Fragments

by Dan Wells

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to be. But you have to face this. What are you hiding from, Afa? What are you afraid of?”

  Afa stared in silence before whispering his answer, and his voice was scarred by years of pain and fear. “The end of the world.”

  “The world already ended,” said Kira. “That monster’s come and gone.” She stepped forward slowly, inching toward him. “In East Meadow we celebrate it—not the end, but the beginning. The rebuilding. The old world is dead and gone, and I know that’s so much harder for you than for me. I barely even knew that world.” She stepped closer. “But this world is right here. It has so much to give us, and it needs so much of our help. Let the old world go, and help us build a new one.”

  His face was lost in shadow. “That’s what they said in their emails.”

  “Who?”

  “The Trust.” His voice was different now, not the halting mush of confusion or the clear window of intelligence, but a distant, almost haunted whisper, as if the old world itself was speaking through him. “Dhurvasula and Ryssdal and Trimble and everyone: They knew they were building a new world, and they knew they were destroying the old one to do it. They did it on purpose.”

  “But why?” Kira pressed. “Why kill everyone? Why put the only cure in the Partials? Why link humans to the Partials at all? Why leave us with so many questions?”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I tried to know, but I don’t.”

  “Then let’s figure it out,” she said, “together. But first we have to help them.” She paused, remembering the words of Mr. Mkele, words that seemed so unconscionable when he said them. She repeated them now to Afa, bewildered to find how her situation had turned. “Humanity needs a future, and we need to fight for it, but we can’t do that unless we save it in the present.” She put a hand on his arm. “Help me find a microphone, so we can make sure there’s somebody left to give all these answers to.”

  Afa watched her anxiously, seeming small and childlike in the dark.

  “Are you a human?” he asked.

  Kira felt her voice catch in her throat, her heart jumping in her chest. What did he need to hear? Would he help her if she said she was human? Would anything else terrify him back into his shell?

  She shook her head. What he needed to hear was the truth. She paused, breathing deep, clenching her fist to build up the courage. She’d never said it out loud before, not even to herself. She forced herself to speak.

  “I’m a Partial.” The words felt right and wrong and true and forbidden and terrible and wonderful at once. To speak a truth, to get it off her chest, brought a thrill of liberation, but the nature of the truth made her shiver uncomfortably. She felt wrong to say it, and immediately she felt guilty for feeling wrong about her own true nature. She didn’t. “But I have given my entire life, I have given everything, to save the human race.” Her lips parted in a thin smile, and she almost laughed. “You and I are the best hope they have right now.”

  Afa set down his can of beans, picked it up, then set it down again. He took a step, stopped, and nodded. “Okay. Follow me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Marcus crouched in the lee of a crumbling cinder-block wall—an old garage, he guessed. There was a car inside, visible through a hole in the wall, with the driver’s skeleton still sitting at the wheel. Marcus tried to imagine why the man had died here, in the car, still sitting in a closed garage, but it hardly mattered now. If the Partials found his patrol, Marcus would be as dead as he was.

  “We can’t afford to protect the farms,” said Private Cantona. His voice was an urgent whisper, and he never took his eyes off the forest. Marcus had come to hate him, but he couldn’t deny he was an effective soldier. “Or the farmers.”

  “We’re not going to abandon them,” hissed Haru. He’d been leading the patrol ever since Grant died. He glanced at the four farmers hiding beside the soldiers—two men and two women, eyes wide and terrified. “As near as I can tell, the Partials are capturing every human they can get their hands on. We’re supposed to be protecting people, so we’re going to protect these people all the way back to East Meadow.”

  “We’re supposed to protect civilians,” said Cantona. “That was a work farm—for all we know, these four could be convicts.”

  “If the Partials want them,” said Haru, “then I will die before I give them up.”

  Marcus looked at the farmers, minimally armed with three guns between the four of them. It seemed unlikely that prisoners would have access to weapons at all, but with a Partial army bearing down on you, who knew? I’d give them all guns, he thought, and hope for the best. When the enemy are Partials, every human is an ally.

