by Dan Wells
They reached the wilderness. Phase one was a success.
Kira and Marcus had fought again last night: his final attempt to talk her out of going. It drove Kira mad that he could be so obtuse — that he could misunderstand her so completely — and she was still fuming as she sat in the Grid wagon, trying to think of something else. She looked at the group they’d assembled. Driving the wagon was the same girl they’d had on the last run, a small-framed girl named Yoon-Ji Bak. Next to her at the front of the wagon was Gabriel Vasicek, a battle-scarred mountain of a man who made the phrase “riding shotgun” sound pathetic — he was riding “chain-fed minigun,” a giant metal monstrosity with at least eight barrels. Nobody who saw him wielding it was likely to give them trouble. In the back with Kira were Jayden, Haru, and two soldiers Jayden identified as Nick and Steve — Kira had no idea which was which, and chose to think of them as Skinny and Scruffy. They watched the empty houses roll past without comment.
Jayden laid out a map of the island. “We head south on Meadowbrook, west on Sunrise, and then south on Long Beach Boulevard to the edge of the island. We’ll actually get pretty close to the school in the salvage report, just a few blocks away, so anyone who sees us and happens to get asked about it will report that we went exactly where we’re supposed to.”
Kira pointed at the map’s south shore, a rough-edged maze of bays and inlets and narrow islands. “Your path takes us over a bridge — are we sure it’s still up?”
“You’re thinking of the wooden ones,” said Haru. “These that we’ll be using are steel, and even without maintenance, they can last a lot longer than eleven years.”
“But why so far south?” asked Kira. “If somebody sees us near the school, hooray, we have a witness, but is that really likely enough to warrant going a day or more out of our way?”
“We have to head south anyway,” said Jayden, tapping the western half of the map, “for two reasons. First is the airport, the block marked ‘JFK’—it’s big and solid and we don’t use it for anything, which makes it practically the Voice capital of the island. Everyone who doesn’t want to follow the rules ends up there sooner or later.”
“Everyone but us,” said Kira.
Jayden smirked. “It’s also perfectly situated between East Meadow and the military base in Queens, which is our other big obstacle. If we travel too far north, we hit the Defense Grid, which is obviously out of the question; if we travel through the middle, we risk Voice raids out of JFK. But if we go all the way south, we avoid them both — we get pretty close to the airport, but our scouts say the Voice don’t tend to patrol that far down.” He gestured to Skinny and Scruffy; one of them nodded once, the other did nothing. “The shore has less loot to steal, and fewer people to rob, and a pretty straight shot here, to Brooklyn.” He tapped the map again, then moved his finger south, to a place called Staten Island. “This is empty as far as we know, plus the Defense Grid collapsed this bridge, so there’s no good way across. Obviously there’s nothing south of us but ocean, which means ninety-nine percent of the military is up here, in Queens, where our land and their land are closest. All together, that means the route we’ve planned cuts deep to the south and far around everything we want to avoid.”
Kira nodded, seeing their plan. “So we follow the southern coast, hope all these bridges still work, and then cut up behind the Defense Grid through”—she peered at the map labels—“Brooklyn.”
“Exactly,” said Haru, “and we cross on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Kira frowned, studying the map. “If this area is so undefended, why aren’t we worried the Partials will sweep across it and kill us? The bombs you were talking about?”
“We’ve filled that area with every explosive we could find,” said Jayden. “There are guard posts and watchtowers all through the area, and mines and traps all over both the city and the bridges. We can avoid them because we know where they are, but an army marching through would get blown up, bogged down, and sniped to death while our own forces march down to flank them.”
“Aren’t the Partials going to have the same defenses in … what is it called, the Bronx?”
“Possibly, if that’s where they are, but I honestly don’t think they even care. We’re gnats to them: a few thousand humans against a million-plus Partials. They likely don’t defend as well as we do, because they don’t expect us to be stupid enough to attack.”
Kira snorted. “I don’t know if ‘we’re stupider than they think we are’ is a really great attack strategy.”
