by M. R. Forbes
“Natalia,” he said simply. He had showered and changed, replacing his filthy suit with a fresh one.
She almost laughed at the idea he kept an identical change of clothes all the way out here. She was in no mood to laugh.
“Charles,” she said. “If that’s your real name.”
“It is,” he replied, smiling.
Someone else entered behind him. A woman. Not Liv. She was older, with gray hair and scarred hands. She had the USSF logo tattooed on her cheek. A soldier.
“This is Bones,” he said.
Bones stared at her but didn’t speak.
Ghost held the plate out to her. “Vegetables. Don’t worry. They’re hydroponically grown. No concerns about radiation. You can’t eat the trife meat because you haven’t built up an immunity.”
“We have vegetables on the Pilgrim,” Natalia said, taking the plate.
There were no utensils. She wasn’t hungry, but she started eating anyway. She wasn’t going to let him see her upset.
“I want to make sure we’re clear on things, Natalia,” he said, taking a seat beside her. “I brought you here for a reason.”
“Because King told you to. You’re a good little boy.”
Ghost flinched, anger filling his eyes. Bones took a step toward her. He held up his hand to stop her.
“This facility was once called the United States Space Force Datalink Bunker Portland,” he said. “I know it’s a mouthful. It was a repository for the intel being passed between the Space Force bases after the war began, a home base if you will. There were some engineers and scientists down here, collecting, collating, and parsing the data. Trying to find patterns. Trying to solve riddles. Directly below us, there’s a room. It’s filled with computers. Over two hundred large machines, with who knows how much information on them. The problem is that the room is dead. The power goes on, but the computers won’t start. We’ve had our people looking at it, and they’ve made some limited progress, but they aren’t you. Do you understand?”
Natalia nodded. “What are you hoping to find down there?”
“Directions. We know the Space Force had bunkers and caches all across the country. We know they were stockpiling munitions in the hopes they would be able to make a final push against the trife at some time in the future. I’ve seen the videos. This whole city was being bombarded, thousands of trife were dying, while the scientists hid down here and continued their work. They talked about their plans. How they were trying to prepare for a future that might not come in the final months before it all ended. King wants those munitions. He wants those resources. With them, we’ll be able to unite the scattered remains of civilization under his order.”
“What order?” Natalia said. “His soldiers are murderers and rapists. They follow nothing but fear and pain. The innocent people are naked and hungry. How is that world better than this one?”
Ghost glanced over at Bones. She came toward Natalia, her hand moving so fast she barely saw it before it slapped the side of her face.
Her cheek burned. She looked back at the woman.
“Unlike my father, I don’t believe in hitting women,” Ghost said. “So I brought a woman to do it for me. Do you know why she’s called Bones?”
Natalia could guess. She nodded.
“Good. The Scrappers are the biggest and the baddest. That’s what the world needs right now. Now, you’re going to fix the servers. You’re going to get us into the data stores. That’s why you’re here. That’s the only reason you’re here, and your value is tied directly to that outcome. Do you understand?”
Natalia nodded again. “You should kill me. I’m not going to help you.”
Ghost smiled. “Yes, you are.”
“You can’t force me.”
“Yes, I can. I’m not going to kill you, Natalia. Bones is quite skilled at inflicting pain without causing death. Do you want a demonstration?”
Natalia looked at the woman. She wanted to say no, to give in, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Bones reached for her. She tried to struggle, but it only took a few seconds for the woman to subdue her, grabbing her in a choke hold and pulling her off the cot. She removed a small blade from her pocket, maneuvering it to Natalia’s hand. She shoved it beneath one of her fingernails.
Natalia cried out in pain. She couldn’t believe how much it hurt. Tears sprang fresh to her eyes.
The blade was removed an instant later.
“How much of that can you take, Natalia?” Ghost said. “That was two seconds. Imagine it for two hours. Imagine torture worse than that.”
She shook in Bones’ arms until the woman let her go. She fell back onto the cot beside Ghost. He turned toward her.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I do respect you, and care for you. You’re a valuable asset and an excellent lover.”
She clenched her teeth. He threw that in to sting her again.
“Bones will stay with you while you work. If she thinks you’re stalling, if she thinks you’re breaking things instead of fixing them, she will cause you pain. Do you understand?”
Natalia glanced at him and nodded.
“The coat comes off when you return to your room. Everything comes off when you return to your room. I won’t have you killing yourself while I’m sleeping.” He pointed over the door, to a small hole there. “There’s a camera up there. I saw you in it. I saw you thinking about it. Someone will be keeping an eye on you.”
“You’re going to leave me in here naked? With someone watching me?”
“Whatever freedom you had ended when Pig pulled you out of the Inside. You can get it back, but you have to earn it. Do you understand?”
Her whole body was shaking. She was angry at herself. She had a chance, one chance, to kill herself, and she hadn’t taken it. She couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in here, knowing she had failed. She didn’t want to be naked. She didn’t want someone watching her. If she had to earn his trust, she would earn his trust. If that was the only way she could survive in this hellhole of a planet, then that’s how she would survive.
