ME2 (S.E.E.D.S. Book 1)

by J Peregrine

  After a little while one man went to a large jug and filled mugs with what I thought must be a batch of home-brew. The other men went together one on either side of the fire and pulled a rack from the ground where they must have been cooking meat. With the meat and their mugs, they sat down near the fire to eat and drink.

  Suddenly one of the men became agitated. He jumped up and threw a bone at Jake from what he had been eating. "Quit staring at me! Quit it!" He looked at the others who, still chewing, looked up at him in amusement. "He's staring at me. I can't eat with him staring at me." He wiped his face angrily.

  "Don't like your dinner to look you in the eye?" one of the others asked, then they both laughed.

  "Shut up," the man yelled at his companions and went to his pack, pulled something out and tore a piece of fabric from it. Then he went to Jake and tied the fabric around his head, covering his eyes. He stared down at Jake for a moment. "You ain't no right to judge me, boy. Until you watch your little brother starve, you've no right!" He sniffed and rubbed his nose, and then went back to his food and drink and sat down.

  The others paused their eating while they watched him and then they all went back to eating and drinking in silence. After a little while, one of the men got up, got more meat and handed the others more as well. They each went back to refill their mugs one more time and then went back to more eating and more drinking.

  I was getting tired myself and had to pinch myself so I wouldn't nod off. Finally, the one who yelled at Jake fell onto the ground and laughed himself to sleep. The other two got up and went over to the man, kicked at him trying to get him back on his feet, but he wouldn't budge. They laughed at the poor sod and went and settled themselves onto mats near the fire, curled up and seemed to fall straight to sleep.

  Chapter 21

  I waited. I wanted to make sure the men were fast asleep before I made my move. I had retrieved the small knife that I had found in the car, and then secured my pack back onto my shoulders. With Dog at my side we got up. “Stay down,” I whispered to Dog, and he lowered his head and tail and followed.

  As soon as I got to the boulder behind Jake, I whispered to him. “It's me. I’m cutting you loose, then we can make a run for it while they're asleep.” He jumped and growled deep in his throat but with the rag in his mouth he made no words. Sawing on the rope with my knife, he started pulling. “Hold on, I’m cutting as fast as I can,” I said, and put more weight behind the knife but it was a small knife and a tough rope.

  He squirmed in place. I stopped sawing and looked around the rock at him. “Are you trying to wake everyone up?” I whispered and went back to cutting the rope. “If you want to stay here with them, I’ll leave already.” He groaned twice which I took to mean no, but he was still squirming, so I sawed faster. As soon as the rope popped apart, a high-pitched buzzing noise erupted from the other side of the camp.

  Jake pulled the rag from his mouth. “Run!” he fired at me and scrambled to his feet faster than I could and lit out for the trees, “Se...curity bots, you idiot. Grab something to hit them with.”

  Sure enough, tiny bee like things were flying towards us emitting an ear-splitting sound that made my ears buzz as they screeched towards us. I saw Jake make it to the trees and pick up a branch swinging it back and forth through the air taking out several bots one after the other. As I tripped over the pile of firewood, one of the bots hit the back of me so I rolled until I felt my shoulder crush the little devil. Dog put a paw on it for good measure after I rolled to my feet. Then I grabbed the first piece of firewood I found and started swing at the other bots coming at me. It was like a vicious game. They dove at me and I batted.

  “You have to hit them harder than that if you want to disable them, they'll keep coming until you do,” he shouted.

  So, I swung harder. Swipe, swipe, swipe. I turned and swung, and turned and swung, and turned and found one of the men coming at me. My adrenaline soared as my branch caught him right in the head connecting with an awful crack, making him topple sideways like a giant tree. I stood over him panting.

  Jake came towards me and as he did, he sent a few more bots to their graves. “Come on,” he said, as he pushed me away from the man on the ground.

  I stumbled and caught myself. Then turning, I looked at the man who lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. “I didn’t kill him, did I? I didn’t mean to kill him....”

  “You don’t have to apologize, he’s a cannibal,” hissed Jake. “He eats people for lunch.”

  I shook my head, unable to believe what I had done.

  “Still, don’t believe me?” He put his hand on my head and forced me to look to my right. “Do you see that?” I started to move, but he held my head in place and whispered, “Look again.”

  As I looked, the moon caused dark shadows to fall everywhere, but the firelight touched something familiar. I stumbled backward as I caught sight of the skeletal hand, all alone, sticking up above the gruesome pile of bones. It’s shadow a larger than life wave from beyond the grave. My breath caught in my throat as I gasped and swallowed a scream.

  “Do you believe me now?” Jake grabbed my hand as I tripped up a boulder he had scaled to continue through the trees.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as we slowed to climb to the top of the knoll. “I thought you were just trying to scare me.” There was no one visibly chasing us, but we ran anyway. One possibly dead, and two sleeping cannibals were enough to keep my blood running cold and my feet moving forward for a very long time. Eventually though I had to slow down in order to breathe.

  Jake looked back and stopped.

  “Where are you headed?” I finally asked between breaths.