“Just trust us,” said Jayden. “We know what we’re doing. We can avoid our own mines — Nick and Steve here set half of them themselves — and we can find theirs before they get us. This will work.”
Kira looked at Skinny and Scruffy again. One of them nodded, the same one as before. His companion again stayed silent. Kira pushed her hair from her face.
“We trust all these people? Nick, Steve, Gabe, Yoon?”
“Haru picked them,” said Jayden. “He trusts them, so I have no reason not to. They know what we’re doing and why, and they agree that it’s worth the risk. I’ve met them before; they won’t turn on us or rat us out, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Just curious,” said Kira. She turned to Skinny. “What do you say? Why are you here?”
“I want a piece of a Partial.”
“Great,” said Kira. “Real upstanding motives.” She looked at Scruffy. “How about you?”
Scruffy smiled, his eyes hidden behind jet-black glasses. “I just want to save the little babies.”
“Awesome,” said Kira. She looked at Jayden and opened her eyes wide. “Awesome.”
“It’s eleven miles to Long Beach,” said Haru, “then we’re going to push west as far as we can before dark. If you need some shut-eye, now’s the time to get it. Vasicek, you got front?”
“Sir,” said Gabe.
“I’ll watch back for now. The rest of you rest up, it’s going to be a long week.”
“It’s a double bridge,” said Yoon, scanning ahead with binoculars. They had reached the small bridge to Long Beach on the southern shore of the island. “Steel and concrete, both sides look pretty good. Better than good, actually, they’re almost clean — there’s debris built up on the edges, but nothing in the center.” She lowered the binoculars. “Those bridges get used, and regularly.”
Kira peered ahead. “Voice?”
“Probably just a fishing community,” said Jayden, “couple of makeshift family groups who use the bridge to sell fish in East Meadow. They’re all over down here.” He clicked his tongue and shrugged. “Doesn’t mean they’re not bandits when the opportunity presents itself.”
“Then we make the opportunity as unappealing as possible,” said Haru. “Vasicek!”
The giant man stirred and woke, moving from wagon-shaking snores to full alertness in a matter of seconds. “Sir?”
“Get back up front with that minigun; try to look scary.”
Gabe shouldered the minigun and climbed forward, shaking the wagon perilously with every step.
“Why on earth is that called a minigun?” asked Kira. “It’s bigger than I am — is it like calling a fat guy Tiny?”
“It’s the same kind of gun they use on tanks,” said Haru, “but small enough for infantry. When you call something mini, you gotta remember the scale of the original.”
“So you’re a walking tank,” said Kira, whistling low as Gabe settled into the seat by Yoon. “Remind me not to call you Tiny.”
“Move out,” said Haru. Yoon whipped the horses, and the wagon lurched into motion. Kira watched the bridge as they approached it, her eyes flicking back and forth to the other buildings they were passing. The street here was wide, lined with parking lots and looted stores, and where it merged with another road, there were triangular patches of grass and trees springing up between the lanes. As they passed the last building on the corner, Kira whipped her head around to look down the other street, expecting an ambus
h at any minute, but all she saw were broken storefronts and rusted cars.
The wagon rumbled forward, the horses’ hooves clattering on the broken asphalt. They reached the tip of the bridge, and Kira saw the narrow bay stretching out on either side, and then they were on it, out in the open, with hundreds of yards to cross without a tree or a building or any kind of cover. Kira had never felt so exposed. She’d grown up in the center of the island, surrounded by … stuff. By everything the old world had built and grown and left behind. It held its own dangers, but she’d learned to deal with them — holes to hide bandits or animals, walls to collapse on you if you weren’t careful, metal spikes and shards of glass and a hundred other threats. She knew them, and she was used to them. To be out here, away from everything, with nothing to hide behind or shelter beneath or even lean against, she felt like the world was empty and alone.
