Petra: Allendian Post-Apocalypse

by Stone, Nirina

  Okay—they have Petra and Sidney. Knowing everything he knows about raiders, he can hardly let them just get away. What other option is there though? He can’t even stand, how in the world will he catch up with all those bikes going at over a hundred an hour?

  I can’t, that’s how.

  He stares after the bikes hopelessly, and though he still can’t feel much, he knows he has tears falling off his cheeks. He knows what they’re about to experience, and all he hopes is something in Petra will decide a law’s been broken before they get to hurt Sidney, or even hurt her for that matter.

  Then he lies in the dirt, crying as he waits for his body to finally decide to work.

  Forty-Four

  Sidney

  Loud, harsh, headache-making. Those are the first thoughts in Sidney’s mind as she comes to. Then everything rushes to the forefront of her mind—someone had grasped her ankle in the water.

  So the raider got her. Now they have her, the three raiders she’d seen on the shore. Her eyes flutter open and she stares up at the sky, moving past much faster than she’d ever seen in her ten years alive.

  Whatever she’s lying on rumbles and shudders under her, making her shoulders ache and itch. Still, she doesn’t dare to turn over to see exactly what it is. All she knows is, it’s moving fast and she’s in the hands of cannibals.

  “They’d eat you,” Nayne said the one time they saw them in the city. They were both hiding in the tiniest spot they could find, where Nayne said they’d never look for them.

  “Whatever you do,” Nayne had said, “don’t ever let them catch you. If they catch you, they’ll eat you for breakfast, for lunch, for supper.”

  “I wouldn’t last long, Nayne,” Sidney replied, “I’m too little.”

  Nayne snickered then told her to shush, to stop trying to make her laugh, because they needed to be quieter than ever.

  So they stayed like that, quiet, soiling themselves in that hole, until two days later when the raiders had finally driven off.

  By that time, Sidney was so hungry, she worried that her rumbling stomach would let them know she was there. Luckily though, all the noise they’d made themselves was loud enough to drown out anything her belly could come up with.

  Now—they’ve got her.

  Nayne, she thinks. What do I do now, Nayne? They’ve got me, they’ll eat me for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  Of course Nayne doesn’t say a thing back and Sidney suddenly feels hopeless. She’d promised Nayne she would do whatever it took to protect herself from them, but she was careless by the lake—she’d never thought they’d go all the way out there. After all, it wasn’t like there was anything they could raid out there, unless they were also planning to head out the dome? For what purpose? Maybe to raid another dome? Maybe they’ve finally run out of places in this one?

  Sidney’s arms lie by her sides. She feels the metal griddle under her palms, then slightly pushes herself up so she can see around her more clearly.

  Her neck braces as she leans onto her elbows. She’s in some sort of metal trailer. Behind her, trees are left in their wake as they speed through the forest. She thinks she sees Henry’s dead body on the ground there but from a different angle than she’d left him in. She can’t see Petra’s body from here, maybe she did heal fast already. Then she looks to her left, sees raiders on bikes on that side. She turns to look right, and sees three more. She flips quickly on to her belly and looks forward, just to see the back of Petra’s head. She sits on the back of another raider bike behind one of them. Sidney counts seven raiders.

  At least Petra’s here, she thinks as she stares at the back of the bot’s head, willing her to turn back, not wanting to move more or to encourage them to stop.

  Still, remembering where Henry is, she realizes they’re traveling back north, and they’re traveling fast.

  Doesn’t look like they’re about to stop any time soon either.

  Why in the world are they going north? If Sidney’s guess is right, Petra would have negotiated with these raiders somehow. In that case, wouldn’t she encourage them to go find the vault of food. Didn’t Petra say that vault was also south? it would have been somewhere near where she was.

  So why—the city?

  Sidney still wills Petra to turn but stays put, waiting. At some point, they’ll stop. Then she’ll have to deal with maybe getting eaten. She reckons not, Petra wouldn’t allow it. Still, she waits patiently.

  Then she sees her knapsack over one of the raiders’ shoulders and she narrows her eyes. It’s the skinny one she’d seen on the shore. She means to get the bag back from him if it’s the last thing she gets to do before they broil her.

  It feels like they’re about to travel through the night but when the sun finally sets to their left, the bikes slow and Sidney knows it’s time to stop, time to camp. Then what?

  The trailer she’s in shudders and vibrates for a couple more minutes after the bike stops.

  Petra slides off the bike and looks right at her, smiling as she does. “Good to see you’re fine, Sid,” she whispers, before the biker she’d sat behind, the huge one with a dirty beard, grabs her by the hand and drags her away.

  But she places a small graceful hand against his chest.

  “Give me a half hour to comfort her, make sure she’s okay, healthy. She was under the water for several minutes. I need to ensure she’s okay.”

  He grumbles but walks away as Petra climbs on to the trailer with her, holding her close. She has Sidney’s book in her hand, and holds her tight in her arms as she reads some of the words, pointing at each one as she reads, and before long, they’re at the end of the book.

  “I’m glad it’s a happy ending,” Sidney says, closing her eyes in relief that she’s finally heard how the story finished. “Maybe happy endings happen only in books like this. Books full of magic. I so wish there was magic in our world.”

