by Kyle West
Makara nodded. I was surprised to see none of this surprised her.
“Did Bunker One fall in the same way?” I asked.
“It fell in a similar way. It was an attack of demons.”
“Demons?”
“They are what they sound like. They’re monsters, from Ragnarok. They’re still very rare around here. You can find them in areas called Blights. You'll know them as soon as you see them, because this weird, purple fungus grows thick on the ground and stinks up the land. All the trees are coated with pink slime. All animals avoid it – except the demon animals, and you will know them because they stink like rotting corpses and have all white eyes.”
When she said “white eyes,” I couldn’t help but think about Chan, and everyone the xenovirus infected in Bunker 108. It was an image I had been trying to push out of my mind all week. But it sounded like it had happened at Bunker One, too. Only, that would have been twelve years ago. If that was the case, then the human strain of the xenovirus was much older than my father had thought.
I remained quiet as Makara continued.
“The monsters attack any living thing on sight,” Makara said. “That’s how unaffected animals turn – they are bitten, and they become part of the Blight.”
“So, you’re telling me these monsters attacked Bunker One?”
“Yes. They're a lot thicker in Colorado, I guess because it's closer to Ragnarok Crater. But now, it's spreading, even as far as here. It's starting to affect everything. I saw my first Blight in this area about a year ago, farther north. There's more of them, now. There have been mysterious deaths, even by Wasteland standards.”
“It’s nothing demonic,” I said. “It’s the xenovirus. I had no idea it was this dangerous. Not until last week, anyway.”
“When you live underground, you’re blind to what's going on upside. These Blights have been old news here for at least a year.”
“What happens to the animals it affects?"
“They become stronger, faster, and deadlier. A huge wave hit us, that night. Where they all came from, I don't know. There were thousands. But they were animals of all kinds – birds, wolves, even bears – all rotting and twisted, attacking as if of one mind to destroy us. And there were some that have no name, which look like nothing this world has ever seen.”
“Were there people turned into them, too?”
“No. I have never seen people turn into these monsters. Is that what happened at your Bunker?”
I nodded. “Yeah. There’s apparently a new strain that targets humans, too.”
“Then this is only getting worse,” Makara said.
“The bodies exploded, sending purple slime everywhere,” I said. “That seems to be how it spreads.” I thought of Khloe, with a shudder. “Bites also seem to work.”
“Anything that’s infected gives off the slime. It can be pink, or purple. Pink for plants, and purple for animals. The explosions, though…I’d never heard of that until now. That’s very disturbing.”
“How did you escape your Bunker, then?” I asked.
“When the last helicopter took off, I wasn’t even supposed to be on it. My father ran with me in his arms across the helipad with the monsters behind us. He threw me into the helicopter just as it was lifting up. Someone onboard grabbed me. I still remember my father’s face as he fell away, as more of those things overwhelmed the tarmac. He was buried in a wave of them, his arms outstretched, screaming my name. I cried and cried, but we were already flying away.
“The journey to California was incredibly cold. We were supposed to join Bunker 114, but they didn’t have room for us. So, we were to touch down in L.A.. The plan was for the Bunker survivors to find some uninhabited corner of the city and start new. But as we got closer, the helicopter blades just…slowed down. I don’t know if we ran out of fuel or something else, but that next moment, we were spiraling toward the ground.
“We crashed. By some miracle, I survived. I was thrown out of the helicopter and landed in some grass nearby. I was knocked out, and woke the next day to find the helicopter turned on its side like some dead thing. Everyone else had died in the crash – all except me.”
“Lucky.”
“I know. My luck didn’t end there, though. My older brother had escaped in an earlier helicopter that had flown to L.A. as well. I thought he had died.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. But it doesn’t matter now, because he actually is dead now.” She gave a long sigh. “That’s another story.”
“So, what happened after the crash?”
“I escaped, with nothing more than a broken collar bone and a few bruises. I ended up staying at the crash site for a day before heading into the ruins of the city. On my way there, a patrol found me, not from another Bunker like I thought. It was the Lost Angels.”
“Lost Angels?”
“A gang. A man named Raine was their leader. He took me under his wing, and in time I forgot about my past. Soon, I was reunited with my brother, Samuel. He left the community the Bunker One survivors founded, and came to join us. A good thing he did, too. The Bunker survivors were taken and enslaved by the Black Reapers, another L.A. gang. They were our bitter rivals.” Makara sighed. “That was twelve years ago. Another life.”
“God…you must have been, what, seven or eight?”
“Seven. That’s as much as I remember, anyway. I guess I was tough, even back then.”
“Which makes you nineteen now?”
Makara nodded. “Nineteen. Nearly twenty. The point of the story is…yeah, you will cry sometimes. Life sucks, there’s no way around that. But you never know when good might come. Maybe it won't, but you shouldn’t count it out. And besides, that’s what makes us human, right? Even if it seems impossible, even when there is no point; we fight to the death, with smiles on our faces.”
I was quiet for a while. Hearing her story made me feel better, crazily enough – something I would have thought impossible just minutes ago.
"Thanks, Makara. Believe it or not, this actually helps."