The beach on the far side of the peninsula was, if possible, worse. Gray waves rolled against the shore, topped with white and whipped by a salty wind. Whereas the north shore looked across to the mainland, here the ocean simply continued, flat and featureless as far as Kira could see. She had often dreamed of the world beyond the island, the ruins and wonders, the danger and isolation. Here she saw the world as a great gray nothing — a broken wall, an empty beach, a dull wave slowly grinding it away to nothing. She saw a dead dog half-buried in the sand, brown with old blood and speckled white with maggots. She turned back to the road and kept her eyes from wandering.
If there were people on Long Beach they kept to themselves, and the wagon rumbled along without incident to another bridge on the western tip. Here they crossed back to the main island, circumventing a wide, marshy bay, and then turned west again through another empty city. This shore was much closer to the road than it appeared on the map, which heightened Kira’s unease for reasons she couldn’t explain. All the soldiers were awake now, alert in the fading light, and Jayden whispered at Kira’s side.
“This is the closest we’ll get to the airport — this urban strip heads straight up to it, just three or four miles.”
“You think we’ll see any bandits?”
“You got your rifle?”
Kira nodded, picking it up and checking the chamber. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. “Locked and loaded.”
“Then you’re ready, either way.”
Kira swallowed and pointed the rifle out away from the wagon, holding it the way they’d taught her in school: left hand supporting the barrel, right hand on the grip, finger next to but not on the trigger. She thumbed off the safety and watched the buildings roll by — fancy town houses with tall, old-growth trees in the front yards, probably millions of dollars apiece before the Break. Now their windows and doors were broken, their yards had gone to seed, and rusted cars squatted in their driveways like giant, dead insects. They passed a stretch of trees, and a row of tall buildings beyond them — an old beach resort, probably half-flooded by now. She saw a glint of light in an upper-story window: an idle reflection from a shard of glass? Or a signal to someone hiding in the city?
The trees gave way to more buildings, the heart of the old town community, and Kira began to see signs of modern habitation: graffiti on the walls, tarps over broken roofs, boards nailed up across shattered windows. The front of an old bank had been hung with corrugated aluminum, and the cars in the parking lot had been pushed together to form a barricade. She couldn’t tell how recently the work had been done, or if anyone was still there. Nothing moved, and no one spoke.
Two blocks later a loud clap echoed through the air, and Kira jumped in fright, clutching the gun. “Was that a shot?”
“Sounds like something fell,” said Jayden, eyes peering carefully into every corner and shadow as they passed. “A sheet of plywood or something, I can’t be sure.”
“So we’re not alone?”
“Oh, we’re definitely not alone.”
Kira scanned the windows along the road — old homes, condos, restaurants, and ice cream shops, all empty, all looted, all scarred by time and weather and human violence. Yoon kept the horses steady, whispering softly to calm their nerves. Gabe brandished his minigun like a talisman, half standing in his seat for better leverage. Skinny and Scruffy crouched low in the wagon, sighting odd places with their rifles that Kira would have never thought to look: a Dumpster by an alley, a billboard, a tipped delivery van lying dented on its side.
Footsteps echoed down the street, and Kira’s heart tensed in her chest. She couldn’t tell if they were running toward her or away. She strained her eyes and saw nothing.
“Could be Voices planning an ambush,” said Jayden. “Could be fishermen thinking we’re the Voice.”
“You’ve got uniforms,” said Haru. “They should know that we’re safe.”
Kira gripped her rifle tighter. “That also makes us a target for the Voice.” She saw a flash of movement in an upper window and swung around quickly, training her gun on the enemy, finger moving fluidly to the trigger to fire the first shot.
It was a kid, maybe fourteen years old. As young as Saladin. His face was dirty, and his shirt was ragged and oversize. Kira gasped, breathing heavily, seeing the boy in her sights and feeling her finger on the trigger. She lowered her gun. “Nobody shoot him.”
Jayden was already watching the boy in the window, who looked down at them stone-faced. The wagon rolled forward, and he disappeared from view. Kira turned and slumped against the inner wall of the wagon, dropping the rifle and covering her face.