  “They’re going to get us killed,” said Cantona. Their unit, once twenty soldiers strong, had been reduced to seven plus the farmers; half had been wiped out in the ambush, and the rest as they’d retreated, running almost headlong through the forest to stay ahead of the invaders. “They can keep up with us fine,” said Cantona. “That’s not the problem, it’s that they’re noisy. They don’t know how to stay hidden.”

  The farmers’ faces were sunburned and weathered, but Marcus could see their skin grow pale as they listened to the soldiers argue their fate. He shook his head and butted into the conversation. “They’re no worse at it than I am.”

  “I’m not throwing away our medic.”

  “But he’s right,” said Haru. “With Marcus in the group, we’ll make enough noise to be found no matter how many civilians we have.”

  “Well, I’m not that bad,” said Marcus.

  “It doesn’t matter either way,” said Haru. “If they haven’t heard us talking, then we’re out of danger for now—it’s getting dark, and they have no reason to hunt down a group of armed soldiers who might be lying in ambush. More than likely the Partials retreated, regrouped, and you can bet they’re on their way to another farm.”

  “Then we don’t need to protect them anymore,” said Cantona, gesturing again at the farmers. “Either way we cut them loose, tell them to make for East Meadow, and then we try to rejoin our unit.”

  “I can’t raise them on the radio,” said Haru. “We have no unit to rejoin with.”

  One of the other soldiers, a big man named Hartley, held up his hand, and the group fell instantly silent. It was a sign they’d become all too familiar with, and Marcus listened intently, gripping his rifle. The Partials had stronger senses—better hearing, better vision—so they could detect Marcus’s group from much farther away, but in a forest this dense, they still had to get close to engage them, and at that distance the humans could sometimes hear them coming. They were no match for a Partial unit, though, with or without warning; the only enemy they’d managed to kill had been distracted by larger forces. Marcus and his group had been running, pure and simple, and they’d still been whittled to a fraction of their former numbers.

  They sat in silence, ears perked, rifles ready. The forest around them stared back, as still as a tomb.

  Marcus heard one of the watchmen curse suddenly, shouting the first few syllables of a warning, and a little black disk clinked against the wall by his feet. He looked down just in time to see it explode in a blinding flash of light, and suddenly the entire patrol was shouting. Marcus clutched his eyes, grunting at the throbbing pain, seeing nothing but brilliant white afterimages. Guns fired; Haru shouted; people screamed and cried. Marcus felt a splash of hot liquid on his hands and ducked down, cowering against the wall. A body fell against him and he crawled backward, his breathing ragged and terrified. By the time his vision cleared, the fight was over.

  Senator Delarosa stood over him, a rifle in one hand and a thick, hooded cloak over her head.

  Marcus tried to think. “What?”

  “You’re lucky it was only two,” said Delarosa. “And that we had the drop on them.” Her face was grim. “And that we had such good bait.”

  “Two what?”

>   “Two Partials,” said Haru. He was shaking his head, pounding his ear with the palm of his hand as if it were ringing. “And don’t call us bait.”

  “I don’t know what else to call you,” said Delarosa, turning and rolling a body over with her foot. Marcus saw that there were several: soldiers, a cloaked figure like Delarosa, and two inert Partials in their unmistakable gray armor. The one by Delarosa’s feet groaned, and she shot him again. “You were making enough noise to attract every Partial patrol for miles.”

  “You used us as bait!” Haru said again, struggling to his feet. Whatever had incapacitated him had left him unsteady. “You knew they were there? How long were you watching?”

  “Long enough to be ready when they got here,” said Delarosa. “We knew you’d attract a group eventually, so we laid low and let you.” She knelt over the body, quickly stripping it of useful equipment: body armor, ammo clips, and several pouches clipped to the chest and shoulders. She turned back as she worked, nodding at the black disk on the ground by Marcus’s feet. “That’s their flashbang. They thought you were incapacitated, so their guard was down.”

