by Jim Rudnick
They’d never match the disciples on their return trip home; they’d most likely not even get past Lindos, a city where one needed safety in numbers.
“This dog-Khuno—who is the dog’s master here?” he asked.
Javor looked at the disciple and smiled. “I saved the dog’s life a few months back, and he’s been at my side since. I take it he’s no use to the Forest Empire—so I’d ask that you leave him with me—kinda like having him around.
Anqas stared back. For a full minute, no one else spoke and then he answered. “I will grant you the dog—Khuno. You will be his new master—do treat him right—we Disciples love our dogs.”
With that settled, he said something to the dog. Bixby looked up at him, barked, and then trotted over to sit beside Javor. He licked Javor’s left hand, his tongue making big sloppy paths across the back of Javor hand, and he paid no more attention to the disciples at all.
Anqas nodded and then he said to one of the bowmen, ”Pick up all their weapons—we’re taking them with us. We will leave you alive, but unarmed. You will not follow us or you will never even feel the arrows. You can go your own way—but a caution. The Forest Empire considers your word as our hostages—surrendering to save your own lives—as paramount. Do you all so swear?”
He looked at each and got a nod or a yes from the three conscious members of the cadre.
“The one asleep we will hold to the same standards. Remember your word,” he finished, and in less than a minute, he and the other six were gone, dancing away into the darkness that lay off to the west.
Sue held up a hand and pointed to Wayne, digging in her backpack for the first aid kit.
After a quick look at Bruce and the arrow, she grinned at him and said, “You know the drill, Brucie … on three.”
She got in position directly in front of him, one knee above the arrow and one knee below.
Bruce squirmed and nodded.
“One … two—” she said, and she yanked the arrow out a full count earlier, and he screamed loudly.
She looked closely at the point—no real barbs to speak of, yet she knew that would hurt a lot. She dug into the first aid kit, found a small bottle, popped the top off it, and sprinkled the powder down and into the wound. She took another small case out and reached inside for an injection stylus. She jammed it into Bruce’s bicep and made sure that he got the whole dose. One more time she reached into the kit, and she pulled out a sterile dressing that adhered itself on his shoulder. She patted him on the face.
“Three, eh?” Bruce said as he leaned back to rest.
“Next time, it’ll be three,” Sue said, and that at least got a smile from him.
A quick thought struck Javor, and he groaned but went back up the slope to retrieve his things and bring them down to the area that was lit up by the truck.
“They missed my Colt,” he said.
Bruce nodded as he added, “My small pistol is still in my ankle holster too. But they did get that beautiful new rifle I so loved.”
Javor dug into the remains of what had been in his bag and pulled out a drone ball. He slowly twisted the top in a counter-clockwise direction. As it lit up, he pressed a button down deeply and said, “AI Nine-oh-one?”
The drone ball chimed.
“I want you to go west ‘til you find seven bodies moving as a team. I want you to follow them at maximum height so you will not be found. You will radio to the other drone I have, AI nine-oh-two, your location and rate of travel at the end of each day. Understood?”
The drone ball chimed again.
“You are less than five minutes behind this group, so get going,” he said as he then carefully looked up and tossed the ball into the air.
It went up, held its place for a moment, and then spun and rose as it headed west.
“Forgot I even took a couple of these off the Drake,” he said to the open-mouthed stares from Bruce and Sue.
“Accurate?” Sue asked.
“Fairly, we’ve used them to track animal migrations, predators, and even divisions of marines on one planet. Long as she finds them, we’re okay,” he said.
“Range, Javor—if that guy was right and it’s like 500 miles … can we get that recon data?” Sue asked.
He nodded just as Wayne groaned out loud and grabbed his head with both hands.
Someone like the guy who clubbed me must have given him even a harder smack, but with my headache, I wonder how that’s possible.
Wayne tried to slowly lift up, and Bruce held him down with his one good hand.
“Later, soldier. Just take it easy. Sue, got any of those headache pills?” he asked as he held out his hand.
Javor’s hand joined his, and they all took a couple of the pills.
“So where are we? What and who are these Forest Empire disciples, and where do they fit in with the Regime? I thought you’d said that the Regime was the only real power left on Bones,” Javor said as he settled back to lean against his backpack.
Sue had pulled out a small mirror from the first aid kit, but after a single glance at her face, she just sighed and put it back.
“Right—the Forest Empire is the power in the north—and that’s all there is to it. For some reason, after the Boathi bombed our power dams and grid and then followed up with the virus bombs, all the people of Forest—as it used to be called—found God—the Boathi. For some reason, they think the enemy will come back, and so they all try to lead pious righteous lives. Least that’s what they say. While they took away our weapons, they use bows and arrows and spears only—seen some of them toss a spear hundreds of yards too,” she added.
Javor doubted that as he figured that Sue was just exaggerating for him, but he nodded.
“One thing though to remember—they are different than us. They look at life here on Bones—what they still call Ceti4—as a sacred trust between each one of them and god—the Boathi. I’ve often wished they’d just come back and put a big one down on those two Empire pyramids they have in the middle of Forest, the capital. It is more than—”
She cocked her head to the side.