“Get to bed, kid. Story time’s over.”
She lay down, and wrapped herself up. I heard her snoring almost instantly.
I didn't know how she could fall asleep so fast. Despite my exhaustion, I lay there for a while, thinking. I thought about how narrowly I had escaped Bunker 108. I didn’t know if I had it in me to survive another encounter with something infected with the xenovirus, human or not.
But at least I had Makara. Makara, who would teach me how to survive out here.
However, the more I saw of the Wasteland, the more I saw how the odds were stacked against me.
I just hoped I could find that fight within me.
Chapter 14
Makara and I woke with the sun. After eating, we set off. It was our goal to reach Oasis by nightfall.
Any tenderness Makara showed last night was completely gone. She did not smile, and her face assumed a hard, stony expression.
“This makes me nervous,” Makara said.
“What?”
“It’s so empty. No signs of human life.”
“Isn’t that normal?”
She shrugged. “I prefer to see my enemy.”
“Do you think they’re following us?”
“I know they’re following us. Every batt we have is in that pack you’re carrying right now. Brux is not going to let that go without a fight. Count on it.”
I smiled. “I still can’t get over the fact that you guys use batteries as money.”
“They’ve been the currency of Raider Bluff for the last ten years. When you have a lot of goods going through a place, you need something to use as money, or things bog down.”
“Raider Bluff?”
“It’s the biggest city in the Mojave, on the Colorado River. Five thousand people, mostly slaves.”
“Slaves?”
“It isn’t pretty, but someone has to man the farms, or everyone starves.”
“Still
…who runs this place, anyway?”
“The Alpha. I haven’t been to Bluff in a while, but last I went, the Alpha was a man named Char. I used to raid with him. He’s a good man, for what good is worth around here.”
“Why wouldn’t he be Alpha anymore?”
“Because if you’re Alpha for over a year, you’re doing pretty damn well.”
“Then why would anyone want to be Alpha?”
Makara shrugged. “Everyone thinks they’re special, that they won’t die from an assassination attempt.”
It was hard to imagine how thousands of violent Wastelanders could cooperate long enough to build a city. But I guess even raiders needed a safe place to lay their heads for a while.
I guess there was a lot of things topside I’d have to get used to. Like, the fact raiders were tracking me because I was carrying a lot of batteries in my backpack. If only Makara knew how many rechargeable batteries there were in Bunker 108, she just might turn around and try to raid it.
“We better hurry, then,” I said.
“We can only go as fast as our weakest link.”
“What? Is this slow to you?”
“We should be running, given the circumstances.”
“I can try harder, if that’s what you…”
Makara held a hand up, and ducked. I fell to the ground with her.
“What is it?” I asked.
It was quiet for a moment. A gust of wind blew over the rocky ground.
“Nothing,” Makara said. “Just a feeling.”
“You fall to the ground because of a feeling?”
Makara stared pointedly at me. “You don’t trust your gut out here, you’re dead. It’s a mistake most people only make once.”
We waited a couple minutes. At least it was a chance to catch a breather.
I looked behind and saw nothing but the flat, red expanse we had already traversed. Some low hills rose on the southern horizon, along with several mesas against the backdrop of the sky, pink in the morning light.
It truly did seem like we were the only ones alive.
“We’re not going to wait here all day, are we?” I asked.
Makara heaved an exasperated sigh. It looked like she wanted to hit me.
“Come on, brat.”
We got up again, and headed in the direction we had been going.
“We have to be careful,” Makara said. “There are only two of us, which makes us prime targets. Raiders go after the guaranteed kills. If I were raiding, my eyes would pop as soon as I saw us two walking across this plain.”
We ascended a hill as we drew close to a narrowing in the valley, about a mile off. It was mid-morning. It seemed brighter than usual, for some reason. The weather had been more placid in the past couple days. Maybe the dying down of the wind affected how much dust stayed in the air.
Makara pointed ahead.
“See there, beyond that ridge of mountains?”
I could barely see them above the hills, but they were very tall.
“Yeah.”
“Oasis is past them. It’s just like it sounds. There’s an oasis there, and a big town grew up around it.”
As the morning went on, I thought of Makara, being a raider. I was traveling with a raider. Someone who had stolen. Someone who had killed.
Maybe someone who had murdered.
I didn’t know why I was not afraid. I also didn’t know why I was so quick to believe her story about Bunker One. Everything seemed to fit, I guess.
“So, why did you really decide to leave that group?” I asked. “It must’ve been pretty bad if you’d rather go with me.”
“It was simple, really. Brux is a bad man, even for a raider. Most raiders kill because they must. Yes, raiding turns them bad. But Brux loves killing. He’ll do it even when there’s no reason to. Raiding is your only choice when you don’t have a home. Most of these settlements won’t take in outsiders. For good reason. Most outsiders are trouble. The settlements learned from their mistakes. Raiders will pretend to be nice, or hurt, or whatever, to get inside settlements and scout them. It takes an amazing feat to be accepted into a settlement these days. Either that, or plenty of batts. In a way, it just makes the problem worse. Good people who could contribute to settlements are turned away. They have to eat, too. So they become raiders.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
Makara was quiet for a moment. “Sort of.”