  Marcus tried to stand up but found himself just as woozy as Haru. He gripped the cinder-block wall for support. A soldier slid to the ground beside him as he shifted, and Marcus realized there was a bullet hole in the soldier’s face. “You should have warned us.”

  Delarosa left the first Partial’s equipment in a neat pile and started taking off the body armor. “They would have found you either way; this way they didn’t find us until it was too late.”

  “We could have laid an ambush,” said Haru. He glanced around, taking stock, and Marcus did the same: three human soldiers dead, plus one of Delarosa’s people. There were at least two more in the trees beyond, keeping watch on the perimeter. “We could have been ready for them and not lost so many people.”

  “We were ready,” said Delarosa, moving to the second body. “This was an ambush. We had the perfect situation, with a perfect distraction, and we still lost four people and got two of the civilians wounded.” She pointed at the farmers. “We had ideal conditions and they still killed twice as many as we did. Would you really want to try that again without the distraction?”

  “Your distraction was my men!”

  “Are you really going to argue with me about this?” said Delarosa, standing to face him. “I saved your life.”

  “You let three of us get killed.”

  “If I hadn’t done what I did, you would have all been killed,” she snapped back, “or worse still, captured. We are facing a superior foe with better equipment, better training, and better reflexes. If you want to risk a fair fight, you’re as blind as the Senate.”

  “The Senate put you in jail,” said Marcus, finally gaining his feet. “You were in a work farm.” He frowned. “You were in this work farm?”

  Delarosa turned back to the second Partial, pulling the rest of his equipment into a pile beside the first. “Back when it was a work farm, yes. Now it’s just a . . . crime scene. Anyone left alive has scattered.”

  “Did you escape in the attack or shoot your way out first?” asked Haru.

  “I’m not here to kill humans,” said Delarosa, and stood again, facing him directly. “I was sentenced to a work farm: You’re right. Do you remember what for?”

  “For killing a human,” said Marcus. “That kind of undermines your credibility.”

  “For doing whatever it takes,” she said. She gestured to one of her companions, similarly cloaked and hooded, and he came to collect the piles of equipment. “We’re facing the extinction of our species,” she said sternly. “That comes before everything else—before kindness, before morality, before law. Things you would never have done twelve years ago aren’t just acceptable now, they’re required. They’re a moral imperative. I will kill a hundred Shaylon Browns before I let the Partials win. I’ll kill a thousand.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” said Cantona. “That’s the only way we’re going to survive this.”

  “If you kill a thousand of your own people, the Partials don’t even have to fight,” said Marcus. “You’re doing their job for them.”

  A bird chirped loudly in the forest, and Delarosa looked up. “That’s our cue to leave. Looks like these two had backup.” She ran to the edge of the clearing, but Haru shook his head.

  “We’re not going with you.”

  “I am,” said Cantona. He grabbed a second rifle from a fallen human soldier. “Come on, Haru, you know she’s right.”

  “I’m not abandoning these civilians!”

  “Actually,” said one of the farmers, “I think I’m going with her, too.” He was an older man, made lean and leathery from hard labor. He held up his hunting rifle and took a sidearm from a fallen soldier.

  Cantona looked at Delarosa, who nodded and looked back at Haru. “We won’t use you as bait again.” She turned and melted into the forest. Her people went with her, then the farmer, and last of all Cantona. He paused, waved, and followed her into the trees.

  Marcus looked at Haru, then at Hartley, then at the three remaining farmers. They’d armed themselves with rifles and ammo from the fallen soldiers. “Two of you are wounded?”

  “We can walk,” said one of the women, a fierce look on her face.

  “That’s great,” said Haru, “but can you run?”

  They stopped in a schoolyard, panting with exertion. The pursuing Partials had claimed two more of them, leaving only Marcus, Haru, and two farmers. One of them was wounded, a brown-haired woman named Izzy; she leaned heavily against the wall, eyes closed, her breathing ragged. Haru was out of ammo, and Marcus handed him his last clip.

