She stuck her head in, wondering if she was the only person there. Her ears caught the sound of dripping water on the floor above. But no movement came from inside the shelter. She stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind her. Lights flickered on overhead. She turned, seeing an identical keypad on the inside of the door. To be sure she wasn’t trapped, she entered the code, and it opened again. Then she turned toward the shelves, hearing the door whoosh shut behind her.
On the back of the door, a sign described how to reboot something called the solar relay if no power was feeding to the shelter. But she had power, and she was relieved.
She eased forward, taking in the space. More shelves lined the walls, and an open doorway stood at the opposite end. She moved through it, finding another room beyond, once more full of shelves. Unfamiliar rectangles lined them. She wondered if these were the books Rowan had described to her.
She pulled one off the shelf. A mildewy smell blossomed up, and it fell open. It wasn’t a box like she’d pictured, but was comprised of a number of thin, flat pieces, each filled edge to edge with words. She scanned over them, recognizing a few here and there. Again the words used every letter, fully spelled out like in the descriptions she’d found regarding the asteroid. She put the book back and pulled a different one off the shelf. When she opened it, the colors surprised her. Images filled this one, depicting a variety of structures and scenes. She didn’t know what to make of some of the pictures. The buildings were stone like the ones she’d been holing up in at night, but they weren’t wrecked. Some were quite elaborate, with intricate designs and beautiful stonework. Other images showed vast green landscapes dotted with color; others relayed scenes covered with the same huge plant she had seen on her first day outside the city. One showed a woman standing next to a single colossal plant that dwarfed her completely. The description below read: The Roosevelt Tree, King’s Canyon National Park. She didn’t recognize any of the words, but the object was definitely similar to the giant plants she’d seen.
Forgetting how wet she was, she flipped through page after page, wondering if someone had created these images for a purpose.
Finally she replaced the book. She’d been standing there a long time.
Then she spotted a dented metal box on the bottom shelf. She pulled it out. When she flipped up its small latch, she found a PRD, at least ten years old from the look of it. She tried to turn it on, but the battery was dead. She stood up, placing it on the table.
She turned, spotting a large hanging map with a list of coordinates written on a poster below it. The poster read Weather Shelter Network, and listed other shelter locations. Red dots on the map above marked where they were situated across a vast geographical area. She took out her PRD and imaged the coordinates, then the map.
Another open doorway was set in the opposite wall, and she passed through to the last room. Four cots took up half the room, with folded, warm-looking blankets at the foot of each. A small sink, toilet, and a strange space with a protruding nozzle stood on the other side. Nearby were a small table, a few chairs, and some dishes and utensils.
She sat down on one of the chairs, an old green one. She took her bag off her shoulder, then removed her soaked coat. A chill set in at once, so she glanced around for a heat source. Against one wall was a small box with a lever. She walked toward it. The bottom of it sported numbers: 50, 60, 70, 80. The lever moved a red needle up and down across them. It was an ancient kind of thermostat, she realized, controlled by an old analog lever. She set it to seventy, then sat back down, draping her wet coat over another chair. It felt good to sit, to have the weight of her bag off her. She dug through her belongings and pulled out her PRD, checking for messages. Willoughby hadn’t contacted her about the Rovers. She would have to wait here. Glancing around the shelter, she wondered if she could find a clue on her own.
Returning to the initial room, she took a cursory inventory of all the MREs. So much food filled the shelves that her stomach starting rumbling just looking at it all. She chose a dinner that was said to simulate something spelled fettuccine alfredo, and returned to the little kitchen. Inside one of the drawers, she found a wicked-looking knife. It wasn’t a simple food knife, but had the kind of handle that looked like it would be good in a fight. The blade gleamed, and the edge felt sharp. She decided to stash it in her tool bag.
She returned to the table and began to eat, staring at the shelf of books. She realized they held information, like an ancient form of a PRD. If she still hadn’t heard from Willoughby by tomorrow, she’d start going through them.