  Closing the book tight, Petra says, “In a way, there is. There’s heaps of magic in science.”

  Sidney rolls her eyes, remembering that her nayne used to say things like this, too, as they watched fire rise, burning everything it was fed.

  “Chemicals that react with each other just to create entirely new chemicals,” Petra says. “Cloakers, like the one in this story. Made of mirrors and lenses and light. Or me—”

  Sidney looks up into her blueish gray eyes. As the sun sets, she notices they have a tinge of violet to them.

  “You’re made of dust, liquids, and nerves,” Petra says. “I’m made of dust, liquids and wires. We’re very different, the way we’re made, but we’re very much the same. That’s magic.”

  Then the same raider comes and plucks Petra out of the trailer like she weighs nothing.

  “No!” Sidney yells as she throws herself out of the trailer. “You leave her alone!”

  The others stop, stunned that she’s up at all. Then they laugh out as the man continues to carry Petra away.

  “No!” Sidney says. Why would they eat her? She’s not made of flesh, as far as Sidney knows.

  Another raider grabs her by the waist and places her back in the trailer. Do they mean to eat Petra first then? Then her in the morning, for breakfast?

  She doesn’t dare to make another peep, not another sound when the short raider walks right up to the trailer and stares at her. “We may have promised we wouldn’t touch you girlie,” he says in a low voice, “but you watch yourself. Or we’ll let you watch us hurt her.”

  Then he sneers and walks in the other direction. Two other raiders start up a fire in a clearing ten feet away as Sidney watches, terrified of what he means. “And don’t even think of running away,” he threatens, “If you know what’s good for you, and for her.”

  He cackles and grabs a tent out of the trailer, right next to where she’d sat. Then he walks away with it, helps another raider set it up along with three other tents they’d had in two trailers she didn’t notice before.

  The big man then takes Petra into one o
f the tents and zips it up as the others laugh and argue over who’s next to go in.

  Sidney stays put in her trailer, not understanding what’s going on, but wishing that she could be anywhere else.

  A heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach tells her that whatever Petra is doing, she is doing it to protect Sidney from these raiders. Sidney pulls her legs up to her chest and holds her arms tight around them. The others sneer at her some more but she turns her back to them, staring into the trees, wanting so much to be anywhere else right now.

  Forty-Five

  Petra

  The raider doesn’t last long. Petra lays under him as he snores, and a thread of drool slips from his beard into her hair, but she doesn’t move to clean it.

  She knows that the moment he wakes, the next raider in line will come in here so she doesn’t move, meaning to let him sleep for as long as he wants.

  Her companion programming is such that she has to do as the Allendians want, as long as they’re not ill, or criminal. Other Allendians might even find some of the acts repulsive, but she doesn’t feel anything either way for any of it.

  Though there are certainly some aspects of companionship she appreciates more than others. The debates, for example. Hours-long conversations about the history and politics of Allenda, or the history of humans in general. She always found those far more appealing than any of these base acts.

  Still, she lays still. She scans and hears the heart beats of seven grown men and the slightly faster heart beat of a terrified young woman, she can tell. Still, from here, she’d know if Sidney’s heart rate changes. She’d know if any of the others would deign to move on her—and Petra would react fast enough to stop them. These are things of which she’s certain.

  What she’s not certain about is what to do once they’ve reached the city and the raiders discover her lie. She assumes they’ll want to harm her and Sidney, but she’ll have to find a way once they arrive, to get away from them.

  She knows the ins and outs of the city better than any Allendian alive—except perhaps Sidney. She’ll find an escape route.

  When the raider shifts, she expects him to wake. Instead he grunts a few times, moves off of her to sleep on the mat beside her and continues to snore.

  She’s heard so many other Allendians snore over the years, she’s become accustomed to the grating rumbling machine whistle that a lot of them seem to share.

  Sidney’s heart rate slows and Petra hopes that means she finds some sleep. Because tomorrow, they will arrive at the city before dark, depending on how often these raiders intend to stop. If Petra’s plans work out, they’ll have to run for their lives. That’s the best case scenario.

  As the raider grunts again, he throws his heavy arm over her, pushing her slightly into the mat. Still, she doesn’t react.

  Then, finally, another raider unzips the tent and wakes the big one, pushing him out the tent as he mutters and growls back.

  This raider, the skinny one she’d negotiated with on the shore, turns to her and grins a wide toothy grin as he moves to drop his pants.

  Another part of Petra’s programming fights to surface, but she tampers it down as she allows her companionship rules to take over.

  He walks deeper into the tent and she smiles up at him, her arms outstretched as if to welcome him in to a hug.

  Forty-Six

  Henry

  Once his legs start working again, Henry pushes himself up to his feet and jogs on the spot. They healed a lot faster than he’d expected and he wonders if whatever Petra’s poured in him is affecting him in ways he’d rather not know.

  Wouldn’t it mean he’s not entirely human any more? Wouldn’t that mean he’s turned into some sort of bot?