  “Does it matter as long as it’s away from them?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  When we came to the top of the hill, Jake paused. I bent over, holding my side and sucking in the cold air from between my teeth. I tried to tell my body it was not going to die just yet and hoped it would agree. He was looking out over the valley. I looked too, but I only saw trees and hills. I didn’t know what he was looking for.

  Suddenly I realized Dog was not with me. I moved back in the direction we had come. I knew I had heard him behind me, at least, I thought I had.

  “What are you doing?” said Jake.

  “Dog,” I said, then I relaxed as I saw him coming over the rise. He had been behind me watching my back as always but then I noticed that he was coming the last little way towards us very slowly, haltingly. Then he stopped and fell forward into the leaves at his feet. “Dog,” I yelled as I dove to his side. “Dog,” I said, as I crouched down next to him putting my hand on his side, but he didn’t move.

  “A bee bot,” said Jake.

  “What?” I said, unable to comprehend what was happening.

  He pointed to the spot on Dog’s head were something had made a hole down into Dog’s brain. “Bee bots are robotic devices someone designed as wards,” he explained. “They're made to protect them when they were sleeping, eliminating the need for anyone to stand watch. It gripped onto him and tunneled down into his brain, interrupted his circuits.” he laid his hand also on Dog.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want this boy to see me cry, so I squeezed my hands into tight balls. “Grandfather gave him to me... when I was nine,” I said, and put my hand on his face, feeling again for signs of life. “He’s gone?” I asked, as my heart caught in my throat, but I knew he was gone. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true.

  “He was trying to protect you,” Jake said, as he looked down at Dog.

  “I... he’s always been there...” I said.

  Jake nodded.

  “I can’t just abandon him,” I looked around trying to think if there was a way I could carry him.

  “Come on,” Jake said, as he reached down and picked Dog up. “We have to keep moving, but he’ll be safe in here.” He carried him to a tree. Laying him down in the hollowed-out center of an old oak already lined with a cushion of
leaves. “In case you want to come back for him someday.” Then he bent down and scooped up more leaves to cover him with.

  I reached in and stroked Dog’s hide for a moment. It occurred to me that some wounds might not heal so easily. My physical wounds seemed to have healed without assistance, but the death of Grandfather and now Dog made my heart ache and my head hurt.

  This was not fair. I had thought Dog would live forever. I had thought Grandfather would live forever, to be honest, and I would have cried if I hadn’t been so tired, hungry or in shock, but I didn’t want to cry I only wanted to go back in time. Then it occurred to me that I had finally gotten my wish. I had wanted to escape the mountain, to be on my way to the city. The problem was that now all I wanted was to be back in my room in the mountain with Dog, listening for the sounds of my grandfather tinkering in his lab. I closed my eyes. I didn’t care anymore if he saw me cry and I couldn’t have stopped if I had wanted to.

  Jake brushed off his hands and leaned on the tree next to me and waited. Finally, he sighed. “I'm sorry about your dog, and I owe you my life,” he said.

  I wiped my face and was going to object, but he raised his hand to stop me.

  He looked at me. "I can't take you to Mo, but I can take you to the city. My family is there, they may be able to help you."

  I wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Thank you...” I said, but he interrupted me again.

  “Don’t thank me for something you may regret.”

  Chapter 22

  “Come on, we need to keep moving,” Jake shouted back to me as he picked his way through the rocky terrain like a cat.

  I had fallen behind again. “Can we stop for a minute?” I said, rubbing my knee after I had tripped for the third time and this time banged my knee enough to hurt. “My night vision is not as good as yours and I’m used to running not rock climbing.”

  Jake turned and looked at me. Then he came back and sat down on a boulder. “If you haven’t been to the city before where have you been hiding?”

  “I haven't been hiding,” I said. Grateful for the chance to rest, I sat down on the ground and stretched my legs out in front of me, rubbing my sore knee. “I’ve lived with my grandfather my whole life and since he lived through the Fall he wanted nothing to do with what was left of society. So, he retreated to the mountain and refused to leave.”

  Jake nodded. “I’ve heard the stories, there were many that felt that way after the Fall.”

  “Grandfather didn’t talk very often about his reasons for retreating to the mountain,” I said. “He told stories of what happened when people realized that even though they had survived underground in the bomb shelters or the silos, that getting out was no better and, in some ways, it was even worse.” “

  "In the shelters they were forced to work together and get along. Once they got out there was no cooperation," said Jake.

  “There were those who could have helped rebuild. But they only wanted to create weapons. So, grandfather retreated to the north country and the mountain.”

  Jake nodded and started climbing again.

  I closed my eyes a minute wishing we could stop and rest and eat, but there was nothing to eat, and he kept moving so I followed.

  Creatures crawled and slunk past us as we traveled, not that I could identify them. Some of them looked similar to animals I had seen in books, but they were different in subtle ways. They were smaller, leaner with larger ears, and eyes that seemed to have two lids. These must be some of the genetic changes that affected the creatures that survived. Of course, many animals didn’t survive at all, between the bombings, and the bursts, and then the poisons, most had perished. Grandfather had little to share about the animal world. He admitted that he had had no interest really in how or if animals had survived. He was only interested in helping man survive but then he became disillusioned with even that.