The wagon rumbled on.
The peninsula was long, far longer than the last one. The sun began to set, and the buildings cast long shadows over the road. Kira watched as the stores turned to houses, the houses to apartments, and the apartments to forests of kudzu and narrow saplings. Just when Kira thought it was too dark to go on, Jayden called a halt and pointed to a run-down marina office. Skinny and Scruffy jumped out of the wagon and practically disappeared, melting into the shadows. Kira waited tensely, so nervous she even picked up the rifle again. She tried to speak, but Jayden hushed her with a motion of his hand. Minutes passed like hours, until a small light shone out from the windows of the marina. Jayden whistled softly, and Yoon flicked the horse’s reins, guiding them toward the building. The front wall had been solid glass, a showroom for fishing boats, and the opening was wide enough to drive the whole wagon into shelter. Jayden jumped out, and Gabe dropped heavily to the floor, keeping his eyes on the street behind them.
“One door in the back,” said Skinny, “and two windows too big to board up.”
“Let’s go,” said Jayden, and they disappeared into the back rooms. Haru started untying the gear, and Kira hurried to help — blankets and food, extra ammunition, even explosives. She hadn’t known about those. They handed them down to Yoon and Scruffy, and together they ferried it all into a back room with no other entrances. Last of all was the medical computer, a portable unit with its own generator, designed for fieldwork in undeveloped countries. Kira couldn’t remember what the old world looked like — the old days, when she was a child, when the wasteland she lived in was still “developed.” She thought about the maggots on the dog, crawling and eating and blind.
They tended to the horses, set a watch, and settled in for the night. Kira wrapped herself tightly in her blanket, not cold but still somehow freezing, teeth chattering in the darkness. Drifting through the air was a soft voice singing — Gabe, standing watch. His voice was low and sweet, surprising from such a large frame, and he sang an old song Kira’s teacher had sung sometimes at the school, about losing a love and hiding from the memory. It made her think of Marcus, and the last thing they’d said to each other. She loved him, or she thought she did, or she thought she used to. And yet every time he talked about being together, she couldn’t handle it.
Why can’t I talk to him? About the things that really matter? And why can’t he see that it’s not enough to just give up and wait for the end? How can anyone even think that?
She covered her head with her blanket and listened to Gabe’s melancholy singing. When she fell asleep, she dreamed of death — not just for her, not just for her species, but for every living thing she had ever known. The Earth was flat and wide and brown, a field of dirt as barren as the moon, a single road stretching into the endless distance. The last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. Then they disappeared, and there was nothing left but nothing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jayden woke her early in the morning, and together they roused the others and set off through a thin gray mist. Haru was leading the horses this time, flicking the reins gently and clicking his tongue to urge them on. Yoon sat in the back with Kira, rolling her shoulders in slow circles to work out the kinks in her muscles. In the early light they could see the airport across a wide bay. Fog curled off the water.
They traveled through a few more miles of city before reaching the next bridge, the longest yet, stretching far across the bay to reconnect the peninsula with the main body of the island. They saw the bridge long before they reached it, and Kira hoped desperately that it was still intact. If they couldn’t cross here, it would mean days lost from their journey.
Were people already looking for them? The salvage run was scheduled to go overnight, so no one should miss them yet — unless Marcus had told someone the truth about where they were going. She wanted to trust him, she couldn’t think of a single reason not to, and yet he had refused to help. He had refused to come. She needed him with her more than she needed the rifle she was holding, and yet…
They stopped by a massive parking lot, acres across from one shore of the peninsula to the other. The bridge was blocked at the mouth; they crept forward to find a makeshift barricade of old cars, now long abandoned. Skinny and Scruffy stood watch while the rest of them heaved and pushed, hooking up the horses to clear a path through the wreckage. Kira forced herself to stand tall in the wagon as they crossed the bridge, the tallest thing for hundreds of yards in every direction. It terrified her. That was why she did it.