Outrider

by Steven John

  He had retrieved his phone, thrown a weathered, fraying suede jacket over his t-shirt, and grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a glass of ice, leaving home again without so much as turning on a light. He’d walked the twelve blocks from his apartment to the executive building while pouring himself fingers of bourbon. The day had started off bleak, taken a turn for the wretched after his embarrassing rendezvous with Maria, and now was spiraling toward bottom.

  Hale awkwardly crawled over the fine silk couch and snatched his drink from the table, running a palm across the damp trail it left. He was vaguely aware of the fury he would have felt to see someone else dragging their shoes across the executive upholstery or setting down a glass without a coaster. But these notions were foolish when viewed through the lens of liquor. Propriety made no sense at the moment. It never made much sense, did it? This pedantic nod to civility, to manners—it was all aggrandizement of the insignificant; the unimportant made indispensable.

  It was time—he had practiced enough: sitting down on the plush sofa, Timothy held down the number “1” on his phone and gritted his back teeth, staring off blankly into space. The phone rang five heart-stopping times before Hale’s own voice greeted him, saying in a measured, sober cadence: “You’ve reached the executive office. Leave a concise, detailed message.”

  Then came the beep. “Mr. Mayor. It’s Tim Hale.” His tongue felt thick; his lips sluggish. “I see that you’ve been trying to reach me. My phone was disabled. Nothing to report. Carry on.”

  Hale lowered the phone, closing his right eye to be sure he had an index finger on the red “END” button, and terminated the call. He let out a long, heavy sigh of relief. Rising unsteadily, Hale tossed back the last few ounces of whiskey and dropped his phone and empty glass onto the cushions. He made his way to the door outside Dreg’s office and keyed in the entry code.

  The lock clicked open and Timothy turned the heavy brass knob, pushing the door inward. Light spilled from the receiving chamber into the office, mingling with the glow from the pulsing, multi-colored displays along the left wall. Hale entered the office slowly, cautiously, as if someone were sure to burst in and catch him at any moment. He usually walked into The Mayoral chamber with panache, but his mission on this night blunted any swagger. Illogical fear played at Hale’s nerves. There was no way anyone could ever uncover what he was about to do, yet still his hands trembled as he approached the desk.

  The secretary general pulled back Dreg’s chair but did not sit. He slid open the oak panel covering The Mayor’s keyboard and monitor, both built into the desk, and punched in the pass code known only to him and Franklin Dreg. After less than a minute of feverish typing, there was a new code and a new reality; one Hale had dreamt of for years. Now no one but he had full access to the near-omnipotent Mainframe Control System of New Las Vegas.

  Across the country, snow was still falling on Boston, but the flakes were smaller and fewer in number as the night wore on. The storm was drifting west as the wind shifted and blew inland from the sea.

  Scofield tossed and turned fitfully. He had kicked the blanket clear of his body and was shivering in his sleep, his dreams feverish and dark. Sebastian’s face loomed before him, covered in strange tattoos. He sneered, baring teeth filed to sinister points. The leech stood in the middle of a landscape so barren not even a shadow marked the expanse of sand.

  Scofield was on his knees, bare-chested. In his hands he clutched a book. Try as he might, he could not focus his eyes to make out its title. The leech was speaking, his arms slowly rising until they stuck straight out as if in crucifixion. He was wearing the same gray workman’s clothes as in waking life, but the garments were pristine, pressed and creased to perfection.

  Sebastian’s speech was muddled; his words sounded like language but were unintelligible. He leaned forward slowly, arms still outstretched, and though Scofield could not understand him, he knew the leech was referring to the book he grasped between trembling hands.

  Suddenly lucid, Sebastian whispered: “This and more,” then wheeled to face away. The color began to fade from his clothing, gray becoming ever paler until his uniform was pure white.

  Suddenly all was black and then, with a ragged gasp, Scofield was awake. The sky above was still dark and studded with stars, but on the eastern horizon the first hint of dawn had made its appearance. A thin strip of pale blue melted into gray and then into purple-black night sky. It would be the better part of an hour still until any of the desert was illuminated.

  Scofield shuddered, a tremor working its way from his heels all the way to his neck. The fingers of his right hand were numb. His left, he realized slowly, was balled into a tight fist and stuck between his thighs. He lay on his side, curled into fetal position. Coughing, Scofield rose to his knees, massaging his cramped shoulders.

  Reese was on her feet and in the haze of the coming dawn Scofield could see that she was watching him. Shady slept on the ground between him and Kretch, and slowly, stiffly, Scofield rose to peer over the colt. Wilton was out cold, his breathing steady beneath a thick blanket that covered him from head to toe.

  Scofield got to his feet, his joints popping and creaking and every muscle aching in protest. He rolled up his bed mat and secured it to Reese’s saddle, then threw the heavy wool blanket around his shoulders. His hat was lying where he had left it beside the laundry sack he used as a pillow. The canteen lay a few feet off, and Scofield wondered if he had kicked it in his sleep or if Reese had been nuzzling at it as she sometimes did. He jammed the laundry bag and canteen into a saddle bag, retightening the straps and buckles on his horse’s bridle and saddle once his sundries were secure.

