by Mark Lingane
A hot cup of dark green liquid sat on the window ledge, billowing steam. He twisted the cup, noting the ebb and flow of the heat condensing on the windowpane, coming and going like breaths.
A tall, thin woman sat in a corner on a cowhide chaise longue. She was reading a thick book, quietly flicking the pages. Occasionally, she adjusted the large-framed glasses on her beautiful face. She didn’t look up as she spoke.
“Perhaps I’ll lie down soon.”
A few moments passed before he responded. “You seem to need more rest these days, Acacia.” He adjusted his round glasses, watching her reflection in the window.
“Don’t we all.” Her voice remained indifferent. She turned a page.
He stared out at the city, silently watching the groups of people roaming the barren, bleak streets.
Eventually, the woman stood up and walked over to stand behind him, her youthful step full of energy. She joined in his vacant stare over the city, punctuated by the Wasatch and Oquirrh mountain ranges that curled around on the horizon. She clasped her hands in front of her.
She turned and examined the tall plants standing around the room, vivid and colorful, towering up toward the roof. The stems of the plants, curling under the weight of the blooms, swayed gently in the breeze.
“I’ll water the triffids this afternoon,” she said.
The Rocky Mountains to the north had failed to block the powerful polar highs this year, and although the bitter winter had delivered little in the way of snow, it had dealt frozen death to a struggling population battling threats to their survival from all directions of the compass. The snow that had fallen now consisted of a brown sludge and deadly ice patches across the land, bringing a depression that weighed down on all.
“The land is dying,” the Peacemaker said. “I’m failing the people.”
“You’re doing what you have to do. Remember what you’ve built from the ruins of nothing. These people have a home now.”
“But the population’s declining. Is there a point to being leader if there’s no one to lead?”
“You sound like your brother.” She looked down at him, wedged into his utilitarian seat. He was gray-faced and emaciated.
“Please don’t mention my brother to me. He has no interest in people, other than as a means to an end.” His voice resonated with the harmonics of anger.
“You need to address your issues.”
“You know it’s too late for that.”
She yawned, hiding her mouth behind her hand. “I need to recharge my batteries. You have to eat today. I recommend you do that while I’m offline.”
His lips curled. Her terminology made him smile.
“You must eat,” she reminded him.
“I will once I’ve finished my work. So much needs to be managed.”
“You can’t control everything. You can’t save everything.”
“I need to protect the people.”
“Fine,” she said. “Do what you feel you have to do.”
She left him alone in front of the expansive window, a defeated silhouette against the light. The door opened and Acacia disappeared.
The minutes ticked by as the cup on the window shelf cooled. The steam no longer condensed. The only sound was the low hum of the diesel generators deep in the basement of the building.
A small, flickering display to the right of the Peacemaker showed endlessly scrolling numbers. His attention was caught when the scrolling numbers were replaced by a name and two on-screen buttons, red and green. He reached over and pressed the green.
“Hello, Chuck,” he said.
“PM. We have a problem.”
“How can I help?”
“We’re in the middle of heating repairs and we’ve run out of power. The people in the tower are freezing. Can we divert power from anywhere else until we finish?”
The Peacemaker looked around his large office, full of light and heat. He sighed. “You’ll have power shortly.”
“Thank y—”
The Peacemaker pressed the red button, disconnecting Chuck mid-word.
“Christopher.”
“Query?” The voice was hollow, emotionless, with an edge of distortion, and echoed out of nowhere.
The Peacemaker looked out the window. A dozen recently built multistory monoliths stood to the south, gray and bleak, full of starving and freezing people. A few rooms glowed with the fires generated from refuse the inhabitants had salvaged from the streets and collapsing buildings. Heating ducting wound everywhere, but it was useless with so little power available.
“Does any tower have more than five percent?”
“Negative,” Christopher replied. “Repairs to the Great Wall are consuming considerable resources.”
“We can’t let the people live without power,” the Peacemaker whispered. “They could get restless.”
“The citadel currently has twelve percent,” Christopher reported. “The ducting team will require a sacrifice of eight percent. You will only be able to run level-five systems until the team has completed the duties. Once back online, you will have ten percent remaining.”
“I need to prepare for the diminishing. Wind down the generators to shutdown.”
“The third generator is starting to fail. Efficiency has dropped to thirty-five percent. Recovery from shutdown will take two days. What is your command?”
He knew it was pointless. The generators had been built by a genius, and no one else could comprehend how they operated, let alone fix any of the individually crafted pieces.
“Has there been any information regarding Niels?”
“His location is still unknown.”
“It’s impossible for him to have reached the wall. He must be close. Display the last known footage of him prior to his escape. There must be a clue.”
“Displaying surveillance recording. Do you require any further assistance?”
“What I require is the Forty-niners to need me.”
The Peacemaker stared at the small black-and-white images flashing across the display. A man was tinkering away on a long bench. Then he disappeared. The Peacemaker shook his head.
“The probability of assistance with the current conditions is low,” Christopher said.