  “You can use this better than I can.” He paused for breath, then nodded toward Izzy. “She can’t go much farther.”

  “Get her down from the wall,” gasped Haru, hiding in the brush. “They’ll see us.”

  “She won’t be able to get up again,” said Marcus.

  “Then I’ll carry her.”

  Marcus and the last farmer, a man named Bryan, pulled the woman gently to the ground, propping her against the wall with her head between her knees. Marcus looked at her bandages—she’d been shot through the shoulder, miraculously missing the vital bones and arteries, but the wound was still bad, and she’d lost a lot of blood. He’d already patched the bandage twice, in quick stops like this, and given her all the painkillers he could without knocking her unconscious. The bandage was soaked with blood, and his eyes blurred from exhaustion as he started changing it again.

  “I’m starting to wish we had a band of guerrillas using us as bait,” said Haru.

  Marcus frowned. “That’s not funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  “You could do it right,” said Bryan. “The ambush, I mean. Enough guns in the woods, with a good clear shot, and you wouldn’t have to risk the bait at all.”

  “You certainly could,” said Haru, still panting for air, “you certainly could.” He pulled out his radio and tried again, his voice hoarse with desperation. “This is Haru Sato, I have a medic and two civilians pinned down at the”—he looked up—“Huntsman Elementary School. I don’t know which city. If there is anyone out there, anyone at all, please respond. We don’t know how widespread this attack has been, we don’t know where to retreat to. We don’t even know where we are.”

  Izzy coughed: harsh, racking coughs that shook her body until she retched on the ground. Marcus leaned out of the way, then finished bandaging her arm.

  “I think something’s wrong with your radio,” said Bryan. “When’s the last time you got a call? In or out?”

  “Not since the snipers,” said Haru, staring listlessly at the radio. It didn’t have any bullet holes, but it was pretty dinged up. Marcus wouldn’t be surprised if it was broken.

  “Let me see it,” said Bryan, and stood up to take it. His head rose above the level of the surrounding brush and he jerked suddenly, a puff of red mi
st flying out from the side of his ear.

  Marcus and Haru instantly dropped to the ground, flat on their stomachs. Unsupported by Marcus’s arm, Izzy slumped to the side, unconscious.

  “Looks like this is it,” said Marcus. “Either your murderer swoops in to our rescue, or we get to say hi to Dr. Morgan.”

  “You’ll forgive me for hoping it’s the murderer.”

  “You’ll love Dr. Morgan,” said Marcus. “She hates humans almost as much as you hate Partials.”

  Haru looked at the playground. “We’ve got about three feet of brush coming up through the asphalt, rising to six or seven if we can make it to what I assume used to be a soccer field.” He looked at Izzy. “I don’t think we can carry her.”

  “I’ll grab her and run,” said Marcus. “You cover me. Those taller saplings are only—”

  “No,” said Haru, “but that’s exactly what we’re going to pretend we’re doing.” He pointed behind them, a few feet past them along the base of the school wall. Marcus saw the black rectangle of a broken basement window. “You drag her in there,” said Haru, gathering a pile of broken asphalt chunks. “I’ll do my best to make it look like we’re crawling across the field.”

  Marcus nodded. “How much time will that buy us?”

  “Enough,” said Haru. “If it works. We’ll find another door and slip out of the building on the far side.”

  Marcus sighed, looking at the ominous black hole of the basement window. “If I get eaten by badgers or whatever the hell’s down there, I’m going to pretend like this wasn’t our only viable option.”

  “Go.”

  Marcus rolled Izzy onto her back, brought her arms over her head, and grasped both wrists with his left hand; with his right elbow, on his stomach, he started crawling across the broken asphalt toward the window. The rough edges ripped into his clothes, and a bullet winged off the wall above his head. He kept low, trying not to shake the bushes. Haru threw rocks into the field, keeping the arc low so the Partials couldn’t see them; when they landed, they shook the brush. Marcus thought it must have worked, because the next sniper shot slammed harmlessly into the bushes about twenty feet out from the wall.