Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  Lou addressed them all. “Please be ready. I’m going to sleep in the house. I need to prepare Coryn.”

  About time, Coryn thought.

  Shuska spoke up. “We’re ready.”

  A smile spread across Lou’s face, jubilance and joy filling her. “Thank you. Thank you all for helping us get here. We have a chance to change the world.” She hopped down off of the stool and went to Matchiko’s side, holding out her hand.

  Matchiko looked at Lou’s open palm. She let out a sigh deep enough to fill the barn. “We don’t know that she can’t do us any harm. Especially now. Wait another day.”

  Lou glanced at Coryn. “No.”

  Coryn’s wristlet fell into Lou’s hand. She immediately handed it to Coryn, who strapped it on.

  Good.

  No one spoke as they walked out, although they all watched her, and Coryn was sure the barn would erupt in conversation as soon as they left. Barns were never a good thing.

  They found Paula in front of the fire, playing tug with Aspen.

  “Good thing Paula doesn’t sleep,” Lou said.

  “Why? Not that I don’t agree.”

  “She can take care of Aspen when he wants to play. He probably sleeps less than you do, right?”

  “He ought to be exhausted. He walked almost as far as the horses today.”

  Paula looked up. “He is. He’ll settle now that you’re here.” She nodded toward Lou, her voice shading toward disappointment. “Nice of you to come back.”

  Lou ignored the comment. “We’re leaving at dawn. So we’re going to go to bed soon. Can you make up a second bed?”

  Paula gave a slight curtsy, which Coryn interpreted as robot irony, and headed toward the closet. Lou and Coryn sat together on the same brown couch Coryn had fallen asleep on when they first came in for the night. Coryn turned slightly in place to face Lou. “So what does getting the call mean?”

  “I’ll have to start earlier,” Lou said. “I told you this is a bad time for you to join us. Things are serious out here. We’re failing. The wilding is failing. There’s too much to do. We don’t have enough resources. We don’t know enough to do this. We can’t keep the predators alive. Wolf packs and mountain lions get shot. Or they die. We can’t get a grizzly population started, even though this used to be part of their native habitat.”

  Lou’s staccato statements felt like slaps. “You’re planning some kind of war with the city because the wolves keep getting shot by Returners?”

  Lou leaned back into the couch, putting her hands over her face for a moment and then dropping them. “We could do this. We could restore a functioning wild. Maybe not the one we had, but one that didn’t need us. But to do that, we need an army. Bots and people. We don’t have enough people and the robots keep getting hacked.”

  Coryn decided this wasn’t the moment to point out that Lou herself was hacking robots. Maybe that was just what people Outside did for entertainment when they ran out of wolves to save or shoot. “You’re going to declare war on Portland?”

  Lou laughed so hard she held her stomach, a high nervous laugh that didn’t seem much like her at all. “Think of it as a major protest action with teeth. Obviously we can’t beat the cities.”

  At least Lou hadn’t gone completely crazy. “How do you plan to get people’s attention?”

  “That’s why we have teeth. And what Bartholomew is for. Victor says it will keep the Foundation’s fingerprints off of the serious stuff.” Los hesitated, glancing at Coryn, something unreadable that wasn’t happiness in her eyes. “Victor is my boss.”

  “Serious stuff like security systems?”

  Lou looked sharply at her. “You should forget you heard that.”

  “How did you get involved in all this?”

  “I got recruited to help almost as soon as I got out here.”

  “So why’d you write all those flowery things about how peaceful and happy it is Outside? You made me think it was all pinto ponies and knocking down old barns.”

  “No one’s allowed to write the truth, especially not and send it to the city. It’s a shared fiction we use to survive. People who talk about how bad it is out here get shot.”

  Coryn almost protested, but then she remembered Lucien lying under the flowering tree with all the life drained from his body.

