Her eyes were glued to the movement in the distance—the group of people continued to come into focus, and the cloud rising up out of Yuma kept expanding. It was getting blacker—it had to be smoke, and a lot of it for it to be visible from that far away. Dome fires were almost unheard of, and she couldn’t think of what else in the area would have enough fuel to burn so vigorously. What in the hell was going on? Typically desert storms were violent and short lived, but perhaps the storm had traveled far enough and lasted long enough to damage the structure of the dome. Yuma’s dome was small, but it was newer, and most of the new domes were constructed to be nearly impervious to weather or other incidental environmental damages. She continued puzzling over what the fuck could be going on over there.
Meanwhile, the group of people trudging over the sands were definitely headed in her direction, possibly hoping to raid the upended crawlers. At least she had the intact laser. After debating whether it was worth trying to dig through some of the cargo, or if she should just save her energy for the conflict, she decided it would be nice to at least try and extract some kind of clothing or additional weapons from the supplies. Both crawlers were jacked up and partially buried in the sand, making the task difficult, if not impossible.
Using the technique she’d tried using earlier, she wedged as much of her upper body through the opening in the second crawler as she could and blindly fished around in the dark. At least she was pretty sure they weren’t carrying any incendiary devices or other volatile items that might explode if she grabbed the wrong thing. Pretty sure at least. She came out with more water, a long piece of black fabric, and a big stick that looked like the bottom part of some garden tool. Not the best things she could have found, considering the kinds of fantastic items that sometimes ended up on her cargo trains, but at least they would all be useful for something. She used the water douse herself again to soothe some of the continuing burn from the rain. It had been awhile since she’d had any water to drink either, and she made sure to hydrate well. Nothing would kill you in the desert faster than running out of water, and she was thankful for policies that mandated a certain amount of water that had to be present on any cargo runs.
She tore small strips from fabric and tied them around some of the bigger wounds, if nothing else to keep more sand from getting inside the cuts. Using the remainder of the black cloth, she fashioned a crude sort of toga that would help keep some of the sun off. The stick would be a good back up weapon, and could possibly help her dig more of the doors out of the sand and get better access to the rest of the cargo hold. What she could really use would be some tools and wiring to try and get the radio working again so she could get some help out there to pull her ass out of the fire.
The smoke coming out of Yuma had spread even further just in the short period of time that she’d been digging around inside the crawlers, and she knew that something outrageously bad had happened. At least she could tell that the group headed towards her weren’t skeletons, at least not uniformed ones. It wasn’t exactly productive, but watching the figures come into focus gave her something else to focus on besides her throbbing skin.
They looked like refugees—they were dirty and shambling, traveling with great difficulty, except for one man that was walking in front of the group. He had short black hair that was longer in the front, and a dusty dark trench coat with some kind of satchel slung over his shoulder. He was striding purposefully out in front of the group with the aid of some kind of stick or staff. He rallied the group, and they began calling and waving their hands in her direction, screaming for help. Great. Just what she needed—a group of stragglers to try and rescue. Well, she had news for them. There would be no rescue coming from her direction, not with the radios down. At least they weren’t outwardly hostile, but desperation took hold quickly in the desert, and you never could be certain when someone might turn on you when survival was on the line.
“Who goes there?” she called when they were close enough to comprehend actual words. She raised her own staff and made herself look even bigger than she already was, as though they were an animal she needed to intimidate. She must have been quite a sight, like some odd tribal desert dweller, a giant half naked woman with a wilted neon green Mohawk shaking sticks and lasers in their direction.
The man held his hand up, signaling for the rest of the stragglers to wait while he came just outside of easy striking distance.
“I’ve got a group of survivors here from the Yuma dome. We’re trying to make it to Gila Bend,” he said.
Dome people out in the desert? Shit—she looked over his shoulder and saw that they were dirty with black ash, and most of them were panting, struggling to remain standing. Many of them had already collapsed into the sand, some of them laying so still that they may have already surrendered to the cruel air. However, the man in the trench coat wasn’t having any trouble at all, and in fact didn’t seem to be distressed in any way. Who the fuck was this guy?
“You’re from the pits,” she said as a statement.
“No, actually,” he said simply. “It looks like you’ve run into trouble yourself. Perhaps we can work together and travel to Gila Bend. There’s strength in numbers.”
She squinted her eyes at him, trying to figure out how someone that wasn’t a pit dweller could be faring so well out in a dead zone. “A haboob and a super storm cell collided and fucked up my crawlers,” she said, tossing a thumb behind her at the wreckage. “Radios are down, and the entrances to the cargo hold are blocked, so I don’t know how useful I’d be to your group. You may as well keep trucking.”
The man smiled and motioned towards her laser with his chin. “I obviously can’t force you into letting us join you, but I think I can help you out. These are dangerous times to be wandering the desert alone,” he said.
