Beat

by Jared Garrett

  My eyes felt like they’d been scraped with sandpaper, and keeping my eyelids open was taking more and more of my attention. I rode maybe a kilometer down this new road, really wishing that the CyJet emitted more light than the glow from the propulsion units. The trees had been growing steadily thicker, and the wide, tightly packed trunks cut off the minimal light. These trees were different, too; their trunks didn’t glow. But some of them were immense. Some of the trunks were the size of my room. I pulled the CyJet off the road into the darker space under one of the trees.

  Redwoods.

  My bleary mind randomly recalled the name of these trees, calling the word up from a memory of some class from a few years back. As I dismounted, I looked around, hoping no wild animals were close and hungry. I found myself standing on a relatively clear patch of ground at the base of the huge tree. There were plenty of leaves, but only a couple of tiny bushes and saplings. I kicked some leaves together, pulled my zip tightly around me, and gingerly lowered myself to the ground, my right arm feeling strangely stiff. I must have had bruises on every inch of skin. Muscles I didn’t think I’d ever used complained.

  Maybe I would just live out here. Find some way to get food. Maybe steal it. Nobody would find me in the middle of this place. Nobody ever came out here.

  I don’t even remember my head hitting the small pile of flat leaves I’d quickly kicked together.

  CHAPTER 13

  The CyJet was singing. I was riding along, exploring the gray, overgrown corpses of ancient cities when the machine began singing. I couldn’t make out the words or see a mouth, but there was no doubt in my mind.

  I blinked, the dream clinging to me with sticky fingers. The CyJet singing? I fought the strange images back and looked around, sucking in a deep breath. Singing? That was impossible. I stared at the CyJet, which was maybe a meter away from my head. It made no noise. Scuff marks dotted the machine’s body where bullets and electrodes had pounded it.

  What was that? I lay in the grass, not sure I could get up. My legs and arms, my back, too, felt pulverized and frozen with pain. Ignoring the pain, I listened closer, but the sound faded. Was it a bird? It sounded like a person. Like a girl.

  It was gone.

  I couldn’t hold back a low groan as I pushed myself to a sitting position with my left hand. My back felt like it was made of stiff, throbbing lengths of heated metal. Suddenly I couldn’t stand the stiffness. I needed to get up, stretch it out. I lurched to my knees and nearly fell, but I managed to put out my right hand and catch myself.

  And I nearly fainted from the pain. Black spots swam in front of me and my head seemed to tighten, squeezing my brain. My elbow flashed in lava-hot agony. Lances of pain slashed all the way to my fingers and shoulder. I gasped and swore. What the Bug? Still on my knees, I carefully pulled my right arm closer to try to get a look at it. I could barely move it. I had slept on my left side, and my right arm had been draped over my body in a slightly bent position. It wouldn’t move from that spot. If I tried to lift my forearm, or lower it, the elbow twinged bright with pain.

  I thought back through the events of the previous night, trying to track down when the injury had happened. Had it been a bullet? No. It had to have been when I’d fallen off the bugging drain pipe. I’d landed on my elbow pretty hard. Or maybe I’d been hit by a bullet, rubber or otherwise. I couldn’t see blood, but I couldn’t move the arm at all to really check.

  Was it broken? I had no way of knowing. But if it were broken, how could I have done everything I’d done last night? Had adrenaline just kept me going despite the pain? It must have. I decided it would probably be best if I didn’t move the arm, so I tucked it against my stomach and levered myself to my feet with my left arm, muscles everywhere screaming at me to forget moving for a long time. I fought against the pain and finally stood, wobbling a little and leaning against the redwood trunk. At least the Papa was on my left wrist so I could still ride the CyJet.

  An unfamiliar smell caught my attention. It reminded me somewhat of the Dumps in New Frisko, but this was heavier and sweeter. Richer. For a moment, I felt like I’d been transported to an alien world. All around me stood massive trees, their deep red bark stretching in long furrows and ridges from the gnarled bases of the trees and disappearing high above me. The thick canopy of leaves that extended high above me allowed plenty of light in to see by, but it was a strange light. Tinted red and green and gold somehow. Among the huge sentinels that surrounded me stood saplings and some small scrub and bushes.