“My own tech skills are somewhat limited, but something just struck me. They said they’d been on the road for the tablet for ten days. Where was the tablet ten days ago?”
“Back in Maxwell,” Wayne answered.
“Yet they found us here—on a regional road under the interstate. Would that not mean that perhaps that tablet was talking to some kind of Forest Empire network? While I like serendipity, I don’t think that they stumbled upon us …”
Javor nodded. That made sense. If the tablet was hooked up to a network, then it could be found. Like this one had been.
But there was no network he’d been told on Bones—the Boathi had taken care of all the planet’s satellites more than eight years ago.
There were some important issues here, and Sue nodded at him too. She got it and she looked up at the eastern sky.
“Still nighttime. Let’s just camp out right here—little less comfortable, but we’re all used to that. I’ll take first duty, Javor, and I’ll wake you at four hundred hours. Bruce, Wayne, get some sleep lads.
As Javor tucked the pad down around him in the dry overgrown area at the front of the truck, Sue turned the truck lights off and the night turned pitch black.
A few minutes later, Wayne’s voice rang out. “The lights on the truck were on. They know that, but they never asked about the truck or wondered why we picked this spot to camp out … that’s a bit strange, eh?” he asked.
There were no answers, but Javor nodded to himself.
Finding a society that would move five hundred miles in ten days and not even consider that a truck was alive seemed odd. The headache pills kicked in, and he drifted off into sleep.
#####
In the fullness of the bright dawn sunlight, Javor rolled over and Bixby barely moved beside him.
His head hurt.
His one non-alien knee hurt.
His pride hur
t too—he’d been surprised by a club-wielding goon, and it had cost him his combat shotgun too.
He slowly opened his eyes and saw just ahead of him that Bruce was still asleep.
He sat up gingerly and Bixby gave him an eye as he slowly turned back toward the front of the truck. Sue was up and had a campfire going. He raised an eyebrow.
“The hell with anyone who comes over to see what we’re cooking up—I’ll plug them before they even smell our brekkie,” she said.
In the pan that she’d balanced on three rocks sat a big mess of eggs—well, that’s what the MRE package read along with just add water, squeeze the bag a few times, and cook like normal.
His mind wandered as his day started. He looked back at Bixby who stared at him with that doggie look of hey, where’s my brekkie, and he grinned at his dog. Khuno, they’d said his name was, but he knew that Bixby already responded to his new name, so he’d never use it himself. He worried open the zipper on his pack and dug down until he found the kibble bag. He took out two full handfuls and laid them on a rock right beside Bixby, who didn’t even bother to get up, ate it while still lying down. He then found that collapsible bowl, poured in a cupful and a half of water from his canteen, and added it to the rock. Whatever Bixby didn’t drink down, he’d just add back to the canteen. “We share,” he said to himself, and he smiled slightly, but the ache in the back of his head was pinching.
He flexed once on each foot. He stretched out a leg ahead of him fully and performed a full deep knee bend, first the left and then the right. He did not bother this morning with any kind of cardio.
He pulled out his mirror to see if he could see the back of his head by using it and the steel dinner plate. No luck.
Sue had been watching and said, “Yeah, I’ll look at that later for you, now come get some eggs,”
As he sat and scooped up a healthy portion, which tasted pretty good, Wayne came back from the woods and joined them.
As he pointed back behind them, he said, “Just don’t go that way anyone.” Everyone knew what he meant and that was fine with them.
Sue finished her eggs first, and using some water, she boiled off the dirty pan on the fire. Moments later, she was up and over at Javor’s back. Using a flashlight and a fork, she parted the bloody patch of hair around the spot where the club had taken him out.
“Um … not too bad. Broken skin that has a nice scab of dried blood on it to keep out any infection. I’d perhaps say we do nothing to this ‘til tonight when we hit Arlington.” Finished examining Javor’s head, she went back to tend to her boiling pan.
Bruce said, “Tonight? Arlington? My reckoning is that it’s like a hundred miles away anyways, without all the interstate issues we’d need to find and get on and off too. Tonight?”
Sue looked at him and smiled. “We have—least as far as I know—the only working vehicle we know of. And while it is just a few more miles than one hundred to Arlington via Lindos—if we cut Lindos off and go there straight via regionals, we can be there today. Maybe even by afternoon tea,” she said.
Javor nodded.
Wayne brought up the issues with that plan. “But that will mean that we’re on regional roads—exactly what we were told to avoid by Effram back at the dam. Some kind of tribal uprising or something? Seems like caution might be a better route than speed, to me.”
Sue nodded to him too but held up a hand. “Normally, you know I’d never preach to chance this kind of route. But one thing that Effram never took into account—nor for that matter did we all—is that the truck is fast. So fast that by the time someone has thought about doing us some harm, we’re by. Gone. Dust is all we’d leave. That and a reminder that in our whole experience on Bones, we’ve never found anyone who lay in wait for the next passing truck. Because there aren’t any—except Nutty. Sounds like we could be having dinner tonight in a real live city—warm beds and hot baths all around.”
Javor wondered what the real driving issue was with Sue, but she did make sense. No one lay in wait for the next truck. By the time they even heard Nutty going by, they’d be by. With no other vehicles to worry about, he could literally drive to this Arlington by lunchtime if the roads were clear.
