by M. R. Forbes
Cass’ head shifted, and she whined loudly, joining Virgo. It was a powerful outburst compared to the animal’s usual calm.
“I take it this is worked up?” Hayden asked.
Jake nodded, reaching over to the side of his mount and grabbing an old rifle. Hayden followed his lead, reaching for the laser pistol he had placed in one of the saddlebags.
A series of hisses rose from within the brush, seemingly from all around them.
The trife were coming.
6
“DAMN SCRAPPERS MUST HAVE DRAWN them over on their way in,” Jake said, head swiveling back and forth as he watched for the creatures. “The trife don’t usually gather on this side of the creek. They don’t like water all that much.”
The landscape here was hilly and green, with sparse trees on either side of them and plenty of thick vegetation lining both sides of the trail. A part of Hayden was in awe at the sight of so many plants, but there was no time to relax and admire the beauty of the scenery.
The bushes on the left ahead of Jake moved. He rotated in the saddle, bringing the rifle to his shoulder and tilting his head to sight down it. The trife appeared a moment later, bounding out of the greenery and charging.
The shot echoed through the air, the round hitting the trife square in the chest. It hissed softly as it was thrown back and to the ground. It didn’t get back up.
The bushes on both sides of them started to move, disturbed by the creatures passing through them. Hayden gripped the pistol, waiting for the demons to emerge.
The ground was shaking more heavily.
Hayden risked a glance back. He could see the goliath more clearly now. It was at least fifty meters tall, a mass of mottled flesh clinging to dense bone. It moved slowly, its head slightly lowered, eyes searching the area. It lifted a massive leg, taking another step that would bring it ever closer to them.
“Sheriff!” Jake shouted, breaking Hayden from his stupor.
He whipped his head back as a pair of trife broke from cover, leaping toward Cass. He fired as she spun, hitting one of the trife in the arm before the change in momentum pulled him from the saddle. He rolled off the side of her, landing hard on his back. Waves of fire lanced up through the area Jake had stitched, and he fought to keep his eyes open against the pain.
“Damn it,” he heard Jake say.
Then one of the trife was on top of him, claws angling down toward his neck. It was definitely different than the ones he had encountered on the Pilgrim. Every part of it was smaller, and it was much heavier than the hollow-boned creatures he had fought before.
He reacted without thinking, bringing his replacement hand up to block the attack, catching the trife’s claws with his own. Seeing the hand, the creature hissed more sharply.
Hayden managed to hold onto the pistol when he fell, and blocking the trife’s attack gave him the seconds he needed to put it to the creature’s chest and pull the trigger. It screeched as the weapon burned a hole in it and then fell on top of him.
The ground shuddered, the goliath drawing closer.
Hayden cursed as he shoved the trife, pushing it off him. He forced himself to get up, finding Jake standing next to Virgo, holding both Cass and the stallion’s leads. There were four dead trife on the road, including the one he had shot.
“What are you doing?” Hayden asked.
“Shhh,” Jake replied, putting a finger to his lips. Then he motioned Hayden to join them.
Hayden limped to where Jake was standing, the fall from the horse causing one of his legs to lock up in spasm. His heart thumped heavily, his breathing froze as the light filtering onto the trail vanished, blocked out by the goliath.
He turned around and looked up as the ground shook again, almost hard enough to knock him over. An awful smell wafted across the area, the goliath’s scent preceding its arrival.
“Stay silent,” Jake said. “Try not to move.”
Hayden stared up at the giant. They were standing in the center of the trail, completely exposed. How were they supposed to not be seen?
Then the goliath was right on top of them, one of its huge legs crashing through the brush a few meters away. The smell of it was nearly unbearable, like the waste recycling system in Metro when it backed up and broke down. Hayden remained completely still, frozen in fear at the sight of the thing towering over them.
It huffed as it leaned forward, long limbs sweeping across the ground behind them. Something screeched, and then he saw a huge hand move to the goliath’s heavily-toothed mouth, depositing a trife into it.
It turned on its hips, reaching down with its other arm, scooping up another of the creatures and devouring it. Then it paused, still standing over them, eyes sweeping the area. Hayden’s breath caught in his throat as the large, blue orbs angled directly toward them, definitely looking their way.
They didn’t stop on the spot, passing over the pair without concern. The brush was shifting nearby, and Hayden watched as it reached toward the area for the trife that were active there.
The trife that were coming their way.
“Jake,” Hayden said, realizing their paths were going to cross at a bad time.
“Shit,” Jake said at the same time, noticing the same thing. “Stay close to the horses. It won’t pay attention to anything that doesn’t look human.”
Hayden was having a hard time believing something so large was so selective about what it ate, but he did as the other man said, pressing against Cass’ side as they moved further down the trail.
One of the trife burst out of the brush behind them, hissing in fear. Hayden glanced back as it saw them, rushing in their direction. He could see the goliath’s arm behind it, trying to grab it as it moved.
He raised the pistol toward it.
“Don’t,” Jake said. “Too much noise.”
Hayden fired. The laser burned silently through the creature, causing it to drop. The goliath scooped it up a moment later.