  Images of the stark cleanliness and order of New Frisko contrasted in my mind with the seemingly random placements of the majestic trees around me. But even as I looked, I could see that the trees weren’t growing randomly. Each had a space that it had carved out where it could get enough sun, leaving plenty of maneuvering space among the house-sized trunks. The bark under my hand felt like rough stone. I pushed myself away from the tree carefully to try to get a better look around and then get on the CyJet.

  That first step nearly sent me back to the ground. I felt tenderized, my muscles pulsing alternately between dull aches and deep, flaring pains. I took a few more steps, each a little less shaky than the one before. It still hurt to move, but I felt like I could move enough to get back on the CyJet soon. My abdomen felt like it was in a knot that tightened with every step I took. I wondered if I’d been hit in my stomach at some point last night until my stomach rumbled. I checked my Papa. Nearly noon. Of course.

  Maybe my idea to try to live in the wilderness wouldn’t work. I looked around and had no idea where I would get food. Or water. I guessed that if I came to a river or stream, I could drink from it, but I had no idea how to find food. Could I eat leaves? Would the water be clean? Before the Infektion, the water had apparently been toxic all over.

  That was a hundred years ago. A century. The rivers had to be clean by now. Although that wouldn’t really matter if I couldn’t find one.

  “Nice work, Nik,” I said under my breath. “You’ll last about a day. If a wandering bear doesn’t get you first.”

  I had to find some food. Why didn’t they teach us how to survive in the wilderness in school? I shook my head at the idiotic question. It didn’t matter now; I needed to get moving. Maybe I could find an old garden or fruit tree. Maybe old canned food. I considered going back to New Frisko, sneaking in to get some food and other supplies, and then heading back out.

  Back out to where? I’d just proven to myself that I couldn’t really live in the wilderness. With flaring complaints from my muscles, I climbed on the CyJet and leaned forward. My back screamed in agony. I considered where else I could go. I needed to find out if I really was immune, and if I wasn’t, what else was going on. Why I had lived and Bren had died. Why the Enforsers had immediately tried to kill me. Why they didn’t want to know how I’d survived.

  It occurred to me that, honestly, they had no way of knowing what had happened.

  I had to figure this out. I couldn’t do that in New Frisko, at least not with the Enforsers out to kill me. The CyJet fired up, and I had to be very careful as I balanced with one arm so I could get back to the road. The propulsion units’ whine held steady at a low pitch.

  My mouth felt dry and strained, like I’d been clenching my jaw for days. Even my tongue felt like it was rebelling against all of the abuse of last night. I settled deeper into my seat. It was going to be challenging to ride with one arm. I’d have to keep my speed and altitude under control. Good thing I could control turns with my feet.

  At the road that had led me into the redwood forest, I looked left and right, hovering gently over the forest turf. The propulsion units scattered leaves, revealing dark earth directly below the CyJet. The rich aroma I’d smelled earlier hit me again. The dirt even smelled good out here.

  Where to?

  If I went back the way I’d come, I could try to sneak into New Frisko for supplies. But the city had to be on high alert by now. There was no way I’d make it, what with all the
surveillance sensors and cameras all over the city. I’d be caught within minutes and that would be the end of it.

  Plus, if I went back, I’d probably have to see Bren’s family. And our friends, the other Pushers. I couldn’t handle that right now.

  But if I went deeper into the forest, I would have to find a way out. And find food. I had to find other people who didn’t know about what had happened in New Frisko. People in a different—

  Of course. Anjeltown. It was south, or southeast, of New Frisko. What had Teacher Harper said about it? It was like 700 kilometers southeast of New Frisko and was near the site of an old, pre-Infektion city with the same name. If I could find roads that led that direction, I could try to get there, maybe talk to doctors there that didn’t know what had happened back home. And as I traveled, I could keep my eyes open for food and water. But if I couldn’t find anything, there was always Anjeltown.

