by A. G. Riddle
“That kind of rationing is bound to have some effect. People will be lethargic. Irritable.”
“Yes. But we’ll all be alive.”
Chapter 19
James
Grigory and I load up the troop carrier we slept in with supplies: food, medicine, and communications gear.
Over our clothes, we don army winter weather gear, including thick gloves and insulated helmets.
Grigory seems eager to get out of this bunker and start going after the people buried in the rubble. The work will take his mind off Lina, and I think finding someone alive would do my friend a lot of good.
“We’re going to dig by hand?” he asks.
“We’ll have to. The excavator’s too large to use at the habitats where the life signs are. It might do more harm than good. Plus we’re going to need it at the Citadel crater.”
“We’re going to dig them out?”
“Yeah.”
Grigory nods, seeming to approve of the plan.
We climb into the troop carrier, and I switch to manual control and gun it, the massive truck rumbling out of the bunker, up the ramp and into the hazy early morning. Camp Seven’s sandy, hard-packed streets are littered with debris. The scene reminds me of coastal towns after a massive hurricane, as though a giant hammer came through and flattened everything and scattered the pieces.
Our destination is a habitat the same size and configuration as the one Emma, Allie, and I shared. A three-bedroom family domicile.
A blanket of snow now covers the lumpy pile of rubble.
I step out of the truck and call out, “Hello! We’re here to help!” I wait for a moment. “If you can hear me, please respond.”
The only sound is the cold wind blowing across the dunes of white-covered debris.
We leave the troop carrier running. The solar panels on top easily power it, even with the diminished solar output. The space heater is set to warm the cargo compartment, where we’ve left our blankets and sleeping bags: a makeshift portable hospital ward. Depending on what we find, it might become an operating room. I’ve laid out the medical supplies I might need. I hope Izumi gets here soon. She’s a far better surgeon than I am.
Grigory marches to the approximate location of the vital signs on the map and starts digging, brushing the snow away and picking up the shattered pieces of the habitat one at a time and tossing them away.
I join in, silently surveying the wreckage: the pieces of the solar panels that covered the top of the home; next, pieces of the roof and ceiling and lights; and then pieces of the wall and hard-plastic studs. The top layer of wreckage is dotted with the same black goo we found in the debris at the Olympus building. I take a second to inspect it, rubbing it between my gloved fingers, searching for any differences between the two samples. It seems the same. It’s gritty, slightly sticky. I think I see a sparkle in the middle of the sample. It’s probably just the sunlight playing tricks on my eyes.
I wipe my hands clean and keep digging. I go slower when we begin to uncover children’s toys. The first toy is a plastic board with puzzle pieces of different shapes: circle, triangle, rectangle, heart, and square, each in a different color. It’s a learning game for toddlers. Allie has one just like it. A minute later, I pick up a shattered tablet and glimpse a leg beneath it. I work faster then, uncovering the torso and the arms and the face.
The child can’t be older than five or six, a boy with dark brown hair, eyes closed, skin gray, hard, and cold.
Grigory and I stand there, staring, both frozen by the sight. The wind blows across the rubble, sweeping bits of grit, dust, and snow over the child. I lean over and brush his face off; then I hoist him up and carry him back to the troop carrier, where I spread a blanket over his body. I was wrong. The troop carrier is more than a mobile operating room. It’s a hearse too.
I wonder if this was the life sign the drone identified. If so, did the child die since the drone’s survey? Was that boy clinging to life while Grigory and I slept in the CENTCOM bunker? Our bellies were full. The troop carrier was warm. And he was out here. Freezing. Dying. Waiting for rescue that never came.
That thought rips through me like a blender tearing me apart. We could have dug faster. Slept less.
I have to know if there’s anyone still alive in that rubble pile.
I open the drone’s control case and study the map. When the drone flew over a few hours ago, it estimated the mass of the survivor at twenty kilograms. The boy we just found is about that weight, if I had to guess. But I have to be certain.
“I’m going to have the drone do another fly-over,” I say to Grigory as I set off toward the habitat again and start digging. Neither one of us says any more about it. We just assume there’s still someone down there. We hope.
Five minutes later, I lift a dining table off a child’s chest. The small body is still. I move the rest of the debris off the boy, revealing his head and face. He has short brown hair and a purple bruise covering his left cheek. Dried blood is caked around his nose. He must have hidden under the dining table. It wasn’t enough. He was about Allie’s age.
The drone’s control case beeps, the sound indicating that the survey is complete.
I walk back to the truck and scan the updated map. The only heat signatures are the truck, Grigory, and me.
We were too late. By how much? Minutes? Hours? If we had dug faster, slept less…
I can’t think that way. We have to keep moving. It’s the only thing we can do.
When we’ve loaded the second child into the truck, Grigory points to the map. “We should prioritize the ones with stronger vitals.”
“No. We stick to the lowest weight first.”
“The adults—”
“The adults—parents—would want their children saved first.”
I know it’s the right thing to do because if I were buried in the debris and Allie were beside me, I’d want them to take her, no matter the odds. So that’s what we’re going to do.
