by M. R. Forbes
“There are still places out there with lawmen?”
“At least one,” Hayden said.
“Nice to meet you, Sheriff Duke,” Jake said, with the same expression as his father. “The world could use more men who believe in laws, instead of assholes like King.”
“King?”
“Pig was a Sergeant. King is the Five-star General,” Hank said. “He’s in control of the Scrappers. He’s in control of everything around here.”
“Does he wear a white suit and a big, white hat?” Hayden asked.
Hank’s expression changed. “You saw Ghost?”
“If that’s his name. He had my wife. He pulled her into a vehicle of some kind, and they went away. Right before these giants attacked the building we were in. They attacked the Scrappers. What the hell are those things?”
“You definitely aren’t from around here if you don’t know the goliaths,” Jake said.
“I thought they were everywhere,” Hank said. “From the States all the way to Australia.”
“Not where I’m from,” Hayden said. “What are they? Where did they come from? They picked up the Scrappers and ate them.”
Hank smiled. “Yeah, that’s what the goliaths do. They wander around the countryside, eating pretty much anything that has two legs. They aren’t very smart, though. As long as you keep quiet, they’ll pass you by.”
“And they’re easy to hear coming, on account of their size,” Jake said. “As for where they came from? Nobody knows. Or nobody remembers. They came after the invasion, after the fall of our last true civilization. Most folks think they’re from another planet, like the trife.”
“The trife are still out here?”
“Of course,” Hank said, feeding him another spoonful of soup. “You can’t get rid of the trife. It’s impossible. The world learned that the hard way.”
“Which may be what brought the goliaths here,” Jake said. “Though some think the goliaths are the ones who seeded the planet with the trife, to create an ecosystem they could survive in.”
“They don’t sound smart enough for that,” Hayden said.
“No, they don’t. But we don’t know that much about them. We don’t know if they have an intellect that’s just different. They seem dumb when they come to scoop up poor souls who can’t keep their mouths shut, or to root out a nest of trife and devour them. But that’s the only way we know them. They could have a city somewhere. They could have starships. Who knows?”
Hayden considered that while he swallowed more of the broth. According to Jennifer, someone had dumped the trife on Earth. Was it the goliaths?
“As for Ghost,” Hank said. “He’s King’s top Courier.”
“Courier?”
“Moving stuff around here is always dangerous, even for the Scrappers,” Jake said. “Everybody has to deal with the trife and the goliaths and assorted problems, other humans included. Couriers are the answer.”
“They aren’t just messengers,” Hank said. “They’re assassins. They’re diplomats. They’re whatever the person paying them needs them to be. The bottom line is that in the tree of survivors, they’re at the very top.”
“And Ghost is on top of that,” Jake said. “If he took your wife, you can bet he’s bringing her to King.”
“So I need to find this King,” Hayden said. “It sounds like it won’t be that hard.”
“To find him? No. To find your wife alive? That depends. If King wants her, she must be special. But he doesn’t think anything is more special than him, and he’s got a reputation for destroying things that other people would covet.”
They weren’t the words Hayden wanted to hear, but at least they were honest.
“All the more reason for me to be on my way,” Hayden said. “I’ve been enough of a burden to you already, and I have no way to repay you.”
“Are you kidding? You had a pocket full of Notes when I found you. Enough to pay for your treatment and your replacement. If I would accept payment from you, which I won’t.”
Notes? Hayden realized he must be referring to the scraps of paper with the USSF eagle logo on them.
“You’re not ready to leave yet, son,” Hank said, taking on a more fatherly tone. “You’ll die out there.”
“Natalia is everything to me, Hank,” Hayden said. “I’d rather risk dying out there than keep sitting in here.”
“Just hold on a minute, Hayden,” Jake said. “I promise, we’ll get you on your way as fast as possible. I can see how much you love your wife. I can’t imagine what you’ve already been through to find her. I want you to have a chance out there. We both do. What I’m trying to say is, please, trust us. If you don’t know the goliaths, then you have no idea what’s waiting outside these walls. Wherever you’re from, you’re not prepared, and you’ll need to be.”
Hayden shifted his eyes to stare at Jake. A big part of him wanted to get up and go. But the man was right. He hadn’t been expecting any of what he had discovered since leaving Metro, and especially since finding his way off the Pilgrim. Right now it was an effort to move at all. He needed time to heal. Ghost hadn’t come for Natalia to kill her. Engineers were valuable. King wanted to use her mind, not destroy her body.
Patient. He needed to be patient.
But not too patient.
“Okay,” Hayden said. “You’re right. But I don’t want to sit here anymore. I want to get up.”
Jake nodded. “I understand, Sheriff. Before you do, we need to run a calibration sequence on the replacement.”
“Calibration sequence?” Hayden asked.
“He doesn’t know what a Borger is, Jake,” Hank said.
“Oh,” Jake replied. “It’s a bit of a shock when you’re expecting it. Depending on your mindset, this could make the calibration easier or harder.”
“Can you both stop tiptoeing around whatever it is you don’t want to say and don’t want me to see?”
“Sorry,” Jake said. “It’s part of the process. You need to see it first.”