  I glanced down the road and turned left, back the way I’d come. I would get back to that bigger road, the one that had probably been a highway, and travel southeast on it. Or near it, considering that Enforsers might still be out there looking for me.

  Seven hundred kilometers.

  I looked over the CyJet and tucked my arm tighter against my abdomen. How fast could this thing go?

  Despite wanting to blast off and make it to Anjeltown in one day, I knew I had to be careful, both to protect my arm and to avoid being seen. The road wound among the huge trees, at one time even cutting through the trunk of one of them. How had I not noticed that last night? How could anybody not notice any of this? The world around me seemed wild, free, totally uncontrolled. I knew laws of Biolojy and Fiziks governed the world, but it was as if those laws had decided to make things as interesting and beautiful as possible.

  I came to the bigger road, checked the sun, and turned south. My stomach seemed to be kicking my abdomen muscles in anger at the lack of food. The CyJet was designed so that wind was split by the front of the machine, so when I leaned forward enough, I found that I could keep my eyes opened wide without them instantly drying out from the rushing air. I kept a close eye on the woods and hills around me. Now, in the light of the afternoon sun, the rusted and somehow melted hulks on the road looked less ghostly and somehow more, I don’t know, human. More temporary. Like somebody had tried to build something that would last, but that it just couldn’t stand up to nature.

  The strange thought surprised me. I realized that, despite the twinges and aches and throbbing in my body, my head felt clear, my thoughts crisp. The sun wasn’t brighter, but it seemed to illuminate the world around me better than at any time before in my life. Near to the sun, the sky was practically white, but as it stretched to the horizon, it grew into a rich, textured blue. Like the inside of an egg might look if it were the color of a bright day—smooth and as if the color weren’t painted on but were a solid thing.

  Finding the CyJet fairly easy to control with one hand and my feet, I coaxed it over to the left of the road, nearer the woods. I wanted to be able to duck out of sight fast if I saw Enforsers.

  An hour passed and I knew I had left New Frisko far behind. I’d seen no sign of pursuit or searchers of any kind. The road had intermittently led through clusters of old buildings, with what looked like old-style houses set back from the buildings, usually built into hills. Sometimes there were other houses, these far more decrepit, built into large clearings in the woods on either side of the road.

  I wondered how it would have been to live in those times. Driving everywhere, choosing your life, your job, your own path. I imagined that day, that first day, of the Infektion—some bio-toxin that nobody has ever heard of suddenly finds a way to supercharge a heart at 140 beats per minute, sending the heart into a cycle that will always end in death, while the bio-toxin eats at your body’s tissues.

  What had those people felt? How would that kind of fear have felt? Bren knew. For a minute, at least. I clenched the handlebar tighter, fighting the tears. I slowed and stopped as my chest tightened. My breath came in gasps. Tears dripped off my chin. It was my fault. It had been my idea, my stupid idea. And now Bren was dead. I wondered again if his family knew yet. Somehow, I needed to get back and explain things to them. Not now, but as soon as I could.

  Later, as I blasted down the shoulder of the road, I kept my eyes open for fruit trees or old gardens that might have gone to seed but still had edible plants in them. I’d discarded the idea of finding ancient cans of food; there was no way that stuff would be good after a hundred years.

  “What’s that?” I think I asked it aloud because I’d never gone so long without hearing somebody speak. Whether it was Admins, Supes, Announsers, teachers, parents, or even the Pushers, it seemed like life in New Frisko was always noisy.

  Something glittered off to the right, maybe fifty meters off the road. A long strip of something. Water? It ran between the road and the ragged line of deciduous trees that had to mark where the old people had cleared for the road.

  I guided the CyJet across the road, careful to dodge the bent and rusted hulk of what had once been a large vehicle. A stream, maybe two meters across at its widest. My heart pounded in anticipation. I parked the CyJet and eased myself off, grunting at the pains that flared in my legs, back, and arms.

  Getting to my knees felt like it took forever, but my legs just didn’t want to bend. Finally, I was propped up on my left arm next to the stream. The water was crystal clear, dancing and hopping over smooth stones. The grass under my knees felt soft, much less stiff than the oxi-grass I’d grown up with. It felt like it could make a comfortable bed.

