Doom Days

by Beaman, Sara

  After she could see again, Veneranda moved quickly down the hall. The doors were all the same: white painted metal with a weird little grid of numbers set next to each. She had Sutera’s directions; she found the fifth door on the right and began pushing the numbers. She made a mistake once, perhaps hit the wrong button or moved too fast. A light above the grid flashed red. She tried again, and this time succeeded: the light changed to green and there was an audible click from inside the door.

  She pulled the handle down and moved inside, finding herself once again in dimness. The space was cramped, and smelled of metal and ozone. Constellations of green and red lights blinked at her from rows of metal railings that ran floor to ceiling - she assumed they were what Sutera had referred to as ‘racks.’

  Veneranda let the door swing shut behind her. Now in darkness, she yanked a shake-to-charge torch from her belt pouch. She gave the torch its obligatory charging shakes, then flipped it on. The light was not powerful, but it let her fumble her way down the row of metal columns to the end. She examined the rack. There were large, rectangular boxes supported by the columns, bolted in and arranged like shelves. All of them had wires emerging from square sockets in their fronts, most of which were coated in blue plastic.

  She bent down and set her torch on the ground, then felt behind the lowest box. Her fingers traced the outline of the empty ports, brushing over those that had wires plugged into them, trying hard not to disturb them. Finally she found the wire Sutera had indicated. She gave it a tug, but it refused to come free. Frowning, she felt around the spot where it entered the box - there was a plastic tab there. She pushed it down and the wire slid free. Tugging it a bit, she found it had some slack, and seemed to be attached to another box, farther up on the rack. With a shrug, she slipped Sutera’s device under the rack and plugged it in. The wire made a satisfying click as she slipped it into the hole in the box’s side.

  Then she was out, moving swiftly. As she reached the door a wailing siren, like the airhorns the town used to signal danger, began somewhere in the night beyond. Veneranda froze momentarily, then realized it must be something to do with Sutera’s distraction. She shoved free of the building as more sirens joined the first.

  She was off, running swift and silent through the night, toward the southern breach and freedom. Twice she had to duck into cover, avoiding groups of hurrying guards. That was the problem with running: your vision tunneled, you missed things. A man leaped over her as she huddled under an overhanging magnolia, invisible amongst the large roots. When he and his fellows were gone, back toward the scene of her crime, she moved again.

  She was at the breach, scrambling up a pile of broken concrete bits, when a shadow fell across her. She nearly tumbled backward, scrambling to unsling her rifle, before she saw his face. Sutera. He looked uninjured.

  “It’s done?” The first thing out of his mouth. He sounded calm. Who had screamed if he hadn’t?

  “Yea, I plugged it in like you said, and-”

  “Good. That’s good. Now all there is to do is wait. The boys back at Cheyenne will take it from here.” Sutera shifted. “You did well, Veneranda. Don’t suppose there’s any chance I could convince you to come back with me?”

  “Back to your government thing? No thanks. I got my life here.”

  “That’s unfortunate. You would’ve made a good agent.” Sutera sighed. “Damn waste.”

  She only barely caught the twitch of his hand toward his pistol. Veneranda tumbled backward without thinking, hitting the concrete hard. A piece of rebar scraped along her thigh. There was a deafening sound, and a searing pain lanced through her upper arm, near the shoulder. Now she was rolling, still without quite understanding. Now she was coming to her hands and knees and shoving herself away.

  Thought caught up to reaction, full realization of the events at hand. He was trying to kill her. Veneranda forced herself upright; she pushed forward, back into the University compound. The sound of another shot rang out over the sirens. A bullet hit the ground behind her. She ran.

  After a few hundred feet she realized she was in trouble. The sirens were still wailing, and there were sounds of commotion from the pathways on all sides. Desperately she flung herself toward a building that seemed reasonably intact. The door refused to open, and as she tried to force it there were sounds of movement from within. A muffled voice called out; she didn’t pause to try and hear what it said, but ducked away from the door and ran along the side of the building toward another. This one was a crumbling derelict, and she hid in the shadow of a wall for a moment to catch her breath and think.

