up the ladder as quietly as she could. She peered inside before climbing through the window. Concentrating on sustaining her stealth, she crawled to the trapdoor in the corner and listened.
“Wait ’til you see this bike, Mags,” Super-ghoul-man said in a loud voice.
Sharon turned the brass ring on the trapdoor and opened it. Inside, her father’s bolt-action hunting rifle stood propped against the wall of the hidden space. After the war of the Second Crusade, no businesses remained that manufactured cartridges. People hoarded the ones that were left until they were all gone. For posterity, her father had saved two cartridges. He’d loaded one in the chamber and the other in the magazine. Chance and a little luck, not bullets, dictated whether the rifle would still fire after all these years. Would the ammo still be good? Would the firing mechanism work? Silently, Sharon laid her hammer down and picked up the rifle. The safety was on; she silently flicked the lever to off. She set the stock against her shoulder and sighted down the barrel from the loft.
Super-ghoul-man pawed at her solar-bike, pressing his forefinger to the ignition button. “We’re going to need a fingerprint to get her started.”
“Thanks for the info, Einstein. I’ll check out back,” Mags’s voice came through the open space. “Come on.”
Inu’s pleading voice followed. “Please.”
Sharon waited a beat for the woman to step away. “Hey, asshole,” she whispered and raised the rifle.
Super-ghoul-man’s head snapped up. His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth.
“Make a sound, and I’ll put you down.” She took a quick glance to locate her hammer. Poised on the floor at her knee, it was her backup should the rifle fail.
He squinted at the open door and started to say something.
“You heard what I said.” Sharon moved her finger to the trigger. “You’re going to get the hell out of my barn and off of my property.”
“You think?” His lips turned up into a sneer. “I’m pretty sure I can take you, and your goddamned rusty gun. Mags can have what’s left.” He started toward the ladder.
Sharon backed away from the edge, tucking her hammer under some moldy straw.
As he reached the top of the ladder, Super-ghoul-man exploded into the space of the loft. His expression wrapped his face in a mask of cavalier indifference to the gun barrel pointed at his chest. “That fucking thing’s empty. Who do you think you’re kidding?”
“You and Mags are going to leave this place—and stay away.” Sharon noticed a tremor of hesitation in Super-ghoul-man. “If you don’t, I’ll kill you both.”
Standing at the edge of the loft about a couple of meters from the barrel, he cocked his head to the side. “Do I look stupid?”
“Do you want an answer? I’m the one holding the gun.”
“Maybe the laugh’s on you.” He puffed out his chest to look bigger. “You don’t have any bullets in that piece of shit.”
“You could bet on that.” Sharon smiled. “I wouldn’t.”
Super-ghoul-man’s eyes narrowed. “I’m done fucking with you.” He lunged at her.
She squeezed the trigger.
A tremendous bang reverberated around the walls as his body flew back over the edge of the loft. Sulfur mingled with the barn’s musty scent. Her ears rang in the wake of the shot.
“You forgot your Superman cape, pal.” Sharon turned as Mags appeared in the loft’s window.
“What have you done?” she screamed, enraged and terrified as she advanced on Sharon with her knife drawn.
Sharon pulled the bolt back and then shoved it forward, shucking the spent brass cartridge and loading the last from the magazine. She raised the rifle. Click.
Mags cackled.
Sharon gripped the stock to swing the gun at her.
Mags kicked it from Sharon’s hands. “You stupid bitch.”
Sharon fumbled for her hammer.
Mags swung the knife. Sharon recoiled, but got a nick to her chin.
She aimed a kick at Mags’ knee.
As Mags stumbled, Sharon grabbed for her hammer. Just as her fingertips touched its smooth handle, Mags’ heavy boot slammed down on her hand. Recoiling in pain, she rolled out of the way of the knife and clambered out of the window.
Screeching like an angry animal, Mags followed.
With no hammer or rifle to defend herself, Sharon ran hard for the drainage pond that was filled with decades of contaminated runoff. It presented itself as a fifth weapon.