After finishing her dinner, she rose from the little table and made her way to one of the beds, taking the old, depleted PRD with her. She found a portable UV charging station on a small bedside table and laid the PRD on top of it. Then she spread out the blankets and placed two pillows at the head of a bed. Stretching out, she wrapped herself up in the warm blanket. She sent a theta wave message to the lights to turn them off, but they remained on. Then she said, “Lights,” hearing her own voice for the first time in days. Nothing happened. A small lamp burned on the bedside table, which she examined for an analog switch. Near the base, she found a button and pressed it. Darkness flooded in. She lay back on the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 13
She awoke with a start, sitting upright in bed. Her eyes stared in the darkness, her heart suddenly skittering. She didn’t know what woke her up, but she felt that something was in the weather shelter with her.
Her hands fumbled for the small lamp by the bed and switched it on. Welcome light flooded the room, and H124 cast off the blanket, jumping to her feet. Her heart pounded so fast that all she could hear was blood rushing through her ears.
What was that she heard? Her body shook. Had the Repurposers found her? Or was it the nightly hunters?
She listened. A faint noise came, a kind of scratching, some distance away. She tiptoed toward the sound. It grew louder in the kitchen, and more so in the first room, where the MREs were stashed.
She strained her ears. More scratching, like someone trying to get into the shelter. She pressed her ear against the door. The sound wasn’t coming from there. She moved along the wall, realizing that something was inside it. She heard more scratching, then desperate scrambling, followed by a crash. She leaped back, hand flying to her chest.
Something was in there.
After a moment of silence, she put her ear against the door again. On the other side, rain muffled all other sounds.
The scratching was higher and closer. Snapping her head up, she saw an air vent above the door. Something moved inside.
She recoiled.
A flash of gray fur pressed against the grating, then vanished. The scratching receded. The hole above the door held only a deep blackness. She stared, backing up against the shelves full of food.
Then the scrambling got louder, and she saw the flash of fur again. A thick, viscous red dripped down the outside of the vent. She bent over it. Blood.
A tiny sniffling came from the ductwork, a sad, lost sound. The fur turned, and suddenly she saw a little face staring out at her. Intense black eyes met her own, as a tiny pink nose sniffed at the grate.
It was clearly an animal, but she didn’t know what the hell it was. She merely stood there, blinking at the creature. It gave another long, pitiful sniff. Then it vanished, its little feet pattering away. A low wheeze sounded, and the creature returned.
It was trapped in the vent.
H124 stood still, not sure what to do. She’d seen things other than humans before. But those were tiny: maggots on corpses, flies buzzing about the air over decomposed bodies. Roaches in the subbasements where the workers lived. But this thing was huge. She watched it pace, its lonely sounds piercing her heart. It didn’t seem hostile.
Making up her mind, she moved to the kitchen and grabbed one of the chairs. She dug through her tool bag an
d pulled out her screwdriver.
She stood up on the chair and went to work loosening the bolts on the vent. The creature backed away. Once the last screw was off, she pulled off the grating.
The little creature hunkered about twenty feet away, at a turn in the ductwork. The vent was too dark for H124 to make out any details. She felt thrilled and scared and awestruck. This thing was alive, but completely alien to her.
She backed off, wondering if it might come back to the edge. Thinking better of it, she opened up one of the MREs, something called soy-based meatloaf, and broke off a chunk. Gently she placed it at the mouth of the vent.
She lowered herself out of sight and returned to the kitchen.
She heard the animal move toward the front of the vent, and then a soft chewing. Quietly she peered around the corner and saw the white face framed in the vent. Its eyes shot toward her at once, two black spheres set in a face of snowy fur. It had gray, rounded ears and a pink nose. She drew closer. She could see blood soaking the fur on its shoulder. As she moved near, it fell over on its side, tongue sticking out.