  The pain from her left arm was bad, bad enough that all she wanted to do was fall over and sob, but the adrenaline kept her up. She couldn’t see much of the wound in the darkness, but there was blood all over her shirt and jacket. When she tried to get the arm to move the pain blasted through her mind like the shockwave of a bomb. She rolled onto the ground and vomited in a single huge heave.

  Her head cleared after a long moment. She felt cold, but clutched her jacket tighter with one arm and rose to her knees.

  Everyone on the Watch got some basic training in field medicine. She knew she had to stop the bleeding. Venerada pulled open her hip pouch and yanked out a small pair of scissors and a ball of cloth bandages. Getting out of her jacket was tricky, and she almost retched again as she peeled it away from her left arm. The scissors made a long strip from the cloth near the hem. She wrapped it onto her arm, up at the shoulder, tied a square knot and slipped the brass rod from her cleaning kit into the knot. She bit her lower lip and began twisting the rod.

  After a few moments of agony, she could think once more. She took the ball of bandages and wrapped as best she could around the hole in her bicep. The wound was no larger than one of those old coins she sometimes found in cash registers in shops she’d looted. Nickels. Blood made a small spot through the lower layers of the bandages, but she kept wrapping. Eventually the red spot failed to return.

  Veneranda stood up, pulling her coat over her good arm as best she could. Now she could hear more voices from the building she’d tried to enter.

  “...tried to get...didn’t answer when I asked...” a distant voice was saying. There was a rumbled response that she couldn’t make out. Then the sound of heavy footfalls headed in her direction. She had to move.

  Veneranda scrambled from the rumble and started to head west around the other side of the crumbling building. She hoped it would give her some cover. Almost immediately she had to duck behind a bush to avoid being spotted by a large group of men, most of whom were holding flashlights. She huddled low and tried not to breathe, trusting in the mottled gray and green camouflage of her jacket to protect her. The group passed her hiding place without so much as a glance.

  Veneranda forced herself to think, to remember the map Sutera had shown her. There were guard towers at semi-regular intervals around the University’s wall. On their way around the wall she’d seen a spot about a quarter of a mile away where the ground outside the wall rose abruptly. A drop from one of the walls, and from there to the ground below, would be possible in that area. With their attention turned inside the compound, some of the guards would be distracted. A tower might even be deserted.

  As Veneranda plunged back into the open path, a droplet of rain struck her forehead. By the time she reached the outer wall again a steady drizzle was falling, and there was a distant roll of thunder. A few hundred yards away loomed the spindly form of a watchtower, but up on the high platform she saw a shadow moving, stretching its arms. She slipped away as quietly as she could, trying the other direction.

  Two more towers and the rain was already worsening, becoming one of the driving downpours that sometimes washed over the area. Her shoulder ached so badly that she had to clench her jaw constantly to prevent grunts of pain as she moved. She had unslung her rifle, carrying it in one hand so that the strap would stop rubbing against the area.

  Pressing through the rain, she spotted anot
her watchtower. She ducked under the meager cover of an overhanging roof and watched the platform above. No shadow moved there, no blacker spot of night against the stormy darkness. She hesitated a long while, uncertain, afraid. The cold of the night pierced her soaked sweater and thin undershirt.

  Veneranda forced herself to move. She ran, quickly, to the ladder up to the tower and slung her rifle back over her shoulder. She gritted her teeth against the agony of the strap. Stupid. Should have slung it over the other shoulder. But she made herself grab the ladder with her good arm. She looped her hand around the back of it and leaned against the metal rungs, then began dragging herself upward.

  Her boots on the rungs made loud clangs as she slowly rose. She prayed the storm would cover her ascent, or that she’d be mistaken for the returning guard. She couldn’t stop now.