“See what?”
“Are you sure he’s ready, son?” Hank asked, glancing at Jake.
“If our Sheriff here were most men, I would say no. But he isn’t like most men. I can see that in his eyes.” Jake paused, staring at Hayden. Hayden stared back, keeping eye contact. “What you want to do is turn your head slowly, start at your left shoulder and let your eyes work their way down. Don’t rush it.”
Hayden nodded. Jake had done something to his arm, beyond healing the infection. But what? He turned his head toward his shoulder. He winced when he saw the cuts and bruises. He had really taken a beating. The kid had told him to go slowly, but he didn’t think that was going to help. Whatever had happened, he wanted to face it on his own terms.
He turned his head quickly, snapping it to his wrist.
It was dull and dented, scratched and decayed. It looked older than he was by a long way.
It was still a hand, but it wasn’t his hand. It wasn’t anybody’s hand. It had been made, of metal and wires and who knew what else.
Replacement. Now he understood.
Pig had taken his hand.
Jake had given him a new one.
3
HAYDEN STARED at the appendage for a long time. He didn’t speak. He didn’t react. He examined it, shifting his eyes up along its beaten surface to a fresh ring of metal near his elbow. He stared at that for a moment and then tried to wiggle the fingers.
One of them shifted slightly. The others were still.
“Wow,” Jake said. “You’ve got sync already. I haven’t even run the calibration yet.”
Hayden didn’t respond. He kept trying to move the hand while Jake reached down into something at the side of the bed and lifted out a rectangular block of plastic. He opened it, revealing a display and keyboard. The USSF logo appeared on the screen. He lifted out another item, a cable, and plugged one end into the computer and the other into the band of metal on Hayden’s arm.
“What
did you think I would do when I saw it?” Hayden asked. “Be horrified?”
“Most people are. Most people would rather live without than use a replacement, mechanical or otherwise.”
“I had nothing, and now I have something.”
“That’s the spirit,” Hank said.
Hayden turned to look at Hank’s stump, and then back at the hand. “This was yours,” he said, making the connection.
“Now it’s yours,” Hank replied.
Hayden shook his head. “I can’t accept this.”
“Too late,” Hank said, smiling. “It’s already been connected, and in few seconds it’ll be synced. It always treated me well; I’m sure it'll do the same for you.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Hayden said. “I think you should take it back.”
“Nope,” Hank insisted. “I’m old, and I wouldn’t need her for that much longer. She’s better on someone who’s going to get some use out of her. If you want to repay me for my generosity, you can tell us where you’re from. If only so we don’t die from curiosity.”
Hayden cracked a small smile. “Have you ever heard of the Pilgrim?” he asked.
They both shook their heads.
“It’s a starship. A generation ship. It was supposed to leave Earth almost four hundred years ago, with fifty-thousand colonists living in a city inside. It was scheduled to reach a planet in the Trappist system they named New Gaia about ninety-six years ago. Natalia and me, we’re the only ones on board who know the Pilgrim never left Earth. The rest of the people are still there, still locked inside. They think they’re in space, headed to New Gaia.”
Jake and Hank were silent for a moment. Then Jake whistled.
“Shit, Sheriff,” he said. “If you weren’t so green I wouldn’t be able to put my mind far enough around that idea to believe you. You’re saying there’s a starship laying around not that far from here?”
“I don’t know how far it is. You’d have to ask your horse.” He smiled a little wider to show them it was a joke. “But yes. It’s underground. The Scrappers know it’s there. They’re trying to reach the city. They were after me because they think I can get them in.”
“Can you?” Hank asked.
“No.”
“But you got out,” Jake said.
“That’s why they think I can get in. It was a one-way trip to find my wife. I didn’t know when I did it if we would ever be able to go back. I didn’t know this was out here, either.”
“This is going to hurt a little bit,” Jake warned.
He was typing something on the computer, and as he hit one last key, a round of stinging shockwaves passed through Hayden’s arm. He grunted in response to the pain, watching the fingers on the alien hand open and close. After a few seconds, he realized he was able to feel the movement in his mind, as though the mechanical fingers were his fingers. When the pain stopped, he was able to control the digits, as well as the hand and wrist they were attached to.
“Perfect,” Jake said.
“You’re more than lucky, Sheriff,” Hank said. “Only a few Borgers this side of the States could have replaced you with my hand.”
“The muscles and nerves are similar, but not even close to being the same,” Jake said. “The ring,” he tapped on the metal band as he unplugged the computer from it, “is an interface between your brain’s version of things and the replacement’s version of things.”
“It’s impressive,” Hayden said, manipulating the hand.
“It’s old tech, left over from the war. There was a time when hands like these were common. That’s where the Borger title came from. Cyborgs. Part human, part machine. A long time ago, our military started repairing soldiers this way so they could keep fighting the trife. The cyborgs were more effective at first, but the trife evolve in a hurry. Try squeezing your fist.”
Hayden clenched his left hand into a fist. He heard the soft snap of a spring, and three twenty centimeter claws extended from the top of his forearm, jutting out past his hand
“You’ll find those claws can cut through more than just flesh,” Hank said. “They’re stronger than steel, and in my opinion better than a human hand any day.”