  With a final stretch, Scofield slid a boot into Reese’s left stirrup and mounted the mare, leaving his right foot dangling freely. He leaned down against her neck and wrapped both arms around her warm, firm flesh.

  “Real quiet, OK girl? Let’s roll.” Scofield tapped the horse gently with one heel, giving a brief tug at her reins with his right hand. She set off at a plodding walk headed east by southeast. At Kretch’s insistence, the outriders had bedded down a solid mile from the strange device. Scofield had wanted to stick nearby and stake out the scene but Wilton had been intractable, convinced that either nothing would happen and sticking close would be pointless or that all hell would break loose and staying nearby could be deadly.

  Scofield hadn’t bought either of these scenarios but the potential for the latter had been enough to convince him not to stay put alone. The two had agreed to sleep in shifts, but after catching Wilton dozing for the second time, Scofield had decided to scrap his worries and just nod off for the night.

  When he had ridden a few hundred yards from Kretch, Scofield tapped Reese into a canter. They reached the sunfield after a few minutes and turned east, traveling just outside the line of pillars. Scofield peered through the gloom, counting the arrays they passed under. After the sixth had gone by, he reined his mare to a halt. By his count last night they should have found the foreign array on the fourth pillar of the sector. Scofield was certain he had neither miscounted the evening before nor just now, but still he turned his horse around and rode back west for the better part of ten minutes.

  After another ride past every QV pillar in two sectors there was no question left: the strange array was gone. Dawn was fast approaching and the wind was beginning to stir, blowing the loose top layer of sand about. Scofield spurred Reese away from the field and out into the desert. He reined the horse west and slowed her to a trot, his eyes glued to the ground.

  The slow ride back to Kretch took more than twenty minutes, but it let him be absolutely sure that he had not missed anything. There were no prints in the sand. No drag lines. No sign that anyone had been there in days, but for the phantom machine. Wilton was still fast asleep when the outrider drew near to their simple camp. Shady was on his feet, milling about, and whinnied at Reese’s and Scofield’s return.

  Kretch rolled over, groaning and peeling back his blanket.
He blinked several times, clearing the sleep from his eyes, and shivered in the frosty morning air. The sky above was pale, the land around them still largely formless.

  Scofield jumped down from Reese as soon as they were alongside Kretch. He pulled the canteen from her saddle bag and took a sip, then cupped his hand and poured water for his horse. Without looking over his shoulder, he said: “It’s gone.”

  “Come on, you son of a bitch!” Boss Hutton muttered, jamming his foot down on the gas pedal and twisting the key back and forth. The engine turned over and coughed at him, then went silent again. “Don’t make me get under that hood, girl!” Hutton lifted his foot from the pedal and sat back, counting twenty seconds to let fuel drain from the engine. Then he gripped the wheel and stomped down on the clutch, turned the key and slowly eased his right foot back down on the accelerator.

  The jeep rumbled to life. Hutton let out a victorious whoop and threw the gearshift into neutral. It was best to let the vehicle warm up for a good long while before driving it—Boss Hutton’s jeep was eighty-three years old. It was the only gas-fueled vehicle within hundreds of miles and one of the last combustion engines in the whole of North America. Hutton had his gasoline shipped to him at enormous cost but the freedom afforded by a car that never needed to plug into the grid and wasn’t stuck on a track was priceless.

  The jeep was open on all sides with a thick roll bar across the top. Hutton had installed massive tires with three inch treads. Sand flew twenty feet in the air when he cruised across the desert at high speed. He touched up the forest green paint as often as it needed and kept the four jerry cans strapped above the rear bumper, each topped off with fuel at all times. The vehicle was his pride and joy.

  On this cold, pale morning, the lasting surge of pleasure that usually accompanied the engine’s rumble was conspicuously absent. As he pressed down the clutch, Hutton’s mood was grim, his jaw set tight. He pulled off his wide brimmed hat and replaced it with a gray knit cap to ward off the cold, then threw the stick in gear and accelerated along the concrete heading west.

  Hutton eased off the gas as the paved road ended and he crossed onto the desert loam. He turned to head southwest, looking back over his left shoulder. Miles away, the outline of New Las Vegas was just becoming visible in the dawn light. Hutton shook his head ruefully as he sped up to fifty miles an hour. He’d been a skilled horseman all his life, but as he aged and his joints grew ever creakier, his muscles stiffer, Hutton had come to prefer his jeep to a horse whenever possible.

  The rule of thumb went that for outsiders, the glowline was the limit; for outriders it was known that you could bring an electric charge about a mile across the line; Hutton often risked a good mile after that. He’d be pushing it today, but decades out in the fields had taught him to sense when he was about to go too far. It was a combination of the hairs on the back on his neck, a taste he got on both sides of his tongue, and the never-unheeded feeling in his gut. Hutton could sense the field’s power before even the most delicate measuring equipment. So maybe he’d be a bit south of safety, but time was of the essence. He had to get his boys together fast.