They remained in place, waiting while the behemoth continued its hunt. Large hands crashed through the area around them, grabbing a few more of the trife. Then it straightened up, eyes scanning the landscape.
They waited a minute. And then another. Hayden’s heart was beating so fast it hurt, his level of fear causing him to shiver where he stood. He stayed quiet. They both did. The horses shifted and nickered beside them, but as promised the goliath paid them no mind.
Instead, it slowly shifted, turning itself around to face the burning farmhouse once more. Something must have caught its attention there because it started walking heavily away.
They didn’t move for another five minutes. It was long enough that the goliath had made it all the way back to the farmhouse. Hayden could still see part of it through the trees, leaning over and reaching out to grab the trife there.
“Too close,” Jake whispered. “I forgot that thing doesn’t make a sound. You saved our asses.”
“You did just fine on your own,” Hayden said. “I only killed two of them.”
Jake smiled. “You don’t survive out here alone without learning how to shoot,” he said. “That pistol of yours is priceless.”
“It’s also one of the reasons the Scrappers want me so badly,” Hayden said. “There are probably more of them inside the Pilgrim. There’s a whole cache of weapons, armor, and vehicles beneath the colony, sealed in where they can’t reach.”
Jake whistled at the description. “Wheee-ewww. But how do those assholes know about that?”
“That’s the winning question, isn’t it? I’d love to know the answer to that myself.”
“Maybe we can ask King once we get to him?” Jake suggested.
“Once Natalia is safe,” Hayden replied. “Nothing else matters before that.”
“We better get moving,” Jake said. “The trife come out in greater numbers at night, and we’ve got a ways to travel. There’s a safe house at the halfway point. We can rest there, but we have to reach it first.”
Hayden grabb
ed Cass’ saddle and pulled himself up. Jake climbed back onto Virgo.
“What are we waiting for?” Hayden said, looking back at the farmhouse and the fading silhouette of the goliath one last time.
For all of their fearsomeness, it was obvious the giants were also helping keep the planet’s trife population under control. He couldn’t help but think back to the Research module and the corpses he had discovered there, bent and twisted into monstrous things.
Were the goliaths really another invading species, or had they been made? If someone had made them, where were those someones now, and what else did they know? If they could create monsters, could they cure him and Natalia of the xenotrife’s disease?
Maybe some things were better off forgotten, but some things definitely weren’t.
7
HAYDEN MANAGED to find a little bit of energy to marvel at the landscape as they made the ride from the farmhouse toward the rest stop Jake referred to as Crossroads. He gaped at the sheer volume of greenery around them. The trees. The plants. The flowers. The bushes. He also stared wide-eyed at the numbers of different animals they passed along the way. Birds, mostly, of various shapes and sizes, but also a number of insects and smaller creatures.
Some of the plants and animals he recognized from the PASS. The others, Jake named for him, offering him a brief description. When a squirrel scurried past in front of Cass, he told Hayden a story about how one of the creatures had gotten into his house once, and how difficult it had been to get it back out. When a deer happened by, he mentioned he was surprised to see one. The animals were good for food and getting harder and harder to find.
The kid was a good talker, and well-educated. Considering the condition Hayden had been in when he escaped from the Pilgrim, he had been incredibly lucky to wind up in his and Hank’s care. It was the only reason he was still alive.
It was the only reason he might see Natalia again.
He could still sense the biting emptiness his fevered dreams had caused. It was a small pit in his soul, a blank hole that had never really been filled, only covered over. They had planned to name their daughter Hallia, an aggregation of both their names. They had been excited as any expecting parents could be. And then came the night on the stairwell, when something had gone horribly wrong. It had been made even worse when Medical couldn’t give them a solid reason for the loss.
“Sometimes, these things just happen,” they had said.
He hated the words. Things didn’t just happen. There was always a reason. They didn’t know what the reason was. The same way he didn’t know the reason for the xenotrife or the goliaths for that matter.
Neither had just happened.
The green started to fade over time, replaced with browns and grays of dirt and stone, a wide swath of it that cut across the landscape. There were signs of a long lost civilization littering the chasm, where heavily rusted hunks of metal sat in random patterns on both sides and plants pushed their way through every crack and crevice.
“This is the common road to Haven,” Jake said. “The Crossroads is about a three miles west of here. We’ll stick to the side of the pavement. If we hear anything, we find cover immediately. Okay, Sheriff?”
“Pozz,” Hayden said. He paused a moment. “Where did this come from?”
“The world before the trife,” Jake replied. “It used to stretch for thousands of miles, across the entire continent from one ocean to another. Some parts of it were destroyed in the war, other parts have decayed over time. King maintains the segment from here to Haven and then north all the way to the Fortress, so his Scrappers have an easier time getting from place to place.”
“Ghost came this way, then?”
“You can bet on it.”
“How far does King’s control reach?” Hayden asked. “You said the road stretched thousands of miles. He can’t go that far?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. The Scrappers have been clearing further east, pushing their empire outward, not only with violence but with the machines King and his crews have been able to restore. Right now, they control an approximately three hundred mile radius around the Fortress, give or take, minus the part of that territory that’s all ocean. There have been rumors of a floating city out there somewhere, self-sufficient and safe from the trife. There’s always some fool passing through Haven with the idea of building a boat to take them there.”
