What if this was the beginning of another Winter? Even a far shorter Winter of a few months would be enough to starve these children to death. We’d stored a decent supply of grain, but with the poor yields from the past two years, we simply didn’t have enough food to last longer.
I wondered what I would do if it came to that – if the darkness choked our crops and left us with nothing to grow, nothing to put into those hungry mouths. Could I really stand by and watch the children die? To see them suffer and beg for help, like I’d witnessed so many times in the Winter?
If the food ran out, that’s exactly what I would do. What alternative would I have? It would be torturous, painful beyond imagining, but I would do it.
I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to think about it any longer. I couldn’t entertain that eventuality, not when we’d overcome so much already.
It couldn’t all end this way, could it?
“Get on with your job,” I growled to myself. “Quit worrying about the things you can’t control.”
It didn’t take long to check the readings on the solar cells. Although there was no flow coming from the panels on the roof, the residual charge was still projected to last several months at current consumption. As long as we didn’t start firing up a-wombs or any additional devices, the cryotank should still remain operational for a while yet. Long enough to survive a brief interruption of a month or two, anyway.
Anything longer than that would land us in trouble.
I had a quick look around for anything here that might be useful back at Somerset, but there was nothing. What we really needed was the sun, or at the very least some other fuel source that might allow us to grow food. The problem was that most grow lights had been used up in the early months of the Winter. Finding them now would be near impossible, so what good would power do us anyway?
Back down at the Helios I found another problem. After starting it up, I noted that its cells, too, were starting to deplete. Without sufficient sunlight there was no way to charge them again. If things didn’t improve, I’d only get one or two more trips out of it before I’d be walking again.
Hitching the backpack into a comfortable position, I decided it was time to get back home, to help Arsha with caring for the children, to keep a watch out for Marauders. I reached out to take the throttle, but then stopped.
A chill ran down my back, my body responding to danger even before my mind had processed the nature of it.
Out beyond the alley, I could hear the noise again. That noise. That rasping, scraping noise. The sound I knew intimately but which I hadn’t heard for years. I’d almost consigned it to irrelevance, put it behind me, but now, here it was again, returned like some half-forgotten nightmare. And it seemed that it had chosen to come back for me now that I was vulnerable, not unlike a virus attacking one with a low immune system. As events conspired against me and I spiralled toward despair, it finally dared to return.
It was the vulture that circled the weary beast in the desert, waiting for it to expire. The coward waiting until his enemy lay bleeding on the ground before moving in to strike.
No. It’s not going to go down like that.
Instinctively, I ripped on the Helios’ throttle and surged forward along the alleyway, gathering momentum rapidly until I attained breakneck speed. Reaching the end, I erupted into the next street like an arrow, sliding sideways and then to a halt, nerves jangling, listening for a response.
I heard it moving in a side street a short distance away.
Gunning the Helios again, I threw caution to the wind and entered the side street recklessly, almost suicidally. I swept between debris and ruined cars, scraping past with no margin for error, almost coming off the bike several times as I clipped obstacles in my way. The normally quiet Helios groaned and screeched under such exertion, pushed to its limits.
Screeching to another halt, I turned again, surging into another narrow alleyway and banging my knee painfully on a steel bollard. I kept going. Through more twists and turns I sped, teeth gritted, allowing nothing to stand in my way. I slapped at cables that hung across the alley, my momentum sending them crashing aside as if they were caught in a hurricane.
I turned again, then heard the scraping somewhere ahead one more time. Louder and more urgent now. The Helios bucked and I headed along a tight passageway, my sights set on the open street at the end. The throttle hit resistance, and I knew I was at full tilt. I was flying. The doorways and windows whizzed past in a blur. My hair pressed back painfully tight against my head. A thin shard of steel that jutted from the brickwork passed perilously close to my head, unseen until the last second. I leaned down further.
At the last moment, as I exploded onto the street, something tried to run past the passageway and was caught flush by the Helios. It screamed shrilly in surprise and knocked the cycle out from under me. I spun through the air, landing with a thud, and slid along the asphalt out of control, gripping the backpack like a surfboard under me. I banged my knees and face painfully as I floundered across bricks and garbage in the street.
The Helios, gliding on sleek metal, swept along far more rapidly, shooting past and thundering into a concrete wall across the road with a loud crash, breaking apart into dozens of pieces on impact. It was obliterated.
As my momentum slowed, I fumbled for the shotgun that protruded from the backpack, ripping it free and raising it awkwardly as I scraped and stumbled to my feet. My eyes darted this way and that as I tried to locate whatever I’d hit, but with a start I realised I’d been looking too hard – it was right there in front of me in the middle of the street.
The thing got to its feet, facing away from me. At first I thought it was a clank, a very large clank, but something about it wasn’t right. The dimensions were wrong: its head was too big, its arms and legs full of strange protuberances. Pieces of metal and tubing jutted out at all the wrong angles. Everything about it seemed wrong.
Then it turned to face me.