He realized though that gas could be an issue, so he spoke up right away. “Listen, before we decide on any route, I’d better check the gas use so far … so wait a few minutes.”
He stood again, walked carefully around the truck to the driver’s side, and got up and into the cab. Turning on the key was the first thing, and he did that and then looked down at the display dash.
Down in the bottom left-hand corner was the fuel gauge, and that red line now sat right above the marker that he thought showed that they’d already used about one-quarter of their fuel.
It had taken one-quarter of a tank to travel about eighty miles or so.
That meant the gas in the back would give them plenty of fuel too as Arlington had been reckoned to be only about seventy miles away. A few turns, some roads being impassable would be right too, so, yes, they could get to the Regime today.
He turned off the key, made sure the truck was off, and returned to the group.
“So far as I figure, we used about twenty-five percent of the fuel in the truck to come this far. Means that if Arlington is about seventy miles away, we can be there today for sure with no fuel worries.”
He didn’t know what to think about Effram’s warning that some tribe was having an uprising. If that was fraught with risk, it didn’t sound like the cadre felt that it was a stopper.
He looked at them all and said, “So?”
Sue looked at Bruce, then Wayne, and then at him. “When we go—we go damn quick, but we cut the big corner and we’re in Arlington today,” she said as she tossed the remains of those eggs and the boiling water into the fire pit and scrubbed it out with a bunch of leaves.
Javor gathered up his own gear. Really miss my shotgun. Want that back, I really do. Maybe one day. As Bixby finished drinking, he checked the bowl. The dog had left half a cup, and Javor tilted it to his own lips and swallowed it down. Flinging the drops away, he collapsed the bowl, tucked all back in his backpack, and donned his armor vest with the Colt. He checked the draw—not a problem—and then the safety. It was on and he reached for his pack.
Bixby was staring at him, tongue hanging out.
He smiled and fished back into his pack for a few jerky bars, and stripping one of the covering, he first took a bite and then tossed it to the dog, who wolfed the whole thing down in three chomps.
He put his pack in the back of the truck, got Bixby up and in the middle of the rear crew cab seating, and moved up to the driver’s seat himself. In about three more minutes, they were all in, and Sue said, “Home, please … and step on it …”
#####
Javor was happy with the regional highway system so far.
Built over generations, it crisscrossed the towns and various cities all over the country. Here in the area now called the Badlands, it was a normal two-lane blacktop road that still had its yellow line right down the middle. Even though it hadn’t been maintained for the past eight years, it was still in pretty good shape because there’d been no traffic using it for those years. Overgrowth past the shoulders was bad, and in some areas, the gravel shoulders were mostly green as nature tried to recycle as much as it could. There were potholes here and there, some with standing weeds, but the truck roared right over them with no problems at all.
Regional 17, which they had seen on a sign, was the name of their route. They had driven through two towns so far, right down the main drag of one of them too, but the roadway had been pretty clear. In the last twenty miles, they’d averaged about thirty miles an hour.
Not a moment after that thought went through his brain, the way ahead was blocked with an enormous crash that must have had forty vehicles in it. Javor slowed and stopped right before the first burned vehicle. He got out and walked the left side of the shoulder first. It was blocked by a pick
up truck that had been tipped over, and as there was a culvert up ahead, a guardrail blocked that way. He shook his head and then tried the right side of the road. He walked almost the entire length of the pileup until he saw that a semi lay on its side with the trailer blocking the whole shoulder right up to the tree lot at the side of the road.
“Not passable at all,” he said.
Sue, who’d walked beside him, agreed. “So … back to the last left, take it, then try to circle around this crash-up, and then get back onto Regional 17?” she asked.
“Aye, that’s about the size of it,” Javor said. “How far back was the last road though?” he asked.
Sue shrugged and said, “I have no idea.”
He smiled and said, “Then let’s get on the road, shall we?” He hopped back up into the truck. After backing up and making a five-point turn to get Nutty going backward, they were off.
It was almost four miles back to the first left-hand road off Regional 17, but the mileage wasn’t the problem.
“Shit,” Sue said as she grabbed onto the dash in front of her. “Bloody zombies … dumb ones, but you can never tell.”
And she was right. In front of the truck coming down all of the intersecting roads at this four-corner stop, zombies were tottering toward the sound of the truck. The fact that they were responding to the first pass-by of the truck from about fifteen minutes earlier wasn’t the real issue. The fact that they were in front of the truck was.
Javor slowed and then said, “Hang on, team.”
He goosed the accelerator pedal, and the truck zoomed forward toward the more than fifty zombies. As he got closer, he left the right-hand lane, went as far left as he could, and then swerved into a left-hand turn.
In doing so, he hit six or seven of the zombies who were mowed down like wheat stalks in a harvest. One must have been closer to the outside of the truck cab, as the truck bounced up and over his body, as the rear wheels rode over him.
And they were clear. Javor twisted the steering wheel, and the truck went over to ride right down the yellow mid-line.
“One way,” Wayne said from the back crew cab seat, and everyone chuckled.