She had no strength left to resist.
“I want to get to work,” she said. “I want to earn your trust.”
Ghost smiled. He leaned over, kissing her on the cheek. She didn’t try to escape from it. She leaned in toward it.
It was better than the pain.
38
THEY NEVER WENT TO SANISCO.
They never even came within a hundred kilometers of it.
There was no reason to go there. Hayden already knew where King had brought Natalia, and after an hour of driving Chains had stopped the armored vehicle, declaring they didn’t have enough fuel to take the already beaten path north to Ports.
That was fine with him. He could deal with King later. Natalia always had been and still was, his goal. Once she was back in his arms, they would figure it all out together.
There was no specific course for them to plot. They didn’t have a definitive path to follow. Chains had driven the route between Haven and Sanisco multiple times, so she had a general idea of the landscape heading toward the north, including the mountains and valleys in their way. She had set a vector she guessed would bring them to the road King had cleared toward the city fifty kilometers from the Fortress, hopefully bypassing notice.
With a little bit of pressure, Commander Ales had agreed with her overall approach, claiming the maneuver would put them at least ten kilometers past where Sanisco’s Enforcers typically ranged.
Not that they could count on anything the Scrapper Commander said, but he wasn’t in the best position to lead them astray. If they came under attack, he would come under attack, too.
Her decision turned out to be the right one. Darkness was falling by the time they rumbled up a slight incline, crushing the light vegetation around the road beneath the tank’s powerful treads. They had bashed their way through countless bushes along the way, the heavy machine able to shove aside or climb over ev
erything that had been in their path. They had been forced to stop a couple of times while a goliath roamed past, and they had driven directly through a group of trife that attempted an attack before the Butcher crushed a few and scared the rest off, but otherwise, it had been easy-going.
Hayden was confident, and he had reason to be. The vehicle they were riding in was invulnerable to the trife, and the Butcher sitting on top of it was deadly to them. They had claimed a raft of gear from the Pilgrim’s spoils, not only weapons and ammunition but armor and food as well. Maybe the Scrappers in Ports would have superior numbers, but he would have superior firepower.
He was going to get her back.
He looked over at Jake. The Borger had been quiet since Wiz’s attack. Withdrawn. Hayden had put him to work finding a way to modify the USSF body armor so he could wear it either over his mechanical hand or in spite of his mechanical hand since the wider profile of the metal prosthetic made the default sizing impossible. Feeling useful seemed to be helping. Jake was completely focused on the task, and his work bag had fortunately contained what he needed to start making the alterations.
Alterations that had required disconnecting the replacement and the band that kept it synchronized with his organic musculature. It had taken nearly two hours to get it off and had come along with no small amount of pain. It was impressive that the Borger was able to do the work while the tank was in motion, the unsteady ground keeping it shivering the entire time.
He knew his work, and he did it well.
Jake noticed Hayden looking at him. He raised his eyes from the armor. “It’s almost finished, Sheriff,” he said. “I could have just cut the whole sleeve off, but that would have left your entire arm exposed.” He held up the band that coordinated the signals from his brain to the hand. “I put some connectors on here, with matching pairs on the suit. You’re lucky it stretches. Oh, and I repaired the pins.”
He pushed on part of the hand, and the claws extended outward. He opened the hand, and they sank back in.
“Good as new,” Hayden said.
“Just about. Give me another hour, and I’ll be finished.”
“I appreciate all you’re doing for me.”
“Kill a lot of Scrappers, and we’ll be even.”
“This isn’t about killing Scrappers. This is about what’s right.”
“Killing Scrappers is right,” Chains shouted, listening in from the driver’s seat. “Sheriff, I think we should stop here for the night. I’m getting wonkers, and could use a little shut-eye.”
Hayden stood and made his way to the front of the tank. Chains was using the vehicle’s external cameras to see beyond the armor. Only six of the eight displays were intact, leaving the right rear corner of the tank invisible to them.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“King’s road, north of Sanisco,” she replied. “If we opened the hatch, killed the engine, and listened hard enough, we might even be able to hear the ocean.”
“I’ve never seen an ocean,” Hayden said.
“It’s something else; I’ll give you that. I never saw the ocean either. Not until I left Carcity. It’s incredible.” She smiled. “But if you’re going to see it, best to see it with your wife.”
Hayden smiled. Chains was still a bit of an enigma to him, but she seemed to have a truly righteous heart. The kind it seemed the world needed many, many more of. “Pozz that. Are we safe out here?”
“We’re in a tank. We have a Butcher. So long as a goliath doesn’t step on us while we’re sleeping, I think we’ll be fine.”
“Thank you for making the trip with me. I don’t think I could have figured out how to steer this thing.”
“I’m sure you could have, Sheriff. But, you’re welcome. You know, I left home to run away from something. Thanks to you, I feel like I’m running toward something.”
“Pick a spot to settle us in, and then come on back.”
“Pozz that,” Chains said, copying him.
Hayden returned to the rear of the tank. He looked over at the stump of his arm as he did. It was hard for him to adjust to the sight of a blank space where his hand had been.