“It’s always a dangerous time to be wandering this desert. Look buddy, you wanna just take a time out for a second and tell me why the fuck you dragged all these dome dwellers out here? You get a kick out of watching people’s lungs explode?” she said and thrust the staff in his direction.
He shook his head. “I guess you missed the news. Yuma is gone,” he said calmly but there was genuine sadness in his blue eyes.
Her mouth dropped open and she didn’t bother trying to hide her surprise. “Um, what?” she said, lacking words to say something more intelligent.
“Can’t you see the smoke spreading out behind us? There was an attack on the Yuma dome this afternoon. I’m still not totally sure what happened, but I’m guessing there were multiple charges set around the dome, and the waves of storms this afternoon helped cover the explosions. It was already too late for the Phoenix military to respond. It was total chaos, and I didn’t want to stick around and find out who was behind the attack. Me and this group of people decided it was a better risk to strike out for Gila Bend. I don’t think there will be many survivors out of Yuma when everything is said and done. I didn’t force anyone to come with me, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said.
She just stood there for another minute or two, processing what he had said, staring at the billowing smoke that had engulfed the western sky. “Jesus Christ,” she said.
Something like this hadn’t happened since the early riots, back when everything was chaos and anger and security around the domes hadn’t been very stable. Her mind raced through waves of thoughts and problems that this would cause. She liked Yuma—she had good relations with both the pits ruler and the dome officials, and it had been one of the few domes that hadn’t been very difficult to deal with. Then there was what it meant on a broader scale. If it was the same person or organization behind the skeleton attacks, then this was more serious than some minor acts of civil disobedience. This could be the beginning of a true war. Even though this problem was obviously the bigger concern, her mind ultimately focused on one final implication: Trina. If Yuma was in ruins, then there was no way for her to get the Ketocillin she needed to survive.
Her hands
curled into fists and she clenched her teeth. “Goddamn it! Are you absolutely certain?” she said, knowing it was a stupid question. A whole dome blowing up was something hard to miss, and it would take a major disaster like that to get dome dwellers wandering around waiting to slowly die in the desert’s toxic air.
He ran a gloved hand through his long hair, a look of sadness showing on his face. “I’m truly sorry—this isn’t something anyone ever thought could happen,” he said. “I’m assuming that you’re a cargo runner from the pits.”
She sighed, trying to get her thoughts together enough to formulate a plan. “Yeah, you probably know me. I’m Xero,” she said.
He squinted at her, and recognition flashed in his eyes. “Ah, Xero, the Tucson pit leader. We’ve never met, but yes, I’ve heard of you and seen you in various transmissions before. Your reputation precedes you,” he said.
She nodded, satisfied that she wouldn’t need to intimidate him into understanding how dangerous she was. “Good, at least you know where I’m coming from them. If you partner with me, you should know what to expect. I don’t tolerate bullshit, and I don’t fuck around,” she said.
“I also know that you don’t give help freely—but I assure you, I can give as good as I get. In fact, I think I can get us back up and on the road again, if you don’t mind,” he said. It was a nice way of saying she was quid pro quo regardless of the circumstances. He wasn’t wrong. You didn’t get to where she was by doing thankless favors just for the fuck of it.
She looked over her shoulder at the dead crawlers and then back at the ragtag stragglers that had all fallen into the sands behind him. “You think we can get the crawlers back on the road with just those sickly fucks? Do you know how many tons each of these things weighs?” she said.
“Trust me, I have a plan,” he said and grinned. What a weird motherfucker. She kinda liked him—there was a sharp intelligence and wit that she sensed behind his eyes, and he wasn’t bad looking for that matter. He had the hard but confident look of a person that had been through things that most people couldn’t dream of, and knew he could take just about whatever life threw at them.
“You got a name, stranger?” she said.
“You can call me Radar,” he said.
She thought for awhile, scanning her memory for anyone matching his name and description, but she came up empty.
He chuckled, watching her try and puzzle him out. “I wouldn’t expect you to know me,” he said. “I’m usually pretty discreet.”
He had to be some kind of independent mercenary or smuggler. No one else would have had such an easy-going confidence while in the middle of a literal disaster. He said he was a dome dweller too, but was obviously having no problems whatsoever dealing with the air out in the dead zone.
“Are you one of Xed’s men?” she said, wondering if he had known there was going to be a convoy headed in this direction because of Xed’s intel. It would have made sense given Xed’s known ability to hide flats and pits dwellers in plain sight within the dome infrastructures.
“No. I’m a free agent,” he said, tacitly confirming her earlier suspicion that he was probably an independent mercenary or smuggler. In some ways it made her trust his abilities even more, given that it was not an easy time to be an independent operator. It was nearly impossible to get anything done without being connected to one of the major cartels.