  I assessed my situation. This wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t use my right arm. I lowered myself to my left side, with my face just above the water, and used my left hand to scoop water, splashing it on my face and down my throat. The stench covering me hit with an almost physical force. An image of the source of that stink flashed in my mind; I shook it away. I splashed water all over my face and neck again. The day was warm, but the water felt nearly ice cold and more perfect and delicious than anything else I’d tasted. I slurped and scrubbed for long while, but I forced myself to stop before I filled my stomach with only water. That had to be a bad idea. I hadn’t eaten in—I checked my Papa—14:00, nearly twenty hours. A stomach full of water would probably turn out to be a bad thing.

  Pushing myself up, my left hand slipped into the water and the frigid stuff soaked me up to the elbow. It felt amazing. I tried again to get up and succeeded this time. The water would probably feel very soothing on my hurt right arm. I yanked the metal zipper on my zip down and struggled out of the thing. I rolled my still-dry right sleeve up and, being as careful as I could, lowered my right arm, elbow first, into the water. I couldn’t get it very far into the water, but the elbow seemed to contract at the sudden cold. The water flowing down from my arm was tinged brown. That had to be my blood. The position I was in became uncomfortable quickly, so I eased myself back out of the stream and reached for my zip.

  My stomach growling painfully, I examined the right sleeve. It was caked brown from the elbow all the way to the cuff. It also had Bren’s vomit on it. I hadn’t noticed the blood because it had run down the side of the sleeve I couldn’t see. Gripping the zip tightly, I lowered the right sleeve into the stream and swished it around to try to get some of the blood off. I looked up, amazed at the blueness of the sky.

  I’d never noticed it before because there was always so much to see at eye level. I never thought to look above me. I scanned the horizon, noting the thin, hazy cloud off to the east, and the rolling, uneven swath of trees that blanketed the hills all around me. A person could get lost in—

  A thin cloud. There were no clouds anywhere else in the sky.

  I looked more intently. Not a cloud. That was smoke. A nearly invisible column of smoke coming from the forest off to the east, maybe a kilometer away.

  People. There were people out here.

  CHAPTER 14

  Maybe the
y had something to eat. My stomach complained noisily, tightening at the thought of finally getting some food in me. I wanted to go find whoever had the fire going, but I didn’t know if they would help me. I might be assuming too much. But I didn’t have much of a choice.

  I grabbed my zip and eased my arms through the now cold, wet sleeves and then got on the CyJet. It came to life under me. I rode toward the tree line that was about fifty meters away. These trees were significantly smaller than the redwoods I’d slept under, but they were still taller than any of the buildings in New Frisko. The shortest ones couldn’t have been less than forty meters or so tall. Some were the stretched out triangles of pines while others were the rounded deciduous types I’d seen farther north. The CyJet easily coasted over the stream and up the slight rise to the tree line.

  My thoughts raced as I wondered what was the best way to approach these people. They had to be people who’d escaped from one of the cities. Maybe even New Frisko. Enforsers might come out here to try bringing them back. If so, should I take the CyJet or leave it?

  I decided the walk might help my muscles loosen up somewhat, and it was better to be safe than sorry. I laughed at that thought. Just like the Announsers always said. But they were probably right this time. I didn’t want to startle whoever that was in there. I wondered if they knew I was around.

  Only one way to find out. Bren always said that. He’d always been braver than me, like when we’d first met. I’d never have thought another kid would do something like help me sit up in my desk—they would have been too embarrassed. But Bren was just a good guy.

  I parked the CyJet about ten meters past the tree line behind a few saplings, hoping to keep it from being noticed by anybody who might come by. I chose a dark, sticky pine tree to hide the CyJet behind. This tree was surrounded by other, flat-leaf trees. I was probably being more careful than I needed to be in the middle of the wilderness. There was no way anyone else could possibly stop by this area any time soon. This was in the middle of nowhere. A hundred years ago, people had regularly driven by on that road. I wondered if they ever came out and appreciated what the world looked like without people messing it up.