She stood up on the chair to get a closer look. It was more than a foot long, not including its thick, naked tail. Its little feet were strange things. It had fingers like her, but they were situated oddly. And though it was breathing, it continued to lie there, tongue out.
She reached up, touching the fur very softly. The thing didn’t move. Gingerly, she scooped the creature up in her hands and lifted it out of the vent. It lay immobile. She got it over to the table and laid it down. Now she could see a bad wound in its shoulder, a jagged cut. She’d sewn herself up plenty of times, because workers couldn’t use the biomed chambers unless they had a mortal injury.
She dug around in her tool bag and pulled out her first aid kit. She looked back at the creature, now standing and staring at her. As soon as she moved toward it, it flopped over on its side again, tongue out.
It lay still as she cleaned the wound. Then she got out her surgical needle and thread. She sterilized the needle with her pocket pyro and carefully sewed the gash shut. Still the creature didn’t move. She wondered if it was unconscious.
When she got up to wash her hands, she heard a scuffle on the table. The creature had leaped down from the chair to the floor, its black eyes penetrating her. She leaned closer, and once more it fell onto its side.
She realized it was playing dead, though she didn’t know why. She fought back an urge to laugh, which caught her off guard. She’d hardly ever laughed.
Returning to the kitchen, she picked out two small bowls and filled one with water, the other with the rest of the MRE she’d opened. She watched in utter fascination as the creature, largely prone all this time, now opened its eyes. It stood up and began tottering around the room.
H124 remained as still as she could. It wasn’t anything like the maggots and roaches she’d seen. It was soft and furry and warm. She smiled, delighted to see it explore the room, sniffing at everything. Finally it found the bowl of water and lapped up a few drops. Then it began eating the MRE.
She thought back to the books with their pictures, and she quietly moved to the bookshelf. She saw one called The Magnificent World of Animals, recognizing the last word. She pulled it down and began flipping through it
It showed hundreds—no—thousands of images of exotic animals, with maps showing where they were found, and numbers describing their sizes. She stopped, jaw agape. Was this book saying that all these creatures existed? Some had feathers, which she’d only seen on clothing. She hadn’t known that those came from living creatures. There appeared to be scores of animals with feathers of every color. She got to a section regarding furred animals and started turning the pages more slowly. A grin cut across her face. There it was, the gray-and-white creature sitting not a foot away. She read the name: opossum. She could read only a few of the words in its description, but the image showed one of its kin carrying three babies on its back.
It ate things called snails, berries, and leaf litter, among other things. Tomorrow she’d go rummaging for food and let it stay here with her while it healed. She placed the book down.
Exhausted, she returned to bed. The old PRD she’d found glowed softly on the charging station. She checked its battery level. Forty-six percent full. She brought up its hovering display. It was even older than she’d guessed, probably twenty years or more.
The screen resolved to show a series of video files. She waved past them, finding a locator map like the one that came on all PRDs, but these were the only things installed on it. It was completely stripped down. She waved back to the video page. The files progressed by date, so she picked the earliest one, dated a little more than ten years prior.
It loaded slowly, and for a minute she thought it wouldn’t load up at all. It might have been too old.
Then the file played.
A young man, probably a little younger than she was, stared into the camera. His black hair hung past his shoulders, framing a handsome russet face. He smiled awkwardly. “Hi, there,” he said, his voice deep and soothing. “Thought I’d put my mom’s old PRD to some good use.” He looked behind him, where a stormy sky brewed. His chestnut eyes stared into the camera. “My name is Raven. I’m out here with my parents while they restock the weather shelters. Someone’s got to do it every few years, and now it’s my family’s turn.” She couldn’t believe it. He was part of the group who stocked the shelters? Was he a Rover?