  Lou stood up and started pacing in front of the slowly dying fire. “A lot of work is coming to fruition right now. Not just us.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the barn. “Not just us. But the Foundation, which is really big and has a lot of resources. That’s part of why it’s so tricky. The foundations need us, and they need the cities, and they need to make all of this work. I think some of the other NGOs are in on it, too, although no one will tell me. And other groups out here who don’t like the cities any more than we do.”

  She remembered the silent army, bent on something, and how Pablo had gone with them and survived. “What about the Listeners? Whose side are they on?”

  “Listeners? They’re like cops covered in sugar. They pretend to help, but they’re really spies.”

  Coryn stiffened. “Are you planning to hurt anyone?”

  Paula came back in, her voice and face both set on some variation of cheerful. “Lou can sleep in the back bedroom, you can take the couch, Aspen can sleep in front of the fire. I’ll watch the door.”

  “We’re not ready to sleep yet,” Lou said.

  Paula held her hands up. “The bed will be ready when you are.”

  “I didn’t see a bed back there,” Coryn said. “Are you going to hurt anyone?”

  “It pulls out of the wall.” Lou leaned forward, looking into Coryn’s eyes. “It’s not likely that we can take a whole city hostage without someone getting hurt.”

  Coryn leaned back against the couch. “A whole city? Portland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. The cities swore to give us enough money and people to finish the wilding. It’s not stable, nowhere near stable. We’ve got a few species doing okay—mostly ones that were okay without us. Eagles. Mice. Two species of bats. Two. A few frogs.” She looked and sounded bitter. “Rabbits. The rabbits are doing great. And the coyotes and the coydogs.”

  “Okay, but it’s only been what—twenty years? Since the great taking?”

  “That’s time for a lot of failure. The cities don’t care. If they could make themselves into starships and just fly away, they would.”

  Coryn leaned back, trying to picture that in her head. It made her giggle, but it might be true.

  “But they can’t,” Lou continued. “They need the wild, and the wild needs them, and if we fail out here, we will all die. Everyone. We’ll all die together.”

  Coryn heard the passion in her sister’s voice, but she thought the Outside was beautiful. “That buffalo herd looks great.”

  “They are doing great. And they depend on us to live. We kill off the weak and some of the young, and most importantly the ill. We pump water to some of the places they go, fill artificial lakes for them. We track most of the adults. They’re not wild. They need us, and we don’t have what it takes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll explain on the way to Portland.”

  “You mean Vancouver. The Washington one.”

  “Yeah. There’s no point in crossing the Columbia. I have some authority throughout the state. Most of us do. That’s why we’re working the Washington side. There was . . . something that happened. Portland needs us to go defend it, and so that’s what it means that we were called up.”

  Coryn stared at the fire, which had shrunk to bright coals.

  Lou stood up. “Want some water?”

  God, did she ever. “Yes.”

  Lou came back with two full glasses. “You still don’t drink anything stronger?”

  “This doesn’t seem like the time to start.”

  That made Lou smile.

  Aspen stopped following Paula around and
jumped up into Coryn’s lap. She made sure Lou was looking at her. “So what you’re saying is Portland is calling you to help it, and you are going to use that to get in close enough to attack the city?”

  “We can’t change anything by telling the truth.”

  Maybe Lou couldn’t hear herself. She didn’t want to ruin the moment or send Lou running back to the barn, and she wanted some more time to think. So she sat and drank her water and stared at the fire. It felt good to be sitting by her sister even though she wasn’t sure how to feel about this new Lou.

  Maybe this moment was the one most like all of the moments she had imagined back in the city.

  Lou seemed to have pretty much come to the same conclusion, since she sat quietly as well for a long time.

  “Is there anything else I need to know?” Coryn asked.

  “Probably a lot. For one thing, you need to work for me in order to go along. I presume that’s okay.”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t want to work for her big sister?”

  Lou gave her a funny look.

  She grinned. “I’m teasing you. I’ll do it. I had to give up my basic when I crossed the border.”