Suddenly, Makara stopped.
“What?” I asked.
She pushed hard down on my shoulder. Both of us fell to the ground and scurried behind a boulder. She held a finger to her mouth. She poked her head around, and quickly pulled it back. She rolled her eyes.
“I don’t believe it…” she whispered.
“What?”
“Somehow, they got ahead of us.”
Chapter 15
A gun went off, sending a spray of chipped rock at my face.
“I thought they were behind us!” I said.
“Same. They probably guessed where we were heading, and went to cut off the only way there.”
“Where are they? I didn’t see anything.”
“There’s an outcrop of rocks maybe a stone’s throw away. I saw one of them behind one.”
A few more bullets fired before a gruff male voice called them down.
It was dead quiet. Even the wind stopped. I could feel my heart beating madly in my chest.
Finally, the same gravelly, slimy voice who had called the shots off yelled out.
“Come out, Makara. We won’t kill you. I promise. I just want the pack back. That’s it.”
Makara gave a savage laugh, loud enough for only me to hear. “Like we’re going to fall for that.”
“How the hell are we going to get out of this?” I asked.
She reached in her bag, and pulled out a canister with a lever.
“This should do the trick.”
“What the…”
“Tear gas,” she said. “I hope it’s enough of a distraction.”
“You hope?”
“If you got a better idea, I’d like to hear it. After a lob this, we’ll take off for those hills to the east. On the other side, there’s a trail that leads to Oasis.”
I looked at the twisted hills uncertainly, not sure if there would be a way across. But what other choice did we have?
Makara pulled the plug on the tear gas canister, waited a couple seconds, and threw the damn thing over her shoulder. There were shouts of alarm, and then I heard a thud. Shortly after, the canister popped, and spewed gas into the air.
“Now,” she said.
She sprinted from the shelter of the rock toward the hills. I took off after her.
I’d never run so fast in my life. I could hear the tear gas hissing behind us.
A few seconds later, the shots started.
I chanced a look back. There were five of them. Three of them, including Brux, were grabbing at their eyes, wailing in pain. The other two ran after us, rifles in hand.
“Run!” Makara yelled. “Don’t look back!”
From time to time, a shot went off. A bullet whizzed past my ear. If I had been a few inches further to the right, I would have been dead.
After a minute, we slowed from a sprint to a fast run. After a mile at this pace, I was ready to die. I was in decent enough shape…or at least, I thought I was. I was nothing compared to Makara. The only thing that kept me going was sheer necessity.
Despite my lagging behind, we were gaining the lead. The backpack was heavy on me, and I felt it bobbing up and down on my shoulders. God, all this trouble for some batteries. I could hear them tinkle in time with my strides. It was like they were mocking me.
Makara had long slowed to a steady jog now, but I couldn’t go on. I collapsed to the ground.
Makara stopped. “Sometimes, I forget you haven’t walked more than a mile a day in your entire life, much less run one.”
I was breathing too hard to protest. I felt like I w
as going to puke. Maybe I would have if there had actually been something in my stomach.
She took me by my sweaty palm.
“You need to get up,” Makara said. She had already regained her breath.
I still lay on the ground, my pulse pounding in my brain. Finally, I let Makara pull me up. I walked beside her. She was still setting a fast pace, but I didn’t complain.
We spent the rest of the morning climbing through the line of hills, trying to break out onto the other side. I looked back at the valley, but didn’t see our pursuers.
“Are they going to follow us still?” I asked.
“Yes. If we can make Oasis, we should be safe.”
“Great.”
We found a pass, and worked our way through to the other side. When we made it, my breath caught in my throat. Before us, I could see a vast expanse of red going in all directions. In front of me, miles and miles out, was a sharp, jagged line of mountains. Their crowns were crested with snow. The entire flatland reflected a strange, golden glow.
A long, brown line snaked its way across the plain, close to the foothills. It took me a moment to realize it was the trail Makara spoke of. Along it I could see a long cloud of dust rising from the red earth.
“What is that?”
Makara squinted. “It’s a caravan. Going to Oasis, from the looks of it.”
“Maybe they can take us with them.”
“Yes,” Makara said. “Maybe they can. There is safety in numbers, after all.”
Before I could say anything else, Makara was bounding down the hill. I hurried to catch up.
* * *
As we came closer to the dust cloud, I could see shapes moving within it. Then, I saw people, walking among animals laden with goods. The animals had long necks and long, brown hair. Each had a large hump on their backs.
“Are those…camels?”
Makara nodded. “Yeah.”
“Camels…in California? Or was my Bunker actually built halfway across the world?”
“No. There were zoos before…you do know what those are, right?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
Makara smirked, as if she might contend that. “There was a really big zoo in San Diego, which was not too far from here. Anyway, when Meteor crashed down, there was no one to take care of the animals. In the chaos, some escaped. Unlike most other animals, camels are built for harsh, dry environments. They would have thrived here, even while everything else died off. I imagine the dry weather is their cup of tea.” She shrugged. “That’s my theory, anyway.”