Thunder Road

by James Axler

  “Ah, I see. I apologize. It must seem some time as though we speak a different language, even though it is on the surface the same. Although what you see before you is but a pale shadow of the man I once was, at least I am still myself. I have memory and character, though sometimes it fades in and out. Hammill is the same. Though we cannot leave our rooms, and serve only by remote means, we can still talk to each other, can still share, and not feel alone. The other workers were placed in moving canisters to enable them to respond physically. Somewhere along the way, something left them. They have no memory of why they are as they are. No indication that they are anything other than automatons.”

  “But to exist like this—” She put out her hand, trying not to recoil at the touch, as it felt like nothing she expected.

  “Is often better than no existence at all.”

  The container on the lab table looked solid. Yet it yielded to her touch, the slightest amount of give. She expected it to be cold, but it was warm. It was semiopaque, but she could still see what was within. The liquid surrounding Sid was greenish in hue, though she couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t due to the membranous container. It seemed too still in there for something that was alive, and spoke to her. She’d seen old whitecoat stories from before skydark, and in them disembodied brains were attached by wires in tanks of bubbling liquid, and they pulsed in time with the rhythm of their words.

  Sid did none of this. He—and it was, in truth, hard to think of that thing as a him, as the voice that had spoken so warmly to her—sat inert in the middle of the tank, suspended in the thick, viscous gloop that was contained by a tank that was not the Plexiglas she would have expected, but something that resembled a living organism.

  “You have nothing to fear,” Sid said with an undertone of amusement. “As you must have guessed, I can only hurt you through the use of the complex’s facilities. But I realize how strange, and perhaps frightening, I must look. Oh, I have eyes. Not in the sense that I used to, but I have signals from all cameras fed to me. There is one in this room, as in all others. Myself and Hammill, we know what we have become.”

  “But how—”

  “How did this happen? How can I still be alive? And yes, I do call this alive. I still know, think, feel. But I digress. To answer the second question, it would be difficult to explain to someone like yourself, who has only known the world after nuclear winter. If I tell you that scientists before that time had developed a genetically made material that is tough and allows me to ‘breathe,’ then would you understand that?”

  She nodded.

  “I communicate via the liquid in which I am suspended. Workers replace it to feed me the nutrients that enables my brain tissue not to decay. In this liquid are small circuits—what we called nanotech before the war—and these are intelligent and tiny. They fulfill the function of wires and cables.” He chuckled. “I can see you are still unsure. Would it help if I said they were like mechanical insects that carry information to and from me, enabling me to operate the complex?”

  Krysty sighed. “Understand isn’t the word I’d use, but I can see how it works, at least. Whoever your original boss was had to have had serious jack, as this is up there with the best tech we’ve ever seen in old sec redoubts.”

  She could swear he was smiling as he answered. “It has been a long time since someone like yourself talked to me. You know that we have intel about you, know some of what you have experienced.”

  “The way Howard talked to us, to me, was kind of a giveaway.”

  “You are right in your assumptions in many ways. Howard comes from a family that wielded both great wealth and great power in the times before the holocaust. They were people who had contacts in every level of both the government and the military. He comes from a line that started with a namesake of his, a man who, in his time, had the kind of fame about which people in this new society can have no notion. He was feted—” Sid noted her growing incomprehension “—I’m sorry, it’s easy to forget that this is the same language and yet not. I should say that in the days of global videos, everyone had seen and knew the name of this ancestor. The industry he established, the money and contacts he made, these were continued after his death.

  “Many people knew what was coming with the holocaust. If you have ever seen any remains of preholocaust history in book or on video, then you may know this. For the ordinary people, it was a surprise, but for those with the kinds of contacts this family had, it was something that was common knowledge and accepted as an inevitability. So they had to plan.

  “Their businesses supplied arms, technology and the service industries that, in turn, supplied other sectors of these industries. How can I explain in terms that you could easily grasp?”

  “I’m not that stupe,” Krysty replied wryly. “I can get the meaning of what you’re saying, even if some of the details are—”

  “No, you misunderstand me,” Sid broke in, his tone seeming incongruous as he was nothing more than a brain and stem floating in a tank of gloop. “I know you can grasp the essentials, but the extent of this family’s influence in this place you now call the Deathlands, I don’t know if…Let me put it this way—imagine the man you knew as the Trader. Imagine that his trading network extended the breadth of the land. Further, imagine that all other traders relied upon him, so that if people were not bartering and buying from him, then they were doing it from traders who then had to go to him, with a percentage of their jack going into his stockpile. Imagine this, and that not another soul except Trader, perhaps yourself, and your friends knew about it. A network that was all-encompassing and also mostly a secret.”

  He waited a second, pausing to see if Krysty grasped this. Finally she said, “That would make Howard’s family one of—mebbe the—most powerful on earth, and also the most private. Right?”

  “Yes, I think you have it,” Sid affirmed. “Imagine that extent of power, and how you could use your contacts, those who owed you, and the technologies you had helped develop and have access to, to secure a future for your people.”