She narrowed her eyes at him, looking him up and down with a new appreciation of just how dangerous he might really be. He smiled as he watched her processing the information. “Don’t worry, even I wouldn’t be so foolish to try and mess with the likes of Xero, injured or not,” he said.
“Good choice. I’m hurting, but I assure you, that just makes me even more dangerous,” she said.
They both nodded their agreement.
“Good. At least we understand each other,” she said and extended a hand. “Partners until we get out of this mess.”
He thrust out his hand and they gave each other a good shake. The dirty, worn leather of his gloves scraped against her palm. “Partners,” he said. In the pits shaking hands was just about as serious as signing a contract in blood, meaning there was a good chance they could trust each other, at least for the moment.
She walked passed him and got closer to the group of survivors that had all fallen into the sand while they’d been talking. There were at least twenty of them, many of which were choking and gasping, or were so far gone that they were only wheezing softly and giving weak coughs as they sucked in too much sand.
Xero raised her laser and quickly shot half of them in the head, spraying the remaining survivors with sloppy chunks of brain and skull. The few that were strong enough to scream did so but couldn’t get enough air into their lungs to make anything more than barely audible cries.
She felt something cold against her leg, and a second later electricity sparked through her body, bringing her to her knees. It wasn’t enough to kill her, but it was enough to make her swear and need a few seconds to recover. Looking up, she saw Radar’s figure looming over her, his metal staff poking into her leg.
“What the fuck,” she said and scrambled to her feet, aiming the laser at his head.
“That was uncalled for,” he said. She eyeballed him and the metal staff that looked like it was actually a chunk of plumbing pipe. There were threads on either end of it, but no other sign of more electronics that would explain where the electric shock had come from.
“If you’re going to make a decision like that, I’d appreciate it if you discussed it with me first before acting,” he said.
He had something of a point, as they had just shaken on being partners. “Sorry, I’m just not used to having to get permission for anything. I’m used to being the boss-lady,” she aid.
“I understand. For the duration of this mission, I think we should reach a consensus before making any major tactical movements,” he said.
“How in the hell did you do that,” she said, her eyes still searching for where in the hell the electric charge had come from.
He dug the pipe into the ground and put a hand on his hip. “There’s more to me than meets the eye. I’ll explain later, but for the moment just know that I’m an engineer by trade. I’m good at putting things together,” he said.
She widened her eyes. She wouldn’t have minded stripping him down to see just what he had under that coat. “I’ll strip search you later,” she said and winked. He laughed.
“Anyway, sorry about killing your buddies, but you know they had no chance of surviving. They were too far gone. They would only be suffering and holding us back. I’ve watched too many dome dwellers slowly suffocate to death in the pits, and it’s not a pretty way to go. This was more merciful. You know I’m right,” she said.
He got a faraway look in his eyes, and he cast his gaze downward, a real sadness falling over his features. “You’re right,” he said and moved his eyes back over the remaining ten survivors. “I think there’s still hope for the rest of these people if we can get them to Gila Bend in time,” he said.
They were rough looking, but from her experience if they’d survived this long and were still breathing like they were, there was a chance for them to recover if they could make it to a more oxygenated environment before the dawn rose on a new day.
“Well, I’m not exactly thrilled about the idea of spending the night out in the dead zone, so if you’ve got another idea, I’m all ears,” she said.
He smiled and patted the dark leather satchel. “I think I can arrange something,” he said.
CHAPTER 14
She didn’t believe in magic, but this guy seemed like he was just a few rungs below being something completely mystical. From his bag he had extracted an array of ropes, a small motor, and what looked like a selection of small grappling hooks. After spending thirty minutes tinkering with the set up, she had helped him attach the ropes at various points on the crawler.
“Now, this is the pain in the ass. We need to
dig down to one of the anchors that kept the crawler from being totally blown away,” he said. “If we can’t get to it, it’s going to be really hard for my little winch machine here to have the leverage to pull this thing up.”
He had determined that the second crawler had sustained too much damage in the crash to be readily fixable without significant effort, and he said the tiny engine would probably only have enough of a charge to pull one of them out of the sand, so they were focusing their efforts on the one Xero had been driving originally. She was skeptical that anything so small could possibly generate the forces needed to pull up the huge crawler, but she was willing to give anything a shot at that point. They started digging into the sand, using their respective sticks to try and dig as far down as they could. It took well over an hour, and Xero’s wounds were screaming in pain from all of the movement, but at last they heard a resonating clunk as his pipe struck the solid metal of the crawler’s anchor. She collapsed into the sand in relief.
“You can take a load off,” he said. “It won’t do any good to have you go out of commission too.”
“Thanks,” she said, not moving from the sand, even though the gritty surface was irritating her already abused skin.
Under Dark Sky Law Page 13