The next habitat is a few blocks away, a crumbled heap that looks disturbingly similar to the one we just left.
The sun is higher in the sky now, but I could swear it feels as though it’s getting colder. That supports my suspicion that the grid is positioning the solar cells between us and the sun. If so, the world will be an ice ball again soon. This time, we don’t have the tools to rebuild our civilization. And we have very little to fight with. As I dig, I can’t help wondering how we’ll survive this.
The digging is slow, back-breaking work. Soon I’m panting, my breath coming out in wisps of white steam.
I pull the gloves off and say to Grigory, “I’ve got to take a break.”
He follows me back to the truck, and we sit in the cab, warming ourselves, each chewing a protein bar, chasing it with water, staring straight ahead.
“It’s using the solar cells to freeze us,” Grigory says.
“Probably.”
“Tell me we are going to fight.”
“If we can.”
“Promise me, James, that we’ll fight them.”
Three years ago, I would’ve said, Of course we’re going to fight. But I’m a father now. What good is fighting if it won’t save my children? Revenge is a luxury. Survival is a necessity.
“We’re going to do what we have to do to survive.”
I can tell Grigory doesn’t like that answer. He shakes his head and bites off another piece of the protein bar. I don’t blame him for wanting to strike back at the enemy that killed the woman he loved. He doesn’t want to survive anymore, not without her. He wants to hurt the thing that hurt him.
We’ve been digging for fifteen minutes when we reach more toys. A stuffed bear. A dozen small animal figurines. A plastic barn smashed to pieces. Yellow fencing that must’ve gone around the barn, wadded up. Bedsheets with a cartoon princess and prince, characters I don’t recognize.
There’s also a small child’s tent, the support frame mangled, the fabric still mostly intact. Alli
e has one just like it. In my mind’s eye, I can picture it set up in our living room. It’s round with a conical top. The walls are striped red and white. Blue flaps hang over the entrance. I can see her hiding inside, me peeking past the blue flaps to scare her and the sound of her laughter filling the small habitat.
In the pile of debris, I reach down to pick up the blue flaps of the entrance. I stop at the sight of a child’s arm. I motion to Grigory, and when he steps closer, I gently tear the tent open, revealing blond locks of hair matted with blood. I jerk my glove off and brush the hair away and find the child’s neck and squeeze.
My vision blurs from the tears that flow when I feel the faint beating of a pulse.
Obviously, the AtlanticNet is down, so I have no way to look up who lived here, and I don’t recognize the girl. I want to call out her name, but I have to settle for, “Hey, can you hear me?”
To Grigory, I say, “Let’s get her into the truck.”
Gently, we lift her and carry her across the rubble. She hangs utterly limp in our arms, feeling so fragile. She’s taller than Allie, probably three or four years old. I imagine she hid out in her tent when she heard the rumbling. Did her parents tell her to go there? We haven’t found their bodies. And based on the drone’s readings, I know what we’ll find if we do.
In the truck, I quickly do a cursory exam. There’s a dark blue-black bruise on her ankle. A similar contusion on her left arm, which looks more serious; the bone is probably broken.
“What should we do?” Grigory asks.
“Don’t know.”
“Aren’t you a doctor?”
“Technically.”
“Well, what is technical thing to do here?”
I close my eyes and rub my eyelids. “I don’t know, Grigory.” The cold and sleep deprivation and aches are starting to affect me.
He’s undeterred. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I had a rotation in emergency medicine twenty years ago, but I haven’t performed any since.”
He throws his hands up. “I remember stuff I learned twenty years ago.”
“Are you sure enough about it to risk someone’s life? A kid’s life? When you might be doing more harm than good?”
“All right, all right. Don’t be so sensitive.”
For a long moment, we just sit there staring at the girl, looking as peaceful as if she’s just sleeping. Except for the patch of blood on her forehead. Now that I can do something about.
I take an alcohol pad from the med kit and clean the wound. She winces but doesn’t wake. I take it as a good sign.
“Now what?” Grigory ask.
“We keep going.”
I’m studying the drone’s infrared map when the radio crackles to life, Harry’s voice booming in the small space.
“Apocalypse one, this is apocalypse two, do you read?”
As bad as things are, I can’t help but smile. I grab the radio and activate it. “We read you. Good to hear your voice, Harry.”
“Good to be here. Rough trip though. Nothing like being a hotdog pulled through the eye of a needle to tell me I need to lose weight.”
The mention of him losing weight momentarily reminds me of the Citadel and the people trapped there. “Hopefully, we won’t have to go back that way.”
“What’s the plan, James?”
“Grigory and I have a survivor that needs medical attention. Izumi and Oscar, I need you to get over here as quickly as possible.” I glance at the map and call out the coordinates of the next habitat we’re going to. “Harry, I want you to take the large excavator in the CENTCOM bunker and drive it back to the crater at the Citadel.”
“Can’t we transport the machine?”
“No. I’m afraid we don’t have a truck or trailer large enough. You’ll have to drive it. Radio us when you get there. The trip is going to take some time. Take all the battery packs you can find. The solar panels on the excavator’s roof aren’t efficient enough to sustain it at full driving speed for long. Plus, I think solar output is already dropping.”
