by Scott Baron
As she walked among the multi-ethnic commuters, Daisy couldn’t help but stare up at the impressive residential towers that managed to gracefully achieve just the right balance, allowing for greater density of living, while not tarnishing the natural beauty of the region. The city planners had set firm boundaries between urban development and lands reserved for natural habitats. The electric pulse walls separating the two allowed observation of nature without intrusion, and incidents of mountain lions or coyotes wandering into a person’s yard and eating their precious Fluffy were a thing of the past.
She stepped into the lobby of the glass-covered tower stretching upward before her and joined the throngs heading for its uppermost reaches. Exiting onto the one-hundredth floor observation deck, she could see why so many had crowded into the elevator.
In the near distance the pristine beaches stretched from Malibu to Palos Verdes, both of which, while retaining their names for nostalgic reasons, were now part of the greater Los Angeles area.
The palm trees look so tiny from up here, she noted. It’s good to be back on solid ground after all those months in artificial gravity. It just feels right. I remember that first step on real terra-firma after I landed…
Daisy paused, her brow furrowed in confused thought.
After I landed… Wait. How did I wind up here? Wasn’t there something I needed to—
The shuttle bucked abruptly as it hit the very edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, snapping Daisy awake, firmly strapped into her pilot’s seat.
“Aww, sonofabitch,” she muttered through clenched teeth as she quickly rubbed the sleep from her eyes and checked the barely-functional navigational array. “My approach is off.”
“This angle will drop you smack-dab in the Pacific Ocean.”
“Yeah, I see it.”
She quickly typed in a series of alternate trajectories, every last one of which told her the same thing: she’d have to adjust her course immediately, or she would be taking a very long swim if she hoped to reach land. Without hesitation—for hesitation would have meant likely demise—she sealed off the command center from the rest of the ship and hit the purge valve, directing the precious gasses into the silent thrust system.
“If you do that, you’ll only have whatever air is in this capsule, and it’s already dangerously high in carbon dioxide.”
“Don’t have much of a choice now, do I?” Daisy flipped the switch, sending one controlled burst to the appropriate thrusters. The shuttle lurched as its trajectory against the edges of the atmosphere altered. There wasn’t much resistance yet, but even a minute’s delay and she would have been too far into the buffeting ionosphere for the thrusters to have made enough of a difference. Only in the vacuum of space could they do what she needed them to.
The rattling increased, and while the rapid spike in temperature was a welcome sensation, it was a bittersweet one. If her trajectory was too steep, the shuttle would not only warm up, but would burn to a crisp, disintegrating into so many pieces of flying debris. It would provide a pretty light show for the people down below, but it would be a truly rotten ending to Daisy’s already difficult day.
A small explosion rocked the ship, shorting out a wide swath of the command center’s panels.
There went the auxiliary scanning array, she grimly noted, her jaw firmly set as the turbulence increased. I wonder what other parts are peeling off and burning up?
All around the ship, bits and pieces were indeed shearing off, leaving the shuttle resembling a meteorite breaking up upon entering the atmosphere. Despite all that, the main power still held.
For a brief moment, a red blip appeared on her navigation system. A blip that was closing distance fast.
What the hell is that? It’s moving too fast to be a support ship.
“Mayday, mayday, this is Váli shuttle, on emergency descent to Los Angeles Space Port. Incoming object detected. I am not a hostile vessel. Repeat, not a hostile vessel. Does anyone copy?”
She fought the steering column as the ship finally cleared the ionosphere and entered the atmosphere with a final jolt, the violence of which shorted out the entire cockpit.
“Oh. Shit.”
The shuttle had lost all power, and while it was still gliding more or less on course, it was completely dead-stick, with not a single electronic system functioning. Daisy flipped all the auxiliary switches on the command console, but to no avail. She was strapped to a piece of debris, falling from the sky.
A sonic boom rocked the vessel as whatever had been locked on to her power signature blew past the seemingly inert craft.
At least it didn’t hit me, whatever that was. Maybe someone got my message.
“Quit with your what-ifs and get this thing working, Daze! Come on, snap to it!”
“I’m trying, but there’s no power.”
“Remember the old specs? The ones we looked at all those months ago? There’s a fly-by-wire backup.”
“You mean the hydraulic system for the flaps and ailerons? But those lines needed to be replaced.”
“It can’t hurt to try them. Unless you have a better idea. Or prefer plunging to your death. Me, I’m already dead, but I don’t think you’d enjoy it much.”
“Point taken.”
Daisy wrenched open the heavy panel on the floor to the right of the pilot’s seat. There, a series of hand cranks lay tucked safely in their cradles, awaiting eager hands to bring them to life. She grabbed the first one, swinging it out and locking it into place. Then the second one. Finally, the third joined its siblings and she began to crank them one by one until they could turn no more.
“Okay, done,” she said. “Now let’s see if those shitty old hydraulics held up to the pressure. Not like I have any readouts to confirm for me.”
With steady hands, Daisy flexed her arms, straining her biceps as she slowly pulled the steering column, while feathering the foot pedals that had raised into place as she activated the system. Miracle of miracles, the craft, while quite sluggish, responded to her efforts.
“Holy shit, it’s working!”
“See? I told ya so.”
“You can gloat if we survive. Let’s just hope the landing gear deployment system works.”
It was a mechanism of desperation and last resort. Explosive bolts which, when manually triggered, would blow the protective housing from the landing gear, while a smaller charge would detonate on the lone pin restraining a high-tension spring system, designed to push the landing gear into place. Of course, those springs were ancient, and the explosive bolts? Well, Daisy didn’t like the odds, but it was better than nothing.
She banked the shuttle at high altitude and began what she believed was the correct angle of approach for Schwarzenegger Space Port, Los Angeles.
As she descended, Daisy noticed the stillness around her. The airspace surrounding the shuttle was completely empty.
Giving me the red-carpet treatment, I see. Nice. At least I don’t have to worry about accidentally taking out any other vessels if things go truly tits-up.
Out the window, the shining ocean beckoned, a beautiful blue siren calling her to Earth. Farther ahead, things weren’t so bright and shiny as the low clouds of the city’s marine layer covered much of the coastline. Inconveniently, right where she needed to go.
Gonna have to guess the approach and hope for the best. A small furrow of concern began to grow on her brow.
Three minutes later she descended through the cloud cover, right into a flock of very surprised birds, several of which met their unexpected demise against the shuttle’s wings.
Sorry, birds, but I can’t really do any evasive steering right now.
She had perhaps thirty miles to go, and it looked like the glide trajectