She peeked at the clumpy power inside, risking licking her fingertip to poke it, getting a thin layer of the creamy white dust on her digit. She shrugged to herself, thinking that she couldn’t do much worse than she had with the berries, and sucked the fingertip clean.
She rolled it across her tongue, smacking her lips together as her face twisted into a mask of confusion with a hint of revulsion.
“Milk?” Lina said out loud, unsure why anything in powder form would taste like the milk from goats and cattle. A noise from outside made her freeze. The unmistakable sound of footsteps over broken glass was loud in the small stockroom she was in. She inched towards the door with her knife in hand. Reaching the double doors to the main part of the building, she peered through the surviving glass in them and froze.
The dog was shaggy brown with different shaded patches on its fur. It stood in the diner and lifted its head to sniff the air. Movement behind it made her stifle a gasp of fear as another, smaller one followed it inside.
Coyotes. Only bigger and bolder than any she had ever seen. They had never come close to the village in the valley, always kept away by their fires and their weapons, but these animals had probably never seen a person.
That would make them bold. They’d have no reason to be scared of humans, to fear her, and she had just walked into their territory.
Not wanting to end up torn apart by hungry predators, she edged away and fell into a door at the rear of the building. The strange bar across it gave way under her body weight, and she spilled out into the sunlight at the rear of the diner, hitting the ground hard. She leapt to her feet, knife held tightly in her grip, fearing an attack. She turned and ran.
Chapter 8
Dex
A whole damned day. He’d spent an entire day searching for Trent James with no prize at the bottom of the cereal box. He’d seen signs of the man’s travels early on, blood stains on the asphalt parking lot behind the arena that led to a copse of trees.
The man was desperate enough to saw his hand off with a sharpened skate, and he was smart enough to not walk down the road in open sight.
Dex spent the dark hours of the night driving through all major routes out of Creston, slowly and without lights. He spotted Seekers hovering above a few times. They seemed to be having no more luck than he was.
Now, as evening came upon him once again, Dex wished he was still cruising around in his car. Trent James had at least a three-day head start, and he could have trudged away in any direction. Dex had found evidence of him an hour or so after beginning his walk into the trees behind Creston, and every so often, he found a fresh set of shoe prints in the damp forest floor.
He was on the right track, he knew that much, but he wasn’t prepared for an extended excursion. His emergency pack was strapped to his back, but it only held extra food, water, and ammo, not a tent. Now, hours from town, he was looking at the prospect of a night in the woods.
A bird chirped and Dex glanced up, sweating in the evening air. He wore his leather jacket, refusing to pull it off. It was preventing his arms from getting scratched in the trees, and it also kept some of his supplies tucked away.
The sun was starting to descend beyond the horizon when Dex’s tired legs stopped. He heard water running nearby. Where there was water, there was life. He crept quietly toward the sound and found what he was looking for.
A body lay partially hidden in the grass. Dex pulled a scope from his pocket and focused it, seeing a balding large man on his back. He saw a hand, then looked to the other arm, which ended in a bundle of bloody cloth.
Dex chewed his toothpick and grinned. Five for five. A week of R and R was just what the doctor ordered.
He pulled the Glock out and stepped forward, landing on a twig that broke with an audible snap, and the man shot up to a sitting position. The sudden movement surprised Dex, and he stumbled, his foot catching on an exposed tree root.
The whine of a Seeker hummed over the canopy of treetops, and Dex glanced up in the waning dusk to see a glint of remaining sunlight reflecting off the drone’s shiny body.
“No way. This one’s mine!” he shouted, not even sure if the drones responded to their speech.
He ran toward the startled man, who was trying but failing to heave himself up to his feet. James fell forward, his large body splashing into the shallow creek. The Seeker had lowered through the trees and now hovered yards above the flailing Roamer.
“Stop! This one is mine!” Dex repeated, slowing his words. He could almost feel the Seeker scan his body and turn its attention to the man in the water. He’d stopped thrashing and was sedentary in the creek; water flowing over his lap.
He was muttering something, and Dex briefly considered shooting the man in the head.
The Seeker drone stayed where it was, and Dex cringed. He knew exactly what it was doing -it was sending for a Tracker, and that was when things would become serious. Dex checked his location on his clunky tablet. Even at optimal speed, he wasn’t getting to his car for four hours, and by the look of the man sitting in the water at that moment, it would take a lot longer than that.
“Get up,” he said.
The man seemed amazed that Dex had spoken to him.
“I said up!” Dex leveled his gun at the man’s head, and now, James finally arrived to his feet. He wore broken glasses, taped together on the bridge, and one of the lenses was cracked, glass spiderwebbed across the lower half.
“Who are you?” he asked. Most humans had heard of the Hunters, but not all of them. From the brief glance of this man’s file, he had come from a small arms plant outside Cleveland.
“Name doesn’t matter. I’m here to bring you in. Hand or no hand, they want you,” Dex said.
“Can’t you just kill me?” James asked, glancing nervously up at the drone hovering in the air above them.