The small flickering image dissolved. “Then we’d better change the conditions. Play the clip, then power down.”
The footage played …
He stood next to the great tropical plants. The bitter winter winds roared past the window, which were frosting in the cold air, and snow tumbled past in a blizzard. Acacia stood nearby, facing him, but staring at the ground.
‘I // love you,” she said.
The glitch always bothered him, but he’d done his best to smooth it out. It was the lasting memory. It needed to be perfect.
The low hum diminished and spluttered into silence. The lights flickered and the room went dark, leaving the Peacemaker alone and staring into the bleakness outside.
4
FIRE ERUPTED FROM the ruined voidship. Sebastian leaped behind a heavy stone wall that defined the entrance to an ancient, official-looking building. The flames roared past him, and then died down until all that was left was the pinking of cooling metal.
He heard the sound of someone having a coughing fit, and a small metal sheet in the center of the street flew into the air and spun away.
“Welcome to Earth,” she said. “Can you free me before we’re all killed?”
A young woman, wild-eyed and dressed in a green uniform that was covered in grease and blood, lay on the ground. She was thin, had pale skin, and her long blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. A huge steel girder lay next to her. Her arm appeared to be chained to it.
Sebastian rolled his head, trying to stop the world spinning like a top so he could focus on her voice. He blinked. “Why are you handcuffed?”
She indicated the bloodstain under the fallen girder. “I was transferring a terrorist from the detention facility in Denver to the LA Metropol
itan Detention Center. You haven’t heard about it?”
Sebastian shook his head. The world was still spinning. He staggered toward her.
She gasped. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone covered in so much blood and still be alive.”
Sebastian wiped some of the blood off his face. He knelt down and examined her handcuffs. He looked at her, then at the surroundings. He had made it to the North America. The trauma of the voyage, and especially its conclusion, had numbed him. He was in a new country, with unknown enemies.
He decided it was probably a wise move to keep his tesla-ness quiet for the moment. “Look over there,” he croaked.
The girl looked in the direction he was pointing. When she looked back, the handcuffs were open. She rubbed her wrist and gave it a shake. She held her hand out to Sebastian.
“Hi, I’m Memphis.”
He looked at her hand, delirium filling his head with bizarre thoughts, and took it in his own. His mother Isabelle had always been specific about how he should treat a lady he was meeting for the first time. If he didn’t show the utmost respect, Isabelle would whack him over the head with one of her ancient romance novels, which always seemed to have a shirtless man on the cover kneeling in front of a skinny woman in frilly clothes.
He knelt down and kissed her hand. “I’m honored to meet you, Memphis.” He wondered if he should take off his shirt.
“Um. Gosh. No one’s ever done that before.”
“I know that was a bit formal, but my mind hasn’t caught up yet with what’s happening.”
They both stood up shakily. Memphis looked up into his eyes, watching him closely as he rose before her. He staggered backward and stretched his back. She noted that he was tall, his shoulders were broad, his strength was apparent, and he was young. He also had a massive sword strapped to his back. She stared at him. You’ll do, she thought.
He looked around at what was left of the street. “Are you on your own?” he asked.
“I did have a security team, but you seem to have taken care of them.” She looked down at her uniform. It was torn and ruined. She sighed. “This is no good to me now. Help me find a replacement.”
Sebastian looked around uncertainly. “Where are you going to find clothes around here?”
“A woman in my security patrol was about the same size as me.”
“You want a dead person’s clothes?”
She gave him a warm smile. “You sure aren’t from around here. Welcome to the new age.”
They searched through the rubble and dug out the bodies. Sebastian stacked them in a pile, thinking it was better than leaving them scattered. The crashed zeppelin had killed dozens of people, and his searches took him in ever widening circles. He wondered why so many people had been gathered together in one place.
He stood up to stretch his back and saw words scrawled on a nearby wall: The Church lies!
He caught sight of something familiar and dashed over to a pile of rubble. He heaved on a long beam and lifted up a large steel sheet. His steambike. He smiled as he exposed its sad shape. It was badly bent and buckled, but if he could get it to a metal works, he knew he could fix it. He wrestled it out of the wreckage and forced it forward. The front wheel was buckled and squeaked loudly as it rubbed against the shock absorber, which was also bent and was forcing the wheel to grind to a halt with every revolution.
He looked around. Memphis wasn’t nearby. He focused his mind.
As he felt the shape of the shock absorber, his head swirled with pain. He imagined the shock absorber back in the correct shape and snapped the electrons into the correct alignment. Something strange caught his attention as his mind focused on the electromagnetic state. A message? No, it felt more uncertain than that. An unwelcome word entered his mind: Warning. It dissolved into the general background hum.
He focused again and the shock absorber twisted back into shape. He pushed the bike toward Memphis and was pleased to see the rubbing was greatly reduced.
Memphis was standing beside a woman’s body. “Oh, wow, you have wheels,” she said.
“Sort of. They’re not exactly round at the moment.” He looked down at the unfortunate woman. “Couldn’t you have found a way of covering her up?”