  She reached the top. The ladder entered the watchtower through an open trapdoor in its center. Laboriously she heaved herself up and onto the platform. She paused for breath, then rose, crossing the wooden planks to the side nearest the wall. The drop to the earthen wall below wasn’t far, no more than five feet, but she would have to jump from the railing of the tower to reach it. From there, the hill beyond was a gentle slope that she could manage if she rolled. The idea of rolling on her shoulder was horrifying, but it was the only way.

  Veneranda began to climb up onto the railing.

  She was jerked from behind, ripped off the railing. She screamed in pain as the strap dug into her shoulder. She fell hard onto the planks of the platform. There was a shape above her, reaching down, grabbing the front of her sweater. She struggled and tried to land a kick against the man’s shin or groin. The form stepped back and she scrabbled to her feet. The guard grabbed her wrist, pulling her off balance and tumbling her into him. Her shoulder impacted against his chest and a boiling fountain of pain erupted from it. Veneranda screamed again.

  Closer to him now, Veneranda could see his face - young, with a coarse growth of beard and dull eyes - and he could see hers. The guard paused, surprised. He wet his lips with his tongue, glanced over his shoulder toward the sirens in the distance, and gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug.

  Veneranda yanked her wrist free while he was glancing away. She stumbled backward and bumped into the side of the tower. She struggled with her rifle strap, trying to free it.

  The guard knocked her down with a cuff to the side of her head. Her vision blurred. One of his hands was forcing her good hand away from the strap. Hot, sour breath fell on her. Another hand was under her sweater, pushing upward. Veneranda’s knee lunged, slamming into his thigh. With a grunt his foot came down, hard, on her ankle. She screamed until the hand under her sweater clamped over her mouth.

  “Fucking scream again and I’ll kill you.” The voice was thick, deep. The form rose slightly, removing the hand from her mouth and fumbling with a belt. Veneranda struggled hard, trying to pull her arm away from his grasp. He hit her in the eye with his fist, so hard she lost all sight for a moment.

  Her head cleared. She almost began struggling, stopped herself. One of his hands was still around her good wrist. She let her injured arm hang limp, but her hand worked its way into her belt pouch. Her fingers closed around the other blob of thermite. The guard had his belt free, now struggling with his pants. She palmed the blob, found the slick, lozenge form of her lighter.

  His pants fell away. His knee pushed its way between her legs and his hand grabbed at her waistband. Veneranda pulled the thermite blob and lighter out. She flicked the lighter.

  The flame startled the man. He jumped back into a crouch, pulling her good wrist with him. Veneranda rolled onto her side, shoved the flame close to the ball, and yanked her hand back.

  The thermite ignited, brighter than the sun. The guard yelled in shock and released her. Veneranda hobbled to her feet and shoved herself as hard as she could over the railing.

  She fell through space, seemingly forever, knowing she had jumped too short, that she was falling to certain injury or death.

  The impact of a hard surface against her chest drove the air and cognizance out of her. Her mind snapped like a shorting wire, consciousness gone, returning from the void an eternity later. She managed to turn her head, look up, watch the thermite burn through the wood of the watchtower platform and fall. Flames licked up around the hole it made. She forced herself to her knees, pulled her rifle off as another airhorn blasted to life from the watchtower above her. Clutching the gun to her chest, she dove off the wall.

  She hit the ground below too stiff. Her shoulder blazed like wildfire as she rolled down the hill. She tumbled, clutching her gun, until her roll was stopped by a large bush. Veneranda was on her feet, almost without thinking, adrenaline taking over for a brain that had almost given up.

  The wall she’d jumped over had been on the western side of the compound. She oriented by that, roughly, and headed northwest, grateful she didn’t have to move around the huge length of the University again.

  She ran. The cold and wet became a fugue of numbness. Her shoulder’s ache became a steady throb. Somewhere in the night, she began to cough. Her run became a stumbling jog. Then a forced march. Then a walk. By the time she found the highway, it was a trudge.

  The highway was a risk. The portion of her brain still capable of logical thought knew that. But there was a chance, slim but existent, that someone from town would be coming this way. They would help her.