I recoiled at the sight of it. Hideous and deformed, it might once have been a synthetic like me, designed to look human, but now it was something else. Hydraulic attachments seemed to have been grafted onto its arms and legs, giving its limbs an awkward bulkiness, and scraps of skin clung to the frayed synthetic flesh within. Its misshapen head had been hacked apart down the centre, a large black disc inserted in the middle of its brow where the crude rent was flanked by charred skin. There were no eyes: those had been torn out, the sockets pushed wide apart, gaping black and soulless with broken wires dangling inside like necrotic worms.
There were patches of skin on its face resembling mottled black scabs, and the exposed musculature of its face was like a tangle of corpulent slugs, bulging and squirming unnaturally. Its mouth hung open, viciously curved in a horrific rictus, and out of it poured that awful, ragged tearing sound.
Shhhhhcccckkkkkkkkk.
I let out a gasp at the nightmarish sight of it.
In response, it twitched toward me and the disc that was embedded in its face seemed to swirl and alter within as if processing my every movement.
“What… the fuck are you?” I said, appalled.
It took three steps sideways, attempting to circle me, moving with remarkable balance and swiftness that belied its ungainly appearance. And it was quiet. With such speed and furtiveness, I could now understand why it had been so difficult to track down all this time.
“What do you want?” I said.
It responded, not with words, but with that chilling, breathy sound, like a page being slowly torn out of a book. Its chin quavered rapidly, and within its open mouth I could see blackened teeth.
I took a step back.
It moved again, its legs criss-crossing rapidly as it changed direction. It was moving closer, rasping as if that were its only mode of communication.
“Get back,” I said, lifting the shotgun, but even as I did, it came for me in earnest, screeching hideously. I squeezed off a shot, collecting it in the shoulder, but it ke
pt coming. It crunched into my chest and neck, knocking me off my feet and sending the shotgun clattering to the asphalt.
I struggled to lift my head, feeling like I’d been run over by a ten-tonne shuttle.
The thing was turning, clutching at its left wrist awkwardly, and for a moment I felt a surge of optimism that I’d hurt it.
But it wasn’t hurt.
With a sickening crack, the thing snapped its own claw-like hand off and dropped it vacantly on the ground, like discarding a wad of trash. Jutting from its wrist amid a tangle of wires was a rusted blade. It lifted the weapon cruelly, as if taunting me.
The thing stood between me and the shotgun.
Now it advanced, moving rapidly but noticeably favouring the shoulder where it had taken the hit. I rolled away as it took a swing at me, hissing in annoyance as the blade found nothing but air. I was on my feet in an instant, running, the guttural sound of the creature thick in my ears.
I clasped a crooked street sign, using my momentum to swing myself around and back at the creature, catching it by surprise and collecting it in the face with my boot. As it stumbled into the wreck of a car I landed on my feet again, running for the shotgun.
The thing squealed and began to chase, closing the distance with every step.
The shotgun was close. I was almost upon it. I dared not look over my shoulder, but I could hear the thing’s feet skittering across the street as it came after me.
I ducked instinctively, heard the blade whiz past my neck, felt the tip of it flick my hair.
I dropped, curling over the shotgun, and the creature became tangled up, tripping over the top of me and crashing down on the asphalt.
I fumbled for the shotgun as it raised its head, snarling. My finger slipped onto the trigger and it reached for me.
I pulled and blew half its head off, shattering the disc in its forehead. It squealed and recoiled, but didn’t stop. It reached for me again. I put another round into its chest, aiming for the power core. Bits of metal and flesh flew everywhere and the creature was knocked backward.
Still it came, fingers from its good hand scratching dementedly on the asphalt.
I got to my feet, towering above it as it writhed. I stomped down on its wrist and removed the threat of the knife. Then I jammed the shotgun into its chest. It reached for the barrel with its free hand, the remnants of its head still keening with that despicable tearing sound.
I pulled the trigger again, and finally it was silenced.
22
Poking and prodding at the creature didn’t reveal any clues as to its origin. It wore no clothes, and even the skin that had once covered its body had been largely stripped away, revealing its rusted metal ribs and the ugly synthetic flesh below. There was no identification to be found anywhere on its carcass.
Was this the result of the Marauders’ experimentations on their captives? And if it was, what was the purpose of this hideous creature? Was it a scout, and if so, why had it hung around the city so long?
I checked the remnants of the disc that had been embedded in its head. There wasn’t much left of it after the shotgun blast, but I had a hunch it was a kind of optical receiver, or perhaps a scanner. There was also a rectangular box embedded deeper in its skull, secured in place by copper bands and with a small antenna protruding from the back. A transmitter?
I had no idea. None of it seemed to make sense. With no hard evidence, all I could do was speculate.
I didn’t loiter for long. If this thing had belonged to the Marauders it would have been tagged, and that meant this wasn’t a good place to be. The thought of it remaining here in the city, even dead and benign, was an uncomfortable one. I wanted every last trace of it gone. I regarded it like a cancerous spore that might infect everything else if left in place, something best eradicated before it could do more damage.