  Hutton crossed the glowline still doing fifty, but quickly eased off the gas and slowed to just above twenty miles an hour. He pushed down the reset button for the trip meter—the plastic toggle was worn to less than half its original length—and then split his time between watching the desert and watching the numbers roll. He wondered for the thousandth time how many miles this jeep had driven. When he’d bought it thirty years ago it had already been fully rebuilt several times and he’d had it overhauled a handful more. He was sure it could have circled the globe dozens of times by now.

  When the trip meter read one-point-six miles, Hutton dropped from third to second gear and turned west by southwest, slowing to under fifteen miles an hour. After another minute that definite but indescribable sensation began, and The Boss knew he was as close as he could get to the field. He steered the jeep to face true west and accelerated again. The day was coming on quickly, ever brighter. Hutton popped open the glove box and fished out a pair of sunglasses. The lenses were mottled where countless grains of sand had blown against them over the years, and through the glasses the world took on a soft, gray blur.

  After another ten minutes of driving, Hutton spotted his destination. The squat cinderblock building perched low against the sand, a tall tower topped with three giant klaxons stuck into the air above it. This unit had sat above the San Francisco Bay in decades long gone, calling out to ships through the fog. Five other identical structures were placed around the perimeter of the sunfield. Two were from Boston, one from Newport News, one from Seattle and the last somewhere in Asia. Their baleful horns had sounded across the desert only two times in all the years since the field had been established; since the way the world worked changed, from another point of view.

  The first sounding was after a powerful earthquake forty-two years ago. The second had been twenty-nine years ago when the alarm summoned the riders together to inform them that the country was at war. Despite the massive damage to much of Vegas and its surrounding communities, the sunfield had weathered the quake with ease in the first instance. And when diplomacy cut short the march to arms, the riders were ordered to stand down from their double shifts and turn in the extra ammunition they’d been rationed. Including Hutton, only five of the outriders still on active duty remembered either occasion. And he was the only man who had served through both.

  Hutton drew alongside the sirenhouse and turned off his jeep, easing to a stop with the vehicle in neutral. He left his hands on the wheel, sighing. Those times, the threat had been external. Now, if Hale was right—and, based on the work Hutton had done the previous day, he was—the outriders would not be merely on alert, they would be in their own private war. Round Up would have to come a day early; there was no time left to spare. The grid was losing over a million kilowatts an hour. That would require enough build-up of infrastructure and manpower to where easily scores, if not hundreds of drainers were working together. The Boss had fifty-seven outriders on the roster. And two were out of commission: Fischer with a broken hip after his horse had bucked him and Moses Smith laid up with what everyone was calling pneumonia but knew damn well was the clap.

  Hutton lit a long, slender cigar and puffed at it until the tip was glowing. He pulled off the knit cap and grabbed his gray hat from the shotgun seat. The door to the eight-by-eight building was secured by several deadbolts, but each opened by the same key. Hutton had one copy and the other was locked in a vault in the city. It was an ironic system: electronic locks worked better but weren’t used this close to the sunfield despite the fact that the system within the building required an immense amount of electricity when operated. The klaxons were placed as close as safely possible to the field. There was a second irony to the situation: using the horns was not only the only way to call all the outriders back to the main Outpost so a unified plan could be enacted, but would also inform every leech for miles that it was open season on the pillars. Every leech . . . and every drainer.

  The locks removed, Hutton set his shoulder against the iron door and heaved inward. The door gave way with a groan, and stale, musty air swirled from within the building. The outrider flipped a switch just inside the doorway and two of eight light bulbs came to life. The room contained nothing but a single panel on the far wall, this made up of a dial and a black button housed beneath a corroded plastic cover. Hutton wasn’t even sure the system would still work.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Boss Hutton twisted the dial clockwise as far as it would go. It stopped turning with a click and a deep bass hum began to fill the room. Slowly growing louder and higher pitched, the hum became a rumble. Dust drifted down from the ceiling and bits of concrete fell away from the walls. As the reverberating whine became nearly overwhelming, Hutton decided it was time, thinking: Ain’t gonna stand on fuckin’ ceremony.

  He flipped up the plastic casing and rested his l
eft palm on the large black button beneath it. Hutton took in a long breath and held it. Then he jammed the button down, his palms flying to his ears immediately after.

  Across two-hundred square miles echoed the doleful moan of warning. In Vegas, amid the bustle of the morning commute, here and there people stopped walking or set down their coffee mugs to listen, most quickly deciding they had imagined the sound. Memories of salty air and sun dappled waves drifted briefly out of the subconscious of some. In the desert, many ears perked up at the seldom heard horns. Very many ears.

  “Sweet Jesus Christ,” Kretch stammered, his breath catching in his throat. His heart rate doubled, pounding in his chest. He glanced over at Scofield, who was looking all around them, his head spinning back and forth erratically. The horses were beginning to whinny and sidestep as the baleful tone rolled across the desert.

  “Is that the horn?”

  “Yeah,” Scofield replied just loud enough to be heard. The deep, awful sound persisted for what felt like hours but was less than a full minute. The silence that followed was in its own way even more ominous. With one noise, everything had changed. The sun seemed brighter but colder; the sands more barren and endless . . . the very air harder to breathe.