  We moved in silence, sometimes jogging but more and more often we had to slow down to climb through brambles, over boulders, down one side of a rocky ravine and up the other.

  As we got what I assumed was closer to the city, the land, and the sky turned desolate and gray. It became hazy as it got light, but the sun never came out. The area we walked through was full of what was left of crumbling buildings, roadways, cars, and towns that ran together from one to the other. I had heard the old news broadcasts about the destruction, but this was surreal, like it had happened yesterday. I assumed we would come to places that had been rebuilt, places that were alive, but the gray carnage went on and on.

  The ancient books and movies my grandfather had collected and given to me suddenly seemed like blatant lies or fairy tales from a time that never was. I knew Grandfather had preferred the past. I’d thought it was because he was in love with that time, but now I realized that maybe it was because he couldn’t bear to face up to the reality of what was left. He preferred something called the Hallmark channel, but the reality was straight out of Kafka.

  “Welcome to the city,” Jake said softly as he stood on top of a huge piece of concrete in front of me.

  I joined him and looked out across what looked like a jumble of concrete that went on for miles and miles. “You were supposed to be taking me to the city,” I said, perplexed.

  “This is the city,” he said, sweeping one hand across the miles of ruin. “Welcome to Rubble.”

  “But I needed to go to New Haven or Shadow Perch or whatever you call it,” I said, as my stomach dropped. We had obviously gotten our wires crossed, and I was now who knows how many miles in the wrong direction.

  He nodded. “I’ve heard it called many names, New Have, Shadow Perch, but does this look like any kind of haven to you? Or even a Perch? We call it Rubble.”

  The sight before me was jarring and in sharp contrast to what I had been expecting. I had expected that what we were passing through was just an undeveloped area. I expected that finally we would come to a city, a real city risen from the ashes. This was... I had nothing to compare it to. Even without my expectations of it being a real city, this was a whole new level of ruin than I ever would have imagined. I gazed out over it, unable to reconcile the reality with the dream. There were even little pockets of green where the wildness was trying to reinsert itself but there was nothing else. I imagined it was once a park or a green space when the buildings and the city had been inhabited. But now even the wildness looked lost and desperate within this devastation.

  “Is this it?” I said.

  “There are whole sections where buildings still stand, but that is even more disquieting, and dangerous,” he said.

  I could not believe this. “I expected people would have rebuilt by now,” I said, feeling sad and overwhelmed.

  Jake grimaced slightly but did not comment. "We need to keep moving," he finally said. "From now on we need to make as little noise as possible, so no talking. All right?" Then he turned back around and moved on.

  I was stunned. It was as if the war had just happened. There was no sign of reconstruction or recovery or anything. I was stunned. "Why didn't anyone rebuild?"

  Jake finally turned and looked at me, as if he didn't know what to say. "There weren't enough resources. Or enough people," he said. "It's all we can do just to survive."

  "Is that why there are slave traders?"

  "What?" he said, turning to look at me.

  "I ran into a couple back towards the mountain, who tried to, well did trap me for a bit. They were slave traders, wanted to sell me to the highest bidder, I guess." I felt him staring at me. "I may have made enemies there."

  "Well, you're lucky you got away." He smiled slightly and then moved on.

  "But wait..." I could not get my mind around the sight before me. I stared at his back as he moved into the haze. "I thought, I mean I guess I assumed there was a city, I mean like there used to be."

  "You mean like before the war?"

  "Yes, I guess. I mean I know a lot was destroyed but not everything was destroyed." I waited for him to explain.
But he just kept moving. "Wait, where are the people?"

  "Come on, I'll show you."

  At least there were other people, but where were they? He was too far ahead to ask. I dropped my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at the devastation and followed.

  Chapter 23

  As I followed him through the gray, I was filled with anxiety. He would be right in front of me and the next time I looked up he was gone down into a pocket of concrete or debris, through a crevasse, or into the fog. The deathly quiet added to my anxiety. When he paused to wait for me, I finally caught up to him again.

  I stood close to him. “Does this mean the fairy tales about the city are true?" I asked quietly. "I thought they were made up stories but now, I'm not so sure?" I had stitched together my own idea of the world and the city from the movies I had watched but that idea had been blown out of the water by the reality of what we were walking through.

  "Which fairy tales?

  "You know, the fairy tales about the city, the ones that start with a gray blanket that descended over everything in its path, or that the only way into the city was through a giant archway and if you attempted to enter you had to first get past the fire-breathing dragon that lived there. When it saw you approach, it would grumble and roar and spit fire. If you survived this, you were then met by flying creatures that scrapped your skin off your body and clawed out your eyes. If you survived that, worst of all were the zombies who would attack like a pack of wolves, cut out your heart and eat it while you watched, and then you were doomed to walk the earth with them for all eternity." Of course, I hadn’t believed those stories, they were designed to scare small children into being careful and staying safely indoors. It worked till I got old enough to realize they were just stories but now I wondered.