“My parents are making me record these entries and place copies in every shelter. We know there are a lot of people out there who don’t know what happened, or how we came to live like this. They don’t know what happened to the animals who used to share the planet with us. So here I am. A Rover kid. Sharing history. I’ll try not to be too boring.” His brown eyes twinkled as he tucked his jet strands behind his ear. A shadow passed over him, and he looked up at someone off-camera and smiled. When the person left, he leaned close to the camera and said, “My mom. Checking up. I’m supposed to have recorded five of these things by now, but this is only my first. Don’t tell her.” He put a finger to his lips and winked.
“Now where to begin?” He donned a more somber look. “The beginning, I suppose. See, a long time ago, libraries started closing down because no one was using them, and universities shut down their math and science programs for the same reason, so a few people decided to come together to preserve whatever knowledge they could. This was the beginning of the Rovers. We came from all regions of the globe, of every ethnicity and age. My parents and I are Diné. That’s Navajo.” He grinned. “So enough about us. On with the bigger picture.” He shifted to get more comfortable. “Okay. Lesson one.” He lifted his palms up. “What’s up with the weather?”
He sat back, cross-legged. “It started to go bad a long time ago, after the Industrial Revolution. Too much carbon dioxide was ejected into the atmosphere, and everything heated up too quickly. You see, the oceans are a vital part of creating local weather. Even if you’re way inland, the ocean still affects you. The majority of heat from the sun is absorbed by it. Since so much greenhouse gas had been pumped into the sky by human activity, even more heat was soaked up by the seas. This heat then circulated the globe via ocean currents, which again drive weather patterns. With all that added heat, weather systems became erratic. Drought and megastorms became common.
“They say that some people wanted to prevent it from getting worse, but they were far outnumbered by those who didn’t think it was a problem. So they kept going on as they did.
“It may sound crazy now, but back then people didn’t want to do anything about all this. They didn’t believe it was real. My mom says humanity is resourceful when it comes to a crisis, but they’re not very good at preventing one before it happens, especially if it will cost them money.” He gave a mirthless smile. “Money. That’s what it was all about. But in the end, the damage cost them more than tha
t. Droughts. Floods. Fires. Storms. Preventative measures would’ve been cheaper.” He crossed his arms over his knees, which he tucked under his chin. The wind lifted his hair. “Resourceful when it comes to a crisis,” he repeated.
He snorted. “Well, they thought they were being resourceful, anyway. They thought they could fix the climate by messing with it some more. Someone had the idea of cooling down the earth by ejecting material into the upper atmosphere, which would reflect sunlight back into space instead of letting it reach Earth’s surface. They got the idea from volcanoes. When one erupts, ash gets trapped in the sky, and the global temperature has the potential to decrease for a few years before the particles settle from the atmosphere. So they had the idea to engineer sulfate particles that would stay up there for decades. It was called the Apollo Project, and it was designed to block out the sun’s radiation. No one is sure which country launched the particles. They called it geoengineering. There were no laws restricting who could do it, be it countries or individuals. No one knows who was the first, either. We just know Earth was never the same. There was a miscalculation, and the particles stayed up there for too long. Any funds that could have been channeled to fixing the problem were spent on war and surveilling the human population. Then the heat trapped in the upper atmosphere came crashing down, causing disasters worldwide. The crazy thing is that someone tried it again. They engineered a different kind of particle to stay suspended, and come down slowly over time. Only they messed up the design again, and these pieces never came down. They’re still up there, messing with the sun’s radiation and trapping heat down here.”
He looked at the rubble behind him. “The irony. The road to hell is . . .” He shook his head.
He pulled out a newer PRD. “Check this out.” He tapped out a command, then rotated the PRD’s floating display so it faced the camera. “This is the same spot, if you can believe it. Right here, where all this concrete is now.” He held the PRD closer, and she could see a throng of trees like the one she’d seen that first day out, but instead of five or six, so many she couldn’t count. Sunlight streamed through their branches. Huge green plants grew on fallen logs. An elegant, long-legged creature with a brown coat sniffed the plants. He lowered the PRD. “That was right here.” He stood up, gesturing behind him.
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