He positioned himself in front of Commander Ales. They had shifted the Scrapper from the floor to one of the seats, binding him tightly to it. He had been silent for most of the trip, except when they had spoken to him directly, observing their actions with a quiet smugness that Hayden didn’t quite understand. Now he looked into Hayden’s eyes, exhibiting the same smugness.
“What can you tell me about Ports?” Hayden asked.
“You’re going to die there,” Ales replied.
“Then so will you.”
“Most likely, but I’m sure I can’t convince you not to go.”
“No.”
“Can I convince you to set me loose?”
“That depends on how much you have to say. Do you have any idea where we are?”
“There aren’t any windows in here, Insider. Maybe you’re accustomed to that, but we like to be able to see outside.”
“Being a belligerent asshole isn’t going to get you anywhere, Commander.”
“What I’m saying is that if you want to know where we are, I need to see the road.”
Chains made her way back, joining him there. “We don’t need anything from him, Sheriff,” she said. “We should have tossed him out of the hatch when the trife showed up.”
“I can’t kill a man in cold blood,” Hayden said. “Not even a Scrapper. Do you have a knife?”
Chains shook her head. “I don’t like knives.”
“She prefers punching people in the head with steel knuckles,” Jake said. “Here.”
Hayden turned toward the Borger, who was offering a knife. Hayden took it, holding it out toward Commander Ales. Then he knelt down, reaching behind the chair and beginning to cut through the laces that were holding him.
“You’re letting him up?” Chains said.
“I want him to take a look at the displays and try to tell us where we are.”
The ropes fell free.
“Don’t do anything stupid.” Chains said, warning the Scrapper.
“I know you have a low opinion of King’s soldiers,” Ales said. “And rightly so. I’m an educated man, and I’m certainly not about to try to get away.”
“If you’re so educated,” Jake said. “Why are you working for King?”
“There are two reasons why anyone works for King. One, because he offers the most for the least. Food. Shelter. Freedom. His Officers get even more. Whatever we want, really. Two, because I believe in the fate of my eternal soul.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Chains asked.
“When a god comes to walk the Earth with you, the wise man follows wherever he leads.”
Chains looked back at Hayden, her eyebrows twisted.
“You think King is a god?” Hayden said.
“I don’t think it, Insider. I know it. I’ve been with King for many years. A disciple of his, if you will. He was sent by the divinity to re-unite humankind against the trife. He came down from Heaven to save us.”
“Does he walk on water?” Jake asked, mockingly.
Ales ignored him, keeping his eyes on Hayden. “There’s a story about King whereby he wads into a group of a hundred trife and comes out unscathed on the other side. I know sometimes legends get exaggerated, but I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. He is the hand of justice, come to cleanse the world. I guarantee it.”
“And it doesn’t matter how many innocent people suffer at the hands of his followers?” Chains asked. “It doesn’t matter how many people go hungry, or naked, or without shelter?”
“No. Why would it? This existence is nothing. A waypoint on a longer journey. The sacrifices the people make to King’s Scrappers guarantee them a place by his side when the true end comes.”
“Forget this, Sheriff,” Chains said. “He’s clearly out of his grepping mind. Show him the displays and shut him up.”
> “What you call insanity, I call faith,” Ales said. “I don’t need you to believe what I believe.”
“Come on,” Hayden said, taking him by the arm. Ales didn’t resist, heading to the front of the vehicle to examine the displays.
“Hmm,” Ales said, staring at them.
“What is it?” Hayden asked.
“You’re further north than I expected. You’re getting close to the bunker.”
“Bunker?” Chains said.
“A waypoint on the trail to Ports,” Ales said. He leaned forward a little more, getting a closer look at the screens. “Do you see that?” He put his finger on the display, beneath a small, dark lump. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a trife.” He moved his finger. “So is that. And that. And that.”
Chains leaned in behind him. “They’re dead.”
“Yes. It looks like there might be more of them further up. If I had to guess, I would say they attacked the convoy King sent out this way.”
Hayden’s body shook at the statement. An attack? What if?
“Chains, we have to keep going. I need to know what happened. I need to know if-”
“I understand,” she said. “I’m on it, Sheriff.”
She pushed past Ales, dropping back into the driver’s seat. Hayden grabbed the Scrapper’s arm again, quickly guiding him back toward his seat.
“How do you think your god is going to get you out of this?” he asked as he led Ales back.
“Oh, I can get out of this one myself, Sheriff,” Ales replied. “My King will honor me in the next life for my sacrifice in this one.”
Hayden started to react, but he was too slow and unaccustomed to working with one hand. The Commander lunged toward him, reaching beneath his coat and grabbing the revolver holstered at his hip. Hayden turned, trying to get his good hand on the weapon and turn it aside before the Scrapper could shoot him.
But Ales wasn’t trying to shoot him. He lifted the revolver, turning the barrel on himself, sticking it against his left eye and pulling the trigger. The back of his head exploded outward an instant later, and his corpse toppled to the floor.
“Shit,” Jake said, some of the blood splattering against his face. “What the hell?” He saw Ales on the ground, the revolver in his hand beside him.