“You’re going to suffer,” Mags rasped heavily, too close behind her.
The SComCat in Sharon’s jacket rang and vibrated against her. “No.” She ran harder. “No, no, no.”
Mags got closer with each footfall.
Not now, Dr. Ryan. Sharon raced through pain and fear. Just give me a few more minutes? Please. She stumbled when Mags jabbed the knife into the bottom of her jacket. Twisting around, she grabbed Mags’s arm.
Mags reared her head and slammed it into Sharon’s forehead.
“Ugh . . .” Sharon grunted at the sharp sting of skull on skull. Ignoring the pain, she returned the head-butt.
The knife dropped from Mags’s hand and she stumbled.
Sharon bolted toward the pond, hidden just below a small cliff of granite boulders. Its funky, poisonous water killed anything desperate enough to touch it.
Mags followed.
Agonizing ringing from the SComCat drowned the ringing in her ears from the gunshot.
In the dusky light, Sharon could barely see the rope she used to swing from as a kid, into the pond before it got contaminated. Still running, she reached for the rope and launched herself over the toxic water. The rope held, but the SComCat slipped from her pocket. A splash enveloped it.
It sank.
Sharon slammed onto the bank at the far edge of the pond, which splashed deadly liquid over her boots. She scrambled up the bank and kicked them off. A gust of wind swept away the yellowed paper with Dr. Ryan’s contact number she’d tucked into her boot earlier, then dropped it into the murk with the SComCat. “No!” Helpless to reach it, she watched it dissolve into slime.
Mags tumbled over the cliff and into the water. A blood-curdling scream exploded from her as she thrashed to free herself from the lethal brew. “He knows you’re here, you bitch.” A gurgling came from her throat. She splashed onto her back, clawing at her face. “He—knows.” Her arms and legs twitched before her body slipped below the gloomy surface.
Chapter 4
“Bastard weighs a ton.” Sitting at the water’s edge with her legs bent and feet planted at the back of the corpse, Sharon summoned her dwindling energy and kicked. The body of Super-ghoul-man rolled and plopped with a splash into the pond’s noxious water. As she scrambled to her feet, she put her sleeve over her mouth and nose to avoid breathing in the unearthly sweet scent of the vaporous splatter.
Oblique light from Inu’s flashlight illuminated the gloomy scene.
“There won’t be anything left but bones in a few days.” She broke off a long knotweed cane, and pushed the floating mass toward the deeper middle. It would sink as soon as water displaced the air in its lungs. “It’s been a terrible day.” She tossed the bamboo-like cane into the water.
From his perch at the top of the rocky ledge, Inu drew a line of light from the watery gore to Sharon.
She squinted up at him. “You’re blinding me w
ith that.” The light in her eyes amplified her persistent headache.
He dropped his hand to his side. Moonlight over his shoulder betrayed a veneer of curious disgust on his face.
“I didn’t ask for this.” She gestured at the lifeless man beginning to slip below the surface of her pond. “I know it’s awful, but it’s not safe to bury a body. I’m sure as hell not going to burn it. I might as well send invitations to all the Banditti within a hundred kilometers. Plus, he’s a murderous thief. He doesn’t get to be buried with my family.”
His eyes darted from hers as if trying to hide something he didn’t want to reveal at the mention of thieves.
“Banditti, I mean. I won’t bury Banditti next to my family.” She thoughtfully adjusted her hammer, tucked in its baldric . The irony was that so much of what she and her brothers had used to build the underground farm came from supplies they stole from the government. “I know a lot of good people who had to steal in order to stay alive. Banditti hurt people for the sake of hurting. And for greed. There’s a difference.”
The boy stood rigid in his cocoon of silence. It spoke volumes she wished she could decipher.
“I would’ve preferred they just left.” A sudden urge to explain her actions pushed against her own secrets, better left untold. “They asked for what they got.” She clambered to her feet and brushed dirt from her backside. “I had no choice. I warned them, but they wouldn’t listen. They’d have cut off both our hands to steal my bike. A print is all they need, even if it’s from a severed hand.”