  Whatever the case, he can’t really care right now. It’s dawn, but remembering the life of a typical raider, Henry hopes they’re not traveling quite yet. They wouldn’t rush today, would they? To get back to the city? What is waiting for them over there anyway?

  He’s already walking as he’s thinking these thoughts, not exactly knowing how he’s going to stop them from doing more of whatever they’re doing to those girls. He knows Petra will be able to take care of herself, but Sidney—much as the kid is tough—there were seven raiders with them. He already breaks into a run before he can fight the horrible thoughts in his head. Raiders aren’t decent people, he knows, but he’d never been with any that would hurt a kid. Still, he’d heard stories—enough stories to know to run even faster.

  How did I get here? he thinks as his pace increases and he finds himself in a comfortable run.

  How did I go from my big family to becoming a raider faction’s little lackey to this—this person wanting to save little girls and old bots?

  Why am I even running in this direction? He slows and continues to walk north as he thinks over his options.

  He was close to the outer edge of the dome—he could have continued to travel south, past the dome’s exit and on to the dome in the south. He could try to find another vault of food. He could just forget about all this—and keep surviving in this godforsaken place, just hide from the rest of them until the re-emergence happens. Even then—

  He knows that this is not an option. He knows there’s no way he can continue living with himself if he were to run off somewhere else while something happened to those girls—to Sidney. There’s no other option, he decides. Since they’d found him and helped him, he feels somewhat obligated to return the favor, and admits there’s a part of him that enjoys being around them.

  He’d been alone for so long after he got away from the raiders, sometimes he’d believed himself the only one around. Then the other raiders had found him, and when he refused to join their faction, they’d beat him and left him for dead.

  Then Petra and Sidney came along and saved his life and fed him. He knows why Petra did it—what with it being part of her program and all.

  But Sidney, with everything she knew, with her knowledge of explosives and everything else, she could have harmed him, no doubt, and she didn’t. Well—not on purpose.

  So now here he is, completely unable to just turn around and run in the other direction towards some sort of salvation. Unable to do anything but want to find them and somehow help them, hopefully.

  Die trying? He looks down at his chest and the metal that shines through between flashes of his skin. Decidedly so, his head says, and he breaks into a run again.

  Forty-Seven

  Sidney

  Her sleep came in fits and starts and she finally wakes with a heavy head, as the sun rises to the right.

  Remembering where she is and more importantly, who she’s with, she sits up quickly, fighting the headache in her temple. Though it’s no longer night, the same sense of darkness and dread remains in the air—the same sense of helplessness slams into her chest and she tries to breathe past it.

  “Here,” a gruff voice says to her right and she scuttles back on her haunches.

  “The bot said to feed you, to offer you water, girl. So here.” Then he shoves a metal bowl at her as he places a flask beside her right leg.

  She grabs the bowl but wants to throw it right in his face. “Don’t even think it,” he growls as he walks away.

  He’s not one she’d noticed before—just slightly taller than the big raider with the dirty beard. He wears glasses held in the middle with a silvery-brown tape. His shoulders bend forward like he’s never quite grown up right and she watches his retreating back as he turns to one of the bikes.

  Then she looks in the metal bowl. It’s a concoction of several different types of beans—she recognizes broad beans, kidney beans, lentils--none of the others, and little bits of meat. Oh heck no! She shoves the lot away from her, causing some of it to spill on to the trailer.

  The raider with the broken glasses comes back to her side and stares at the spilled sauce. “You’re lucky I don’t make you lick that up, girlie!” he says as he grabs a dirty rag off his shoulder and cleans up the spill. “Y
ou think we’re made of food here or something? You eat that up.”

  “No way,” she cries. “I’m not a cannibal. You can not make me a cannibal! I’d sooner starve to death.”

  He frowns at her, then breaks into a wide grin and finally starts laughing so hard, the other raiders around the camp perk up. “Whatchoo laughin’ there for, Zorle?” one of them yells across the way. “Like you never laugh mate, I thought someone had died.”

  Zorle wipes his eyes, then yells back, “This sparky one, mate. She’s a funny one. Claims she doesn’t want to be a cannibal like the rest of us I ‘spose.” He walks away, laughing some more.

  Sidney glares after him, wondering what could make Allendians so bad, they’d become cannibals and laugh about it like it’s nothing. Still, she calms slightly when Petra walks around from another tent and makes her way to her.

  Sidney reaches out to her like a baby and sobs when Petra’s arms go around her. “I’m so sorry,” Sidney says into her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have hurt you, and I thought you’d died, and now we’re here, and they’re gonna eat us and—”

  “Shhhh,” Petra says as she pats Sidney on the back. “You’re all right. I need you to calm down, to save your energy. You need to eat, Sidney.”

  Sidney pushes her away. “No!” she says vehemently. Her eyes land on the bowl, then back to Petra again. “I am not going to be a cannibal.”

  Zorle says something under his breath, and Sidney catches something that sounded like, “too late,” but he walks away so fast, she doesn’t have a chance to ask him.

  Petra continues to shush her, then picks up the bowl and scans it. “I assure you, Sidney,” she says, “you will not become a cannibal. This contains five kinds of beans that have been slow cooked over a hot fire for several hours.”