Dex was surprised by the man’s request. Most of the time the Roamers were cowards. A man prepared to die to escape the Overseers, well, that was a man Dex might grow to respect. But there wasn’t time for that now.
He shook his head. “You see that drone?”
The man placed soggy feet onto the firm ground; each step made a squelching sound. He nodded.
“He’s sending out a beacon to his buddies. They’re called Trackers. They’re about yay high.” Dex lowered a hand to somewhere in the middle of his thigh. “They’re mean SOBs. Carry enough ammo on their little bodies to tear through twenty guys your size, but they don’t stop there. They’ll rip you to shreds, and if you had an ID tag still, that would be all anyone would have to identify your body by. In your case, you’ll become a splatter in the forest. Parts of you will float down this creek, other parts will stay here, decaying into the earth.”
Trent James swallowed hard and clutched his cloth-covered stump. “Just kill me,” he pleaded.
“Too bad, amigo. We’re going now, and we have to hurry.” Sometimes Dex tried to befriend the targets, to let them think he might switch sides and help them. He wasn’t sure if this was going to be one of those times. He didn’t have the patience to play games right now and was glad to see the Roamer walk forward.
Dex glanced up at the Seeker and started to move quickly, happy to see James keeping a good pace.
He peered over his shoulder and saw the drone was following at a distance. He only hoped they could return to the car before the Trackers intercepted them.
They moved quicker than anticipated at first, but after forty minutes, the large target slowed dramatically. He wheezed and coughed, making enough noise for a Tracker to find them from a mile away.
“Will you cut that shit out?” Dex begged, but it didn’t do anything.
“Asthma,” James said, patting his pocket as if he expected to find an inhaler. The guy was a hot mess and was lucky to have made it this long in the factories.
Dex hated talking to the targets, but he was bored and also anxious they were going to be cut off before they got to his car. “Why did you run?” he a
sked without malice.
The man didn’t answer at first, and when Dex was about to resign himself to another two hours of silence, he spoke.
“They needed me. I could see it. I kept track of supplies; logistics and all of that. What moves in and out of each factory, and I chose the right locations to warehouse goods: food, clothing, weapons, chits, tools. I was the guy that created the software for them.” James was still wheezing, but the talking seemed to help.
“I thought you were an accountant… or an auditor or something,” Dex said.
“I am… I was, but I also minored in Supply Chain back in the day,” James said, and Dex squinted at the man. He didn’t think he could be over forty.
“How old are you?” Dex asked him, and the man shrugged. It must have been in his file, but Dex hadn’t read that far.
“I haven’t thought about that in a long time. It’s been twenty-five years, right?” he asked.
Dex nodded.
“Then I’m forty-six. Or close. I graduated at twenty-one. Hadn’t even started in the work force.” James looked in the distance, his eyes glossing over as they trudged through the copse.
Dex thought about his own age. Was he forty now? He had to be. “So how did you become in charge of logistics for the Overseers?” James had piqued Dex’s interest. There might be more to this Roamer than he’d initially thought.
James stumbled, and Dex stuck out an arm, catching him. His skin was pale and slick with sweat.
“Before you answer, hold on for a moment.” Dex pulled something from one of his jacket’s many pockets.
“Nanites?” James asked, his rheumy eyes wide.
“You bet. Can’t have you dying before I bring you in. Wouldn’t look good on my resume.” He placed the injector against James’ neck and pressed, the needle distributing healing cells into the large man. “How did you make it this far?”
“I had antibiotics and a shot of adrenaline. I found them in Creston,” the man said, staring at the ground. He rubbed his neck at the injection site and was already looking better.
Dex glanced to the cloth over the man’s bloody stump and knew they’d have to clean it soon if they made it out of the forest alive.
“Go on with the story,” Dex grunted.
James cleared his throat, his wheezing all but gone. His footsteps were faster, surer of themselves, and Dex knew the shot was doing its magic. “I was brought in with everyone else at the start. Cattle herd lines. I saw at least a hundred people shot down or torn apart by what we call Trackers now. Back then, they were only terrifying robot dogs. People were turning on people, everyone was crying, children screaming…
“I remember seeing them for the first time. Three of them walked the line of us. They were so tall, thin but muscular. I heard them talk to one another, clicks… I’ll never forget that. I could smell them as they strolled by, as casually as if they were on the beach on vacation. They smelled like a tannery.”
Dex scrunched up his face. He knew exactly what the guy was talking about. “I remember visiting one when I was a kid in school. I’ve smelled them too, unfortunately.” Dex had been face to face with them too many times to count, each one he worried would be his last.
“That’s right. Anyway, they went by me, not so much as glancing at the line. Some guy, brave or foolish, tried to attack one of the three. The Overseer grabbed his neck, lifted the guy, and snapped him like a twig, dropping his body to the ground. They kept moving, clicking away in conversation. I knew we were screwed at that moment. I’ve never told anyone this before, but I… I wet my pants then.” James was moving faster, and Dex had to hurry to catch up.
It was dark now, the last of the sunlight sunk beyond the horizon, and Dex hoped they could make it back without needing to use his lights. The Seekers could always tell where he was by his ID, but drawing extra attention was never a good idea.