“Will do,” Harry says. “What should I do when I get there?”
“Use the old map of the warehouse. Start digging where the elevator shaft was.”
“Roger that.”
“What do I need to bring?” Izumi asks.
“I’m not sure. We have a Caucasian female, estimated age is four years, multiple contusions, possible fractures, and a laceration to the head. I’ve cleaned and bandaged the open wound. Vitals are stable, but she’s not conscious. Just bring whatever you think you need. And hurry.”
At the next habitat, Grigory and I dig faster, maybe because we’re encouraged by having found a survivor, or maybe because we’re getting better at boring our way into these debris piles.
But this time, we have a problem. We’ve reached the floor of the habitat, at the exact location the drone says we should find a survivor. The map says the vitals are erratic but the heat signature is there. Weight estimate is a little over seventeen kilograms. Almost forty pounds.
“I don’t get it,” Grigory says.
I scan the items around us: a fabric couch cut to pieces. A club chair mangled, almost flattened. A hard-plastic bookcase turned face down, its contents strewn across the floor: books and pictures and trinkets.
“Help me,” I say to Grigory as I grip one end of the hard-plastic bookcase.
We lift it in unison, revealing a boy lying flat on his back, clutching a small plastic spaceship in his hand. We throw the bookcase over and I reach down to check his pulse, which is stronger than I was expecting.
“Hey,” I whisper, my breath coming out in white clouds as the snow falls, large flakes hitting his face and hair.
His right eyelid cracks open, a brown eye peering out at me, hollow, tired, and scared. But he’s alive.
The eyelid slowly closes, and I’m about to get Grigory to help me lift him up when I hear another troop carrier barreling towards us. The safety locks are off and someone’s driving—the truck’s AI would never drive that fast. But Oscar would.
The truck skids to a stop and he and Izumi throw the doors open.
“Over here!” I call out.
“Status?” Izumi asks, bending down, laying a white camouflaged military bag beside the boy.
“We just found him.”
She works systematically, her hands racing over his body. I can tell from her body language that she likes what she’s seeing. She moves slower as she runs her fingers through his hair, probably looking for any lacerations or knots. He turns his head slightly. Both eyes peel apart this time, slowly, like flowers opening, then close again, as though their weight is too much for him to hold open.
“Young man, can you hear me?”
His lips part, but no sound comes.
“The picture and address match a child in the AU database named Sam Eastman,” Oscar says. “Age: four-point-one years.”
“Sam, can you hear me?” Izumi says to him. When he doesn’t respond, she looks up at us. “He’s in surprisingly good shape. How?”
I point to the hard-plastic bookshelf. “Someone—probably his parents—put him under that deep bookshelf. The debris dented it, but it never broke.”
Izumi takes out a flashlight and pulls his eyelids open, moving the light back and forth. “Saved by reading,” she mumbles as she studies his reactions. “The parents?”
“He’s the only life sign at this location. Can we move him to the troop carrier? We’ve got another patient.”
“Yes, let’s do that.”
“Oscar,” I begin, but he’s already moving around the debris pile, positioning himself to pick up the child’s head and torso. I move around to his feet and we lift him up.
As we move across the shaky, uneven pile of debris, I catch sight of some of the black gooey substance sticking to Oscar’s shoes and pants. It appears to be moving. Surely not. It’s probably just him shaking it off as he walks. But I could swear it’s sliding down his pants leg
and up his shoes, converging on the area where his socks would be if he wore them. Strange.
“Which truck?” I call back to Izumi as we clear the house.
“Yours. Let’s keep the patients together. I want to move them as little as possible.”
We set the boy next to the girl and Izumi climbs in and touches a health analyzer to his finger, taking a drop of blood and watching the screen, waiting for results.
“H-H-Hey…” the boy croaks, voice faint and scratchy.
“Hi, Sam,” Izumi says, smiling, placing her hand on his head. “You’re going to be okay.”
“James,” Oscar calls out, voice flat, but loud and urgent. “I’m experiencing…” He freezes, eyes glassing. “I’m experiencing a malfunction, sir.”
“Malfunction?”
“Sir, I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
“Explain.”
“My system says it’s installing a software update.”
How is that possible? Just before I realize the answer, his eyes close.
He’s being hacked.
“Oscar! Scrub working memory and shut down all systems.”
His eyes open.
He smiles. It’s a smile that is authentically human, one that doesn’t convey joy, but smug satisfaction. It’s an expression too advanced for Oscar to manifest. And it’s an expression he would never make.
His voice is different when he speaks, the tone is arrogant and slow and bordering on condescending. I’ve heard it once before.
“Hello again, James.”
Chapter 20
Emma
I’m walking towards the double doors to exit the kitchen when Fowler calls to me, “Emma, could you stay for a moment?”
I wait while the rest of the team exit, the only sound the swinging double doors rocking back and forth. When everyone’s gone, Fowler says, “For the record, I agree with the plan you put forward. Extreme rationing is the right move now.”
I sense a ‘but’ coming.
“However, I hope you’ll be sensible about it. When it comes to yourself.”