  She moved on, crunching over sodden pine needles and tripping amongst the roots of long-needle pine that had begun to breach the concrete of the road. She did not pause, not until after the morning sun hit the horizon, dim and gray through the clouds above.

  She stumbled to her knees amongst a bed of pine needles and collapsed, shivering.

  She awoke again. The rain no longer fell in drenching sheets. The light was stronger. She was still alive.

  She pushed herself up into a sitting position, back against the tree. She had slept with her rifle clutched to her chest. She clutched it still, trying to make sense of the madcap terrain of her jumbled thoughts.

  A scrape, distant. Traveler on the highway. She eased out of the sheltering trunks of the trees and looked. A man, maybe, still too far to be seen clearly, coming up the highway. What direction was he coming from? She couldn’t orient her thoughts, so she raised her rifle, looking through the scope to see more clearly.

  There was a crack in the lens of her scope that skewed the lower half of the image, distorting it. She shifted the sight, bringing the scope down a bit, trying to make out the man’s face. His hair was brown, close cut, military style. His eyes were blue and almond-shaped.

  Sutera. Must’ve camped out through the storm, set off after the rain broke, maybe a little sooner. How far had she come last night? She couldn’t say. Lots of ground yet between them. He must be headed back, now, maybe to her spot, to camp out again, maybe straight home. The ache in her shoulder was getting pretty bad again, holding the rifle like this. Where was his home? That shape, looming above her last night in the tower, not his face but still, his fault-

  The thunder of a gunshot shattered the morning and set birds to flight, a torrent of beating wings over the stillness of the highway. Sutera’s body jerked from the sight. Veneranda fumbled/dropped/yanked her rifle down. Where-

  Her finger still held the trigger down.

  “I didn’t...” she murmured. Realization came slow. She dropped the rifle, unwilling to feel its material reality.

  She rushed out from the trees, stumbling once on her ankle, the one the guard had stamped on, as pain shot from it. Sutera laid there, down the highway, a few hundred feet. He didn’t move at all.

  Veneranda doubled over and vomited onto the ground. She coughed, retched again, and then couldn’t stop coughing. She fell onto her side.

  The coughing passed slowly. When it did, she pushed herself onto her feet. She retrieved her rifle from the trees. She pushed herself forward, down the highway, toward home.

&n
bsp; ****

  Isaac dunked his hands in the wash basin. He scrubbed a bit, trying to get the grease off but knowing most would stick without using solvent.

  He glanced at the half-assembled tractor engine, lying on a white canvas tarp behind him. With the weld on the cracked block finished, reassembly was all that remained to get the tractor up and running again. Another few day’s work, alone. Where the hell was Veneranda? David MacTeague had given him some song and dance about a camping trip she was going on, which was an obvious lie. The girl never ran off when there was critical work to do.

  Well, wondering wasn’t going to fix anything. She was off doing whatever she was doing. He suppressed the pang of worry, checked the gas torch was fully off, and began closing up the workshop.

  Rina looked up from the corner of the shop where she’d been muttering over her broke-down bike’s fuel intake valve for the last four hours. If she ever found the culprit who had taken it for a joy ride, there was gonna be hell to pay. “That late?” she asked.

  “Got some checking around town I need to do.” He walked across the shop to her tarp. “How bad is it?”

  “I got most of the crap out of the air filter, but there’s a kink or something in the fuel line. I’ll have it sorted out tomorrow.” She laid her tools out on a nearby bench. “Thanks again for letting me use the shop. I’ll get out of your hair.”

  The late afternoon air carried the thin edge of fall crispness as Isaac stepped out into the broken pavement of the street. Stunted brown dandelions and crab grass poked up through the cracked surface here and there. One of these years he’d get around to organizing a work detail to clear out the asphalt so they could lay real stone, or cobble. Even packed dirt would be preferable to almost tripping every fifth step. One of these years.

  Isaac walked down the road toward the center of town. On the way he passed Calliope’s school. Michaela Sampson was stooping in the yard, collecting rocks. Behind her there was a muted clucking from the hen house. Isaac smirked to himself and walked on.