Dex remembered the lines well himself. He’d stood in them with his parents. They took his mom first, his dad had gone maniacal, trying to fight for her. The shot from the Tracker had been fast and efficient. Teenage Dex hadn’t known where it came from until his saw the line of smoke from the robotic four-legged creature’s attached weaponry. Dex had noticed it see he wasn’t going to go after the female woman being dragged away, and it turned, scanning the rest of the crowd. Dex was left with his dad convulsing on the ground beside him, until he stopped moving completely.
Dex had gone into the camp that night covered in blood and had made a vow. Now, as he blindly worked his way through the forest, he hated himself for what he’d become. He spat on the ground and kept moving.
“I won’t tell anyone about your accident,” Dex said, getting a nervous chuckle from the other man.
“Sure. Like it matters. Are they going to kill me?” he asked.
Dex uttered a grunt. It meant he didn’t know. “Not if you’re important enough. Keep talking.”
“I majored in accounting, but I had a mind for logistics. I was thinking of getting into that field instead, but my dad…” James paused. “Not that any of that mattered after they came. So here I am.” He gave a depreciative, one-handed shrug, “I worked for them in a warehouse for ten years and became a supervisor.”
Interesting. A supervisor meant he was in charge of people. Humans. The workers always hated the supervisors. They all thought they’d sold out, working for the Overseers like lackeys. Dex wondered if the Roamer was trying to pull a fast one on him.
“I started to make changes and suggesting things that improved flow. I had the warehouse running so smoothly that they only needed half the workers,” James explained guiltily, and Dex didn’t need to ask what had happened to those they didn’t need. They were either killed or transferred to some other menial task. “One of them came to meet with me. He had a human with him. A middle-aged woman. She was smart.”
“She and I talked about the system they were operating on, which was their own homegrown software, from wherever the hell they came from. It might have worked for them, but on Earth, it didn’t make a lot of sense. I spoke my mind and was lucky to live through the day. I know that now, but back then, I thought they needed me more than I needed them.
“She whispered something to me I’ll never forget. When the Overseer was out of range. She smelled wonderful, like flowers in the spring, her chest pressed against my shoulder, her breath hot and sweet.” James’ voice was light and wistful.
Dex was right beside the man, and he pulled out his tablet, seeing the icon for his car up ahead a mile or so away. Close. They were close. “Well? What did she say?”
“She said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done. You’re helping strengthen their foothold,’ and then she was off, smiling at me like nothing happened. She walked away beside the towering alien, her heels clicking down the hallway, sounding like its clipped speech.” James stumbled again, and Dex was there to catch him.
“What did she mean?” Dex asked, playing dumb.
“This was ten years in. People still had hope we could come back from all of this. That’s what she meant. She actually thought we had a chance of fighting back. You know the funny thing?” he asked.
“What?”
“I didn’t for a minute consider the possibility that we could rise above this oppression. Not for a damned second. Even after this woman, clearly working for them directly, told me those words, I still didn’t believe it. So I did what anyone in my position would do. I created the logistics program that optimized the running of supplies from breeding grounds, to camps, to manufacturing plants. I controlled which truck went where and what they took with them.
“They treated me like a king.” He motioned to his belly which, unlike most of the human population, was well fed. “I had women, my own home with staff. I had it all.”
Dex was confused by one thing. “If you were so shit hot, why are you here, walking in a forest with your hand missing?”
James paused, and Dex had to give him a light shove to keep walking. “
I don’t know, to be honest. I woke up one day and it was as if a veil was lifted from my mind. I saw the way the staff stared at me, like they wanted to kill me. I saw the shipments for one of the breeding grounds, and I actually thought about what they were doing to us as a people. I hadn’t been to one of those grounds before, have you?”
Dex didn’t want this to be about him. He’d seen the atrocities the Overseers brought on them, but this runt didn’t need to know his story. He just grunted, and James continued.
“It’s sick. Their entire operation is horrifying, and I realized that I’d been part of it. That woman had been right; I helped them. I spent fifteen years improving their processes. I mean, what the actual hell had I been thinking? I thought about killing myself, but that wouldn’t atone for my sins.” Dex felt his blood pumping quickly, like he was about to hear something he shouldn’t. He hoped the Trackers weren’t close by, and that the Seekers weren’t hovering above them recording their conversation.
Dex and his target were close to his car. Half a mile and they were free. He could bring the prize home, then he’d be off to the isolated lake house for a week. He needed it. Dex thought about a roaring fire in the fireplace, the whiskey he’d left in Creston, and the stale cigarettes. He also had a couple books he hadn’t gotten through, and he was ready to be done with this one so he could enjoy the brief respite.
“What did you do?” Dex asked.
“I screwed with the program.”
“How?”
“Moved some people around.” James glanced at Dex with the corner of his eye, his mouth opening slightly like he wanted to add to it, then his lips sealed tightly.
Occupation: A Post-Apocalyptic Alien Invasion Thriller (Rise Book 1) Page 5