“If your goal is to kill Scrappers, anyway,” Jake said.
“Where did you learn how to do this?” Hayden asked.
“There’s a Borger named Castillo in the town closest to here. Haven. I did an apprenticeship with him until he was killed a couple of years back. Some people thought I should take over his shop for him, but I don’t want to live in Haven. I like it out here. It’s quieter, and most of the time that makes it safer. I go into town when somebody sends for me. I charge an arm and a leg.”
He laughed at his joke. Hayden couldn’t help but laugh, too.
“So, Sheriff,” Hank said. “You were saying you came from a starship?”
“Yes.” He paused, suddenly remembering the trife’s contagion, and that contact with infected blood could cause problems. “I may be infected with their disease.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Jake said. “But don’t worry that you passed it on to us, Sheriff. We’ve been immune for a long time. I assume no one in the colony was infected?”
“No. The protocol.” He paused, remembering how Malcolm had gunned down the people who had gotten too close to the trife. “They killed anyone who might have been exposed.”
“I’ve heard when the war started, they did the same thing here, too, for a while,” Hank said. “A grepping mess.”
“Is there a cure?” Hayden asked.
“No,” Jake replied. “We never needed one. Genetics took care of who lived and who died before we had a chance to come up with an immunization. You and your wife will either survive or perish. That’s up to your DNA.”
He knew the odds. They weren’t good. There was a ninety percent chance he would die.
“Sorry, Sheriff,” Hank said. “I didn’t think anybody needed to worry about that form of death anymore.”
“It’s okay. I understand. That’s why the people of Metro are better off staying in Metro. One of the reasons, at least. ”
“You said you couldn't get them out, anyway,” Hank said.
“No. I can’t,” Hayden agreed.
He could have before. He had thrown Malcolm’s chip away. It was better for everyone to stay locked inside Metro, at least for now. Maybe one day it would be safe to come out, but he doubted it.
He noticed now that Jake had stopped moving. He was looking at Hayden, a suddenly fearful expression on his face.
“Sheriff, you said the Scrappers think you can get them in?”
“That’s right.”
“How badly do they want to get in?”
“Pretty damn bad.”
“Did any of them see you escape?”
Hayden caught on to what Jake was thinking.
It didn’t matter if they thought he should stay and rest.
He wasn’t safe here.
Maybe none of them were.
“I left a whole group behind, outside the Pilgrim. They had your other horses. I doubt they would have come up while the goliath was tearing the place apart. Unless they got trapped, they know I got away.” He paused. “Ghost saw me, too.”
Jake threw the computer into the bag at his feet and stood up, lifting it with him.
“We have to go.”
4
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WE?” Hayden asked.
“Help me help him up, will you, Dad?” Jake said, ignoring him.
He took Hayden beneath the shoulder and at the elbow of his left arm, while Hank moved to the right.
It should have been awkward to have a mechanical arm attached to his own, grafted on with the metal band that made the limb controllable. By the magic of that same band, it wasn’t. The hand felt natural to his mind, providing the sensation and motion that he expected and satisfying his mind’s desire for a symmetrical form. It looked awful and out of place, but he could live with that
.
“I said, ‘what do you mean, we?’” he repeated.
His feet landed on the floor. He tried to stand, finding the limbs still weak. For all of his talk about getting up and getting out, he could barely stand.
“You’re in no condition to travel alone,” Jake said. “And besides, you have no idea where you’re going.”
“This is my fight,” Hayden said. “My hunt. I’ve already put you in danger.”
“A risk we accepted when we took you in,” Hank said.
They started helping him walk toward the hidden door.
“I can’t ask you to get involved in this,” Hayden insisted.
“Too late,” Hank said. “We made a decision to get involved. Somebody had to, or you would have died.”
“Then you should have let me die, damn it,” Hayden said. “Everyone who’s tried to help me so far has been killed. Sarah, Jonas, Jennifer. They all died.”
“Welcome to Earth, Sheriff,” Jake said. “That’s the way the world is now. A lot of people die for a lot of stupid, senseless reasons. But you didn’t. Not yet. Maybe you can make a difference.”
“We need good men,” Hank said.
“I’m not a good man,” Hayden replied.
“You took on the Scrappers. You killed Pig. That makes you good in my book.”
“Bullshit. I didn’t do it because I was trying to help you. It was self-preservation, plain and simple.”
They reached the door. Jake pushed it open. At the same time he did, a door slammed open above their heads.
“Shit,” Jake whispered. “Stay quiet.”
“Hank, you mangy old cuss,” a rough voice shouted above them. “Where the hell did you get off to? I need to talk to you.”
“Gregor, is that you?” Hank shouted.
“Dad,” Jake said.
“Take him out the back way,” Hank said. “I’ll keep Gregor busy.”
“It’s me. Where are you, Hank?”
“In the basement. I’m coming.”
“Don’t let him see your hand,” Jake said.
Hank nodded, slipping out from beneath Hayden, leaving him dangling from Jake’s arm. Hayden planted his feet, testing his legs again. The strength and feeling were slowly returning.