“You don’t think it’s real?”
“No. Nobody’s ever met anybody who came from there, and people who head out to find it never return.”
“Maybe it’s just a great place to live,” Hayden said.
Jake laughed. “You’re welcome to build a boat of your own, Sheriff.”
“No thanks.”
They were both silent for a few minutes, letting the soft clopping of the horses’ hooves be the only nearby sound. Then Jake broke the silence.
“A little rundown on Crossroads,” he said. “It’s a safe house, designed to provide rest and relief to travelers at nightfall. What that means is there are serious consequences for anyone who makes trouble while inside, including the Scrappers. It’s supposed to be neutral ground, and the proprietor is the last person on the planet you would ever want to screw with. Got it?”
“Pozz,” Hayden said.
“Once you leave the grounds is another story. It isn’t uncommon for people to be jumped and killed on their way out, and if we run into any of the wrong people, the same thing can happen to us.”
“Are you sure you want to go there?”
“It’s going to be dark in an hour. The trife are bad enough during the day, but they’re nearly invisible once the sun goes down. You don’t wander around at night unless you’re stupid, desperate, or part of a large group of well-equipped individuals.”
“Like the Scrappers?”
“Not even the Scrappers want to be out at night. Crossroads is pretty safe, the trife have learned to stay away from there.”
“They’re intelligent,” Hayden said. “In a different way than you and me, but they’re smart.”
“You won’t get an argument from me on that. I’ve read old studies that were done on them. They adapt better than we do. They evolve more rapidly, and they pass some level of instinct or understanding down to their offspring through the serumen; the gloppy, sticky shit they secrete when they’re reproducing.”
“The trife we encountered before looked a lot different from the trife on the Pilgrim. Smaller and denser.”
“I’ve heard if you head further south there are trife with wings if you can believe that.”
“I’m ready to believe pretty much anything,” Hayden admitted.
Jake smiled, opening his mouth to say something else. He didn’t, his face freezing instead. He stopped Virgo, shifting around to face the other way.
Hayden heard it, too. A low hum in the distance, getting louder by the second. He swiveled his head to look along the road to the east. A small cloud of dust was visible on the horizon.
“Find cover,” Jake said.
Hayden took Cass’ reins, the way Jake had shown him during the ride. He kicked the horse lightly, asking her to follow Virgo as the stallion carried Jake off the road, toward a larger, rusted hulk of metal.
Jake dismounted when he got there, tying Virgo off on a rusted metal crossbar that was visible through the foliage before taking his rifle from the horse’s back. Hayden tied off Cass, grabbed his pistol, and joined the man at the back corner of the junker.
The humming was much louder now, a rhythmic rumble that Hayden found oddly soothing. It echoed across the wide road, causing the horses to whinny as they tried to decide if they were afraid of it or not.
He could see the source of the noise now. A car. He had seen them before in the videos stored on the PASS and the movies brought by the colonists. He couldn’t believe they were still out here, still operable nearly four hundred years later.
This one was long and low, a black brick on wheels. Armor plating had been
mounted to portions of it, the metal sculpted into ridges that would probably impale anything that tried to jump on it. The tires were barely visible beyond even more plating, rusted and riveted steel protecting them from bullets and claws. A short pole jutted out of the back, a scrap of purple cloth waving from it.
Jake had been watching it approach with his rifle raised, sighting down it. He lowered the weapon now, straightening up.
“Stay hidden,” he said, ducking further behind their cover. Hayden did the same.
The car went by, rocketing past at high speed. They watched the back of it vanish down the road.
“Who was it?” Hayden asked.
“Just a second,” Jake said, holding up his hand. He was still listening.
Hayden stayed quiet. A few seconds later, he heard a fresh round of noise. They both returned to the corner of the scrapped vehicle, watching as three more cars approached. They all looked different, though they had a few things in common. Large, thick wheels, violent armor plating, cockpits open to the air but protected by heavy steel cages. Each had four people riding inside. One was a driver; another stood behind a mounted rifle. The other two were both armed, balancing from the sides of the machines. A USSF flag whipped in the air behind the lead car, a blue eagle and star logo plainly visible on a red and white background.
“Damn,” Jake said.
“What is it?” Hayden asked.
“Scrapper Road Enforcers. They’re monitoring the stretch between Haven and Lavega. If they’re chasing someone, it means they either killed a Scrapper or refused to pay the road tax.” He paused. “Or the assholes just want their car.”
“It looks like they’re making a run for Crossroads,” Hayden said as the cars zoomed past.
“Any enemy of the Scrappers is a friend of ours,” Jake replied. “I hope they make it.”
8
DAYLIGHT WAS FADING by the time Crossroads came into view, the darkness slowly overtaking them and casting the wide road they were riding on into long shadows where Hayden could easily imagine a trife’s dark flesh disappearing. They had followed in the wake of the Road Enforcers and their quarry on the way to neutral ground, keeping a steady, urgent pace that wouldn’t tire their mounts or themselves and would still get them to safety on time.