  “I don’t have to imagine, do I? I’m standing in it.”

  Sid chuckled. “Correct. You know of the Totality Concept. Your friend Dr. Tanner was a victim of one of its divisions. Much of the knowledge behind the execution of that concept came from people controlled in one way or another by Howard’s ancestors and their businesses. They were able to cherry-pick—ah, to choose the best parts, those that both worked best and served their purpose best—and then utilize them. They were also able to use the pressure of those contacts, what they knew, to keep this a secret.”

  “So where did you fit into this?”

  “I was what you call a whitecoat. My speciality was guidance and security systems. The defense technology around this complex is my work. I warn you, Ms. Wroth, that if your friends come looking for you, as I am sure they will from my knowledge of them, they will find it impossible to get near here without being fried.”

  “Can’t you turn the systems off, or at least alter them so that the attacks would not be direct, give them a chance to escape.”

  There was a pause. When he spoke again, Sid’s voice had changed in tone. There was a weariness of someone who had been alive longer than they wished, and felt trapped by existence itself.

  “Krysty, if I could do this, I would. There are many things I would do if it were possible. But although Hammill and myself retain some essential part of ourselves, so that we have at least a semblance of something you would call a life, we do not have control over that.”

  “Sid, is there anything I can do for you?”

  The question remained unspoken, unfinished. But she knew that he divined her meaning.

  “No, Krysty, I don’t think that it is possible. I will try to help you if you want to escape, but it will not be easy. I would advise you not to, knowing the complex as I do, and also how powerless both myself and Hammill are, ultimately. But from what I know of you, I think that will not prevent you from trying. I
f only I had that courage when I was able.”

  “You’ve got courage. To continue as you are—”

  “You know,” he said hurriedly, cutting her off, “I never really knew Hammill until this happened to us. Why we were selected for this task, I don’t know. I suspect that we were not only the right experts, but the right kind—we were both weak men, when we were men. And there were many workers down here in those days. But in the long, long years since this happened to us, I have got to know him better than anyone I ever knew when I was whole. I think I could say the same of him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In another room. We talked, and I said I would face you. He is more ashamed of this than I am. I was always able to escape facing the reality of a situation,” he added wryly. “We have a pact. We are fed images from security cameras across the complex. These are always with us. But I do not look at him, and he does not look at me. We have those cameras blocked. We prefer to think of each other as we were.”

  Krysty felt an overwhelming sadness washing through her. There had to be something she could do to help them both. That was even assuming that she would be able to help herself.

  Sid broke into her thoughts. “You should go. Howard has finished in the mechanic’s bay. He will probably be looking for you. Go to your room, say you have been sleeping. I can loop footage if he wants to check records. There’s not much I can do, but there is that. If you want to know more, I can also allow you access to the mainframe from the terminal in your room, removing some of the security codes. But this can only be done temporarily. Now go.”

  It was strange, but Krysty felt reluctant to leave the brain. It looked more alien than human, yet it was more human that Howard would ever be able to know. She wanted to stay—Sid needed her, had fed off her for a humanity that he had missed for so long—but she knew that he was right. At all costs, she had to keep Howard sweet until she had a plan of action.

  She left without another word, returning to her room without pause. Her head was spinning with what Sid had told her. That people could do this to each other…The world she lived in was brutal and harsh, but no one had ever taken some poor bastard’s brain and left it to an agonizing half-life, or put a man’s brain into a machine. She had seen and heard of such things during their encounters with the remnants of the past, but had never been face-to-face with the consequences and realized what it truly meant.

  As she lay on the bed, she looked at the room around her. The pastel colors, the predark feminine flounces, all seemed to be mocking her. They were the tainted remnants of a corrupt culture. Maybe skydark had been a good thing, if it had cleansed the world of people who did things like this. Then she thought of the people they had crossed. The only thing separating them from the likes of Howard and his ancestors was access to technology.

  She lay back to wait for him, and to try to work out what she should do next.

  HOWARD DISCARDED his coveralls and stepped into the shower. It was not something that had ever occurred to him before, but he knew as if by some kind of instinct that he had to look his best for his Storm Girl. Neat and groomed. That was the way the good guys always made an impression on the girl of their dreams.

  Was that what she was? He hadn’t considered it before. He had always seen them as partners in the fight for justice; first with her friends, and latterly on her own. But the girl of his dreams?

  As he soaped himself in the shower, perhaps lingering too long over areas that he would previously have washed in a perfunctory manner, he considered why his feelings had changed in this way. In the old tales of those who had gone before, the fighter for justice had a girl to whom he could return at the end of the day. Whether she knew the truth of his whole identity, or just as the man in the mask, or even his cover without knowing his mission, she was always there. She was more than just a girl, more than just a love interest. She was also a representation of all those good things that the fighter for justice was searching for.

  He frowned. For a moment, images and words from the intel reports he had gathered came into his mind. It was hard to reconcile those women of story and legend with the woman in the intel reports, but these were harder times, a different land. People had different standards. It was not her fault that she came from an age where there was less justice and goodness. She had proved herself to be worthy in her fights against evil. They all had.