The damned jacket with the flag of the United States patch he refused to part with was draped down the length of his skinny torso. Cloaked in the failings of grownups, Inu likely had been chased into adulthood before ever getting to be a child. She had noticed the highs and lows of his untold story in the glint of his dark eyes.
“You okay?”
“Bitte.” Inu wiped at blood still oozing from the cut on his wrist.
“We’ll clean and bandage that when we get back to my house. I can give you a week’s worth of food and water. Then I’m afraid we’re going to have to part ways.” Sharon picked up the makeshift litter she’d used to drag Super-ghoul-man’s body from the barn and started up the rocky slope. “Without the SComCat, Dr. Ryan can’t call me. And without his number, I can’t call him.” She reached the top of the bank. “So—I’m going to Chicago to find Eve myself.”
Inu stretched out his small hand.
“Dammit, kid, I’m going alone.”
Inu’s outstretched fingers trembled, but the determination on his face did not waver. He gripped her upper arm.
She regarded the stoic boy who had nowhere to go. A week’s worth of food and water was only a week’s worth of food and water. He’d run out. Then what? Maybe he was hers to keep until she found someone else, better suited to care for a child. “You think you can help me?”
Very slowly, very slightly, the boy nodded once.
“All right. You better keep pulling your weight.”
The trace of a smile passed over Inu’s face.
“If we hurry, we’ll make it to Pennsylvania by morning.” With the litter in one hand, she wrapped the other around his. Her thumb brushed over the crusty dried blood from where Mags had cut him. Well, they were united in blood now. “Once I find Eve, we’ll find your family.” She scrambled to the top of the ledge with the litter banging over the rocks. “You’ll have to keep up, because Eve is my first objective.” She let go of his hand and stepped around him, setting a pace too fast for his short legs.
He tugged at the back of her jacket. “Please.”
She wheeled around. “And stop saying please. Not in English or any other language. Just stop. No more. Okay?”
The spirited boy stood his ground with her towering over him. His eyes locked with hers. Not in the way of David taking on Goliath, but more like a valiant warrior extending an olive branch. Literally, the leafy top of a branch that drooped from his hand.
“I see. You were falling behind because you were covering up the tracks of the litter with the branch.” An impulse to wrap him up in her arms rattled her. She blinked and closed the distance between them. Placing her fingertips beneath his chin and lifting his eyes to hers, she said, “Good thinking, kid. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ll try to slow down. But not much. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover by morning.”
He pressed a fist to his lips.
In the dull light Sharon couldn’t tell whether he was stifling a cry or his propensity to speak the only word he either knew or was willing to share. She pulled his fist from his face. “Don’t cry. You can say whatever you want to say. Or go ahead and cry. Whatever. Do what you’ve got to do. Just keep up.” Gripping the litter in her other hand, she pivoted and went on. The moon glow was enough to see by, and she followed the litter’s drag marks back to the farmyard.
Inu clomped close behind, brushing away their tracks.
As Sharon topped the rise, silhouettes of her small home, the barn, and the Banditti van came into view. Without a fingerprint to start its engine, the van wasn’t going anywhere. Based on Mags’s last words, she suspected someone would be coming for it, and her. Desperation to find Eve wasn’t the only good reason to set off before daybreak.
Sharon took the flashlight from Inu and flipped the beam around the van’s dark interior. Clutter she couldn’t identify was heaped in the space behind the two bucket seats and operating controls. “While I get my bike, you see if there’s anything of value we should take with us. Things like food, tools, or electronics.” She handed him the flashlight. “Be quick. My bike is packed, and we need to get out of here before more Banditti come.”
Not wasting time, he yanked the van door open and disappeared into its messy interior. His beam of light bounced around in a thorough search for things to scavenge.
Sharon strode to the open barn.