  “I forgot about that. Consider it done. I have ten open positions. You’re now a—” She stopped and rolled her eyes up into her head, her way of saying she was thinking. “Let’s make you a wrangler.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You can be a wrangler, a cook, a bookkeeper, a botanist, or a biologist. If I make you a bookkeeper, I’ll have to send you back to the farm.”

  “What if I want to be a biologist?”

  “You don’t have the credentials.”

  “Fine.”

  “Well, wrangler Coryn, let’s go to sleep. I’ll set you up to get data on our networks starting tomorrow. Your wristlet will be your best friend.”

  “Can you do that now? What else do I need to know?”

  “Sleep. We leave in four hours.”

  “I guess I did need to know that.”

  Lou shared a genuine smile with her before padding into the back bedroom.

  And now what? She’d been ready to leave her city and never look back if that was what it took to get to Lou, but she’d never in her wildest dreams imagined she might attack a city.

  Aspen snuggled up to her. She felt his warm, soft breath against her cheek. What was she doing?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The sun beat down on Coryn, making her slightly nauseous. She turned in her saddle, checking on Aspen. He balanced in front of Paula, looking like he was telling the robot what to do. Coryn slowed down so they rode side by side. Paula’s horse was a good four inches taller than River, so Coryn had to reach up to touch Aspen’s nose.

  “You’re getting a lot better,” Paula said. “You almost look easy on a horse now.”

  She’d had a lot of practice recently. They had been riding and camping for two days. “It only hurts a little.”

  “Pretty soon it will feel harder to walk than to ride.”

  “Not for you.”

  “Silly human.”

  Coryn smiled. If they weren’t riding toward a fight the day would be perfect. Instead, all of the things that she still didn’t understand circled in her head. So many unanswered questions.

  She glanced down at her wrist. She’d been able to check that it worked, but that was about all. There had been very little connection out here the few times she’d tried, and she really couldn’t stare at the thing while riding. River sensed distraction and tried to eat grass he shouldn’t or get too close to Mouse or Shadow, or, worse, to Monkey. Monkey liked to kick at him.

  Up ahead, Lou called for a halt. She had told Coryn that they were nearing Yakima, which, like Cle Elum, had survived the culling of the cities.

  A stream ran next to the road, thin in a wide and rocky riverbed. They walked the horses carefully down the steep hill from the road to a clear, wide beach surrounded by scrub oaks and alders. There were only seven of them; Daryl had gone back—reluctantly—to keep things running at the main house. Lou and Matchiko and the ever-looming Shuska, Blessing and Day, Coryn and Paula. At least two people at a time stayed mounted to act as guards while the others watered their horses.

  Coryn wasn’t asked to guard, or Paula, even though Paula would have been better than any of them. That bothered Coryn a little, but she let it go. She settled for watching the others. They were all good hands with the horses, confident. Shuska seemed the best. When they camped, her dark bay horse, Max, followed her with no lead line and seemed to do whatever the big woman wanted with no need for direction. Max stood as tall as Mouse, and broader.

  They ate handfuls of nuts, dried apples, and stale bread for lunch. Instead of getting back on the road, they seemed to be waiting.

  A group of five other riders met them, led by a stocky man on a nearly-black horse. He had short hair above a square face, and a decided air of authority. As that group began the same routine her group had been through, Lou brought the man over to where Coryn waited, scratching behind River’s ears. “Coryn, this is Victor. He’s one of my bosses, and while you work for me you also work for him.”

  Up close, she could see that he was a week away from clean shaven, and a scar started at the right side of his mouth and travelled almost to his ear. His left pinky finger was missing. All of his breadth looked like muscle. He had an easy but surface smile, and his eyes were warm as he held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” she answered.

  He knelt down and held a hand toward Aspen, who had been watching him from a few feet away, staying clear of River’s hooves. Aspen regarded him for a moment, then presented himself to be examined and then petted.