But I didn’t have time for that. I had no means to destroy it, nor the time to drag it from the city with my bare hands. I was uneasy, desperate to get back to Somerset to check on Arsha and the children, to ensure an army of these things hadn’t marched in unheard and were now wreaking havoc. I had to get going.
The Helios, too, was beyond salvage. Smashed apart, it would be impossible to repair. Gathering my backpack, I left the parts where they lay and got on the move, running as fast as my legs would carry me back toward home.
“What happened?” Arsha said at the front door, peering in alarm over my shoulder as if expecting Marauders to come swarming into Somerset Drive in my wake.
“I’m okay, just ran into a little problem,” I said, pulling up before her, my muscles aching. I’d really pushed myself running those few kilometres from the city. “Everything okay here?”
“Yeah.” She stooped down to look at my face as I bent over, massaging the muscles in my thighs. “What’s going on, Brant?”
I urged her inside and closed the door as I crossed the threshold. “I ran into something.”
“Ran into what?”
I made sure the children were out of earshot. They were playing a noisy game in the bedroom, mooing and baaing while one of them pretended to be a farmer, herding them and telling them how well behaved they were.
“I don’t really know what it was,” I admitted, leading her over to the sofa. “All I can tell you is that it’s been around for a while.”
“What do you mean?” Arsha said, concerned. “How long has it been around for, and how do you know that?”
I tried to find the words to explain what had been going on. I knew she wasn’t going to react well to what I had to say.
“Years ago, I started hearing things in the city. Weird things, sounds that were hard to describe. And I felt like something was watching me, but I never actually saw anything. I never found hard evidence that what I sensed was really there. Until today.”
“Why haven’t you told me about this?”
“Because I didn’t know if something was really out there, or if I was just going crazy. I thought if I told you I was hearing things, you’d think I’d lost it.”
“Goddammit, Brant. We have to be transparent with each other. You have to tell me about things like this.”
“Tell you what? That I’m hearing voices in my head?”
She waved dismissively. “Never mind. What was it?”
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe at one time it was a clank like us, but something had been done to it. It was like it had been hacked apart and modified, for what purpose I don’t know. It was monstrous.”
“Was it sent to kill us?”
“I don’t think so. All I can imagine is that it has been monitoring us, but I don’t know why or for who.”
“Did it attack you?”
“Yeah, but only after I had it cornered. It’s always avoided me in the past. It was damn strong, though. And fast. I was lucky to get the best of it. The Helios got smashed up in the process, too.” I smiled sourly. “No more joyrides.”
“Well, the main thing is that you’re okay.”
A dull glow appeared at the window, illuminating the false twilight and scattering light on the wall of the living room. My first thought that it was a ray of sunlight shining through the smog, but the colour and consistency were all wrong. It was more…
Like distant headlights, I thought with dread.
Arsha seemed to be thinking along the same lines, and we both crossed to the window with great haste. It was quickly apparent that the light was not local, but emanated from that needle to the north that stretched into the sky.
“The damn spire again,” Arsha said, but she sounded relieved. “It’s activating more and more often.”
“Yeah. Few times a day now. But at least they haven’t got it running for longer than a few minutes at a time.”
“This is all related, isn’t it? The thing in the sky, the Grid spire, the darkness, the creature you found… this isn’t coincidence.”
“No, I don’t believe it is.”
“So what do we do? Do we take
the children and run?”
“Run where?” I said. “There’s nowhere to go. There’s only one place we can feed them, and that’s right here. I mean, we could haul them across the wasteland and head west, out toward the ocean, but there’s no food there, and we don’t even know it’s going to be any safer.”
“What if we pack up all the food we’ve got and carry it–”
“Arsha, think about what you’re saying. We don’t have any clue what’s going on outside the city. There could be a war raging out there for all we know. And besides, how much grain can we carry? We’d have to carry the children as well. It’s not going to work.”
She sighed. “So we have to stay in the city, but we need to find somewhere we can shelter the children. A bunker. Something the Marauders won’t find. Something that damn drone won’t find.”
“The Marauders’ scanners will track synthetics. As long as you and I, or Mish and Ellinan, are with them, they won’t be any safer underground than here in the house.”
“I think we have to try, Brant.”
“Well, I can head out and look around. Do you have any ideas where to start?”
“Not specifically, but what we really want is somewhere that’s well hidden. Even if it’s a basement somewhere, or something disguised, it will do. Somewhere we can keep the children dry, safe and warm. Somewhere less visible than here.”
“And not too far from the plantations, so we have access to food.”
“Right. We’ll need to make trips back here from time to time.”
“I want to help.” Ellinan stood at the edge of the hallway, watching us, his mouth set in a firm line of determination.
“Ell,” I said, “how long have you been there?”
“Long enough.”
I went to him, placed my hand on his shoulder. “Look, I appreciate the offer, but you’re needed here–”
“Doing what? Looking after children?”
The Seeds of New Earth Page 19