Its familiar musty scent triggered a chain of memories of her family and what they’d built together. The last time she’d been away from the farm overnight her parents were still alive. While the world came apart at the seams, the sanctuary of the farm protected her and Eve. She ached at the thought of leaving it. But that ache didn’t compare to the searing hole cut through the middle of her gut when the soldiers had taken Eve.
The Banditti would likely trash the place while she was gone. But they wouldn’t be able to touch her underground paradise of food and water. Thanks to Jon’s brilliance in designing the farm’s technology, the place could run all on its own, undetectable, for months. The farm, like Eve, tethered Sharon to existence. Every speck of soil, the trees, and the plants—they all formed the building blocks of her identity. She lived because the farm lived. Her family was buried here. Every single one. Wherever her travels took her, the farm’s tether would keep her. “I’ll be home soon,” she said into the stillness of the barn.
Her midnight-blue bike sat poised, ready. In the frenzied aftermath of her battle with Mags, she’d packed a large backpack and secured it in the sidecar. The pack’s contents included several weeks’ worth of dried food, her satchel containing the seven remaining apples, a survival kit, an emergency supply of Eve’s medicine, and her mother’s treasured sketchbook. Stored in the grow room underground, Dr. Ryan’s titanium box and its life-saving medicines would be safe until she could return it to him. Sharon popped open the fully charged solar dome that enclosed the bike’s two seats and sidecar.
She slipped on the weightless black Kevlene helmet decorated with a sunflower, and adjusted the flexible protective material snug to her head. Given the elasticity of Kevlene, the second helmet secured to the passenger seat that Eve always wore would work for Inu. The ride would be long. If he got fidgety, she’d let him draw on blank pages in her mother’s sketchbook. Maybe he’d even reveal something about himself in the things he left on the pages.
To feel her wife’s presence, Sharon caressed the softness of Eve’s scarf tied around her neck. She slid onto the driver’s s
eat, snapped the helmet strap closed, and pressed her forefinger over the ignition button. The bike’s quiet motor purred to life. Inside the tight space of the barn, she opted to use the bike’s manual rather than voice controls. Pulling back the hover-throttle, she coaxed the bike from the ground. Dust and old hay that had settled on the floor boards blew out from underneath the rotating blades at the bottom of the bike. She eased the bike forward through the dusty storm and out of the barn.
Inu stood waiting with a bulging duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
“Nice haul,” she said. “Put your bag in the sidecar with my pack. Then go shut the barn door and hop onto the seat behind me.”
Inu plopped the duffel into the sidecar. He ran to the door, heaved it closed, and scrambled on behind her.
Sharon tapped her head. “Seat belt and helmet.” She pulled the dome over them and latched it shut, watching him fumble with the helmet. Even though Inu created more worry for her, it did feel good not to be alone. Plus, she liked the clever and tough kid.
He snapped the strap closed and smiled.
“Good man.” She moved the hover-throttle to the maximum height position. The bike rose thirty meters above the ground. Sharon swiveled the bike’s search beams downward and gave her farm a last look. The trees cast shadows that reminded her of an army at the ready to protect her home. Below, in the tangle of dark woody profiles, stood her remarkable life-giving apple tree. “Keep standing, my friend,” she said under her breath. “We’ll be home soon.” She glanced in the rearview mirror at Inu. “Ready?”
The boy gripped the arms of his seat and nodded. His helmeted head swiveled from side to side, taking in the view as the bike rose still higher.
“Settle in. We have about nine hundred and twenty kilometers to go. We’ll stop for the day somewhere around State College.” She switched from the search beams to infrared, then activated the global positioning system and the cabin environmental sensors. “We should be able to make it in a little less than six hours.” Her eyes went to the solar battery gauge. “The bike can fly seven in the dark before we need to recharge.” She tipped the steering grips in the direction of the dirt road and throttled up the engine to full speed at one hundred and sixty kilometers per hour. According to the bike’s instruments and force of acceleration against their bodies, it took a mere eight seconds for the engine to comply. Using the object-sensors, she could fly without lights and not worry about crashing into things she couldn’t see.