  Again the picture of the one-eyed man came to mind. Fury built in Howard until he had to release it. He punched the tiled wall of the shower unit. Blood from his skinned knuckles trickled down the tiles, red on white, turning pink as the water from the shower jets diluted it, washed it away, just as his anger and frustration ebbed away with the pain he could feel in his hand. He looked at the knuckles of his fist, unclenched his hand and flexed his fingers. There was no pain except where the flesh had been exposed.

  There was no pain except when he thought about Storm Girl and Cawdor together. Even the realization made the fury begin to rise within him again. It was a revelation to him just how strongly he felt about this. He had read of such things, but had assumed that in this world they would not happen to him.

  And yet, it nagged at him. Why, then, had he chosen to take her out of all of them? Logically, now he stopped to think about it, he should have taken old man Tanner or Dr. Wyeth. They had knowledge of the world before, and they would be more likely to understand with greater ease. Yes, you could say that the old man was on the verge of madness. That was reason to leave him. But there was no reason that he could think of to choose Storm Girl over Dr. Wyeth.

  Except for one.

  He looked down at his naked body, water running over it, dripping off his flesh.

  Yes.

  There was a reason.

  Chapter Nine

  “There is one thing that occurs to me,” Doc mused as the wag steadily ate up the miles. “Our friend the mystery man seems to have access to a lot of technology. So does it not follow that he will have good defenses around wherever he hangs his hat?”

  “His what?” Jak frowned.

  “His home,” Mildred explained. “Don’t worry about it,” she continued as she saw his puzzled expression. “It’s just a old saying from when I was young—though God knows where Doc picked it up,” she added, raising a brow to the old man.

  Doc smiled, his white, even perfect teeth looking sinister in the red glow of the wag’s emergency lighting. “My dear Doctor, I may have been incarcerated during my time at the end of the world, but there were such things as televisions, radios, newspapers and books. My guards were not averse to my having those things.”

  “Will you stop talking shit?” Ryan barked. “Bad enough that we’re still on the trail. I’ve been hoping that we’ll run across the bastard when he’s out on that blasted machine. I haven’t been triple stupe, Doc, I have thought about what the hell he could have waiting for us wherever he’s based.”

  “My dear Ryan, I was only voicing a question that I knew we had all formulated,” Tanner rebuked mildly.

  Ryan turned around so that he faced Doc, Jak and Mildred, seated behind the driving positions occupied by J.B. and himself.

  “Shit, I know, Doc. Guess it’s getting to all of us. Not knowing where we’re going, what we’ll find.”

  “Way I see it,” J.B. said, without taking his eyes from the road ahead, “our real problem is that we won’t know what this stupe has for us until we hit it, so we don’t know what we’re dealing with. And, more to the point, we don’t know when we’re going to hit it.”

  “Meaning?” Mildred asked.

  “Think about it. This coldheart has to have a base. Chances are it’s old military. Most of them are pretty well disguised.”

  “Most of the redoubts we’ve ever known didn’t have exterior offensive weapons, though,” she pointed out.

  “You saw the bike he had. You ever seen anything that looked like that where we’ve been? I know I sure as hell would remember it. So mebbe this base isn’t like
any of the others we’ve ever come across.”

  “And so perhaps we should be expecting the unexpected,” she finished. “Guess it’s a fair point, John.”

  “Don’t know about that, but it might just stop us buying the farm before we’re ready,” he replied in a dry tone.

  They had been driving for hours that seemed like days. Even with the air-conditioning, there was still a lingering undertone of stink that each of them was trying hard to ignore. The fact that they were also tight in the space, under the red glow of the emergency lighting, was also beginning to tell. The air-conditioning was good enough to stop them sweating from the heat, but the incipient claustrophobia was another matter. The cabin was not made for five people, and in the well behind the seats for the intended two-man crew they had been forced to find positions where they could sit or squat with, if not comfort, then with a relative ease.

  At least it wasn’t dark. J.B. had not been able to fix the wag’s lighting system, but he had discovered that the crazies who were the previous occupants had been unaware of the emergency electrics powered off the engine, which was just as well, as they would probably have driven these to destruction, as they had much else. As it was, J.B. discovered on checking that the system was intact, and so they at least had some light in the interior.

  For some time they had driven across the wasteland in silence. Each person had been grimly aware that, although they now had the means to make good time and distance, they had lost so much. So, despite the speed at which the wag could now take them, each of them was silently urging it to go faster, and feeling frustrated that it was not.

  The feeling of helplessness was not doing much to abate the rage that each of them felt, and the growing frustration at not gaining ground.

  SHE WAS IN HER ROOM when she heard it, a two-tone siren, distant from the living quarters, coming from another level. She had been accessing the historical files on the mainframe, trying to piece together the chronology of this place, to get an angle on understanding Howard so that she knew how to deal with him. As soon as the siren began to sound, the comp closed down the terminal.