The distant sound of artillery echoed between the buildings. Memphis looked down the long street. “We’d better hurry. They’ll kill us if they find us here.”
“Who? Who will kill us?”
“The Chargers. The front line isn’t far from here.”
Memphis unzipped her green uniform and let it fall to the ground. She stepped out of it wearing nothing except her underwear. Her thin body flexed as she reached down for the black-and-blue armor she’d taken from the female guard.
Sebastian spun around and stared intently at the wreckage of the vehicles across the street. They looked similar to the steam utility vehicles they’d driven at the Steam Academy.
“You’re a shy one,” Memphis said, laughing. She grunted as she tugged on the pieces of armor. “When that ship crashed and you came flying out, how did you do that … thing?”
“What thing?”
“You sort of flashed on and off.”
“I’m a … I have some special abilities. I think it’s a survival reflex. I don’t know how I did it. It just sort of happens. But I’m beginning to understand it now.”
“So you have abilities. Really?”
Still with his back to her, he said, “Why? Have you heard of something like this before?”
“No. I was just pretending to be interested.”
“I saw on your shoulder … sorry, I couldn’t help … you’ve got something written there.”
“My tattoos?”
“What are they of?”
“The last thing my mother said to me. And the words her murderer used just before he killed her.”
He turned around. Memphis stood in front of him wiping the dust and grit off the armor. She took several small black boxes from the fallen woman’s pack and stored them in pockets in the armor. She placed a pair of dark glasses over her eyes.
“Can we get going on your wheels?” she said.
He looked at his beloved bike and shook his head. “It’s going to need a lot of work before we can ride it.”
“Shame. We’d better get going. I’m starving and it’ll be night soon.”
“I’ll just quickly hide the bike.”
He felt a little hurt at her quickness to abandon his steambike, but he knew she wouldn’t understand the memories tied to it. He pushed it over to the entrance of one of the buildings that still had a door, and wheeled it inside. He did his best to conceal it, then raced back out to Memphis.
“Shouldn’t you tell someone you’re okay?” he said.
“Tomorrow. We need to get out of here before the Chargers come. You don’t want them to catch you.”
As though to emphasize the point, there was a sudden burst of firepower down the street. She tilted her head and her expression immediately turned to fear. There was a loud whistle and the wall beside them exploded, showering them in masonry.
“Joshua Richards,” Sebastian shouted. “Isn’t anyone ever happy to see me?”
Memphis gave him a quizzical glance at the odd phrase, reached out and grabbed Sebastian’s hand. “Quick.”
They sprinted away, with Memphis in the lead.
People stared out of the ruined buildings with timid, dark eyes, watching as the boy hid the strange vehicle, and the boy and girl left. They crept forward. They only had a few minutes to search through the debris for food or valuables before the Chargers arrived. They approached the crash zone.
From the top of the pile of metal and glass that had once been a graceful zeppelin, a few pieces slid off the wreckage and tumbled to the ground. A child pulled at her parent’s hand and pointed upward. The adult shooed the child away. More debris fell. One by one, the scavengers, wrapped in their dirty brown-and-green clothing, looked up uncertainly.
There wa
s movement. A green creature slid down the metal sheets and jumped to the ground. It tore into the adults, dismembering them in seconds.
The child stepped back, her dirty face full of terror. The infected turned to face her. Green fluid dripped from its many cuts. The child wondered if it was an alien looking for a way home. She extended a finger. The creature stared at it, sniffing the air. It stepped up to her, looked into her eyes, and slashed out. In seconds, it had ripped the small girl apart.
The infected stopped and sniffed at the ground. It clawed frantically at the wreckage, throwing the metal debris over its shoulder with intense determination. It reached down for something, screamed, and lifted up another infected, which hung limply in its arms, dead. It sniffed its mate and let out a mournful howl, letting the other infected fall to the ground.
Two forward runners from the Chargers’ front line, wearing lightweight blue-and-white exosuits, rounded the corner. They saw the screaming scavengers in their rags for clothes, and the strange green creature that was carrying another green creature. The runners lifted their weapons and opened fire.
Rockets screamed down the street and exploded in the pile of debris. The runners jogged forward, tracking the green creature with their automatic weapons as it jumped around. A series of bullets shot through the arm of one of them. It yelped. The runners continued to fire, driving the creature back. As soon as their magazines emptied, they quickly reloaded and resumed firing. The creature hissed at them, turned, and disappeared into a building.
The street went quiet. Several other runners appeared, taking up tactical spots down the street. When they signaled that it was safe, a man appeared. Encased in a heavy exosuit that was half the size again of the runners’, and partially and badly painted in red, Q-backer Charlie Baxter, commander of the Chargers, stomped through the bedraggled group of survivors. His heavily scarred armor was covered in black streaks and burn marks.
Behind the man came two towering tanks, four stories high and raised up on long spider-like legs. Their mechanical movements were punctuated by immense gushes of steam as each leg moved forward.