  While he was scratching Aspen under his chin, Victor looked up at Coryn. “You know we won’t be able to stop for him. You have to keep him safe, or not.”

  She swallowed. “I might stop for him.”

  “You can’t separate from us. If we had a safe place to leave you, we would. I need to make sure you understand that. Do you?”

  She stiffened but managed to get out a single nod.

  “See, I don’t care about you, at least not yet. But I do care about your sister, and I don’t want her distracted. So you have three jobs. Stay nearby. Watch your dog. Do what we tell you and only what we tell you.”

  He sounded like Lou. She said nothing.

  He stood up and glanced toward Paula. “Will you let us give you orders for your robot?”

  Paula stood by the river, at least a few hundred feet away. She had clearly been listening. She turned her head toward them, her expression so blank Coryn couldn’t read any clues about what she should do there. She looked back at Victor. “Can you give me an example?”

  He shook his head.

  He was trying to control Paula! Everything in her resisted, and she finally looked him directly in the eye. “I won’t order her into any danger.”

  “We’re all going into danger.”

  “She’s going to protect me.”

  Victor stared at her. “What if Lou needed protecting?”

  Coryn swallowed. “I could ask her to do that.”

  “What about Blessing?”

  “That, too.”

  “What about me?”

  She took a long time to decide how to answer. “If Lou and I are safe, and it wouldn’t put Paula in too much danger.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You do know she’s a robot?”

  “She’s mine. She’s been mine since I was a child.”

  His face tightened so hard and fast that she expected him to argue. He started to turn away, but then, as if it were an afterthought, glanced back. “What if you had to choose between saving your robot and your dog?”

  The question stopped her cold. “I hope I never have to.”

  “You should decide before we get closer to Portland.”

  After he had walked away from them, she clutched Aspen to her and whispered in his ear. “I don’t like
that man. I really don’t.”

  About five minutes after Victor finished his conversation with Coryn, a string of bicycles came down the road toward them. The riders wore matching black spandex and bright yellow tops and braked to a neat stop just opposite them. They waved hello and carried their bikes over their heads down to the trees, where they propped them carefully against branches and trunks. One even hung his bike from a branch, as if the dirt might contaminate his wheels.

  This was the man Victor walked over to and greeted with an enthusiastic hug.

  Coryn found Lou, and asked her, “Bicycles?”

  “We use tours from the city to get people out here.”

  “Out here to do what?”

  Lou shook her head ever so slightly. “What do you think?”

  “Well, so you have more people who see what needs to be done out here.”

  “And so we can stay up to date on what’s happening in the city. But we’re past using it for a recruiting tool. These are all regulars.”

  “They’ve got nice bikes,” Coryn observed. She led River over toward the water, which put her in closer earshot to Victor and the head biker. She noticed the word “Lead” running up his arm, and looked reflexively for the other two positions. One woman proclaimed herself as “Sweep” and a taller, thinner one as “Float.”

  Victor noticed her and led the man he was talking to farther away.

  Coryn watched River slurp up water, then took him back up to Paula. She patted her leg and Aspen followed her over to the sweep. The woman was stouter than a typical bicyclist, although she had the muscled thighs and calves. She looked like she was older, maybe even in her forties, with thin lines of wrinkles surrounding green eyes. Her hair had been cropped short, and curled close to her head. Coryn held her hand out. “I used to ride with the SeaVan bike club. I always liked to be sweep.”

  The woman smiled. “It’s my favorite position.”

  “So you’re good at changing tires.”

  That turned the smile into a laugh. “Yeah, I’m good at clean up. But I leave the really slow ones.”

  “Even out here?”

  “No slow riders get to come with us.”

  Coryn grinned. She had seldom wanted to leave riders behind when she was with the club, but the more experienced ride leaders had made her. It would be fun to be on a ride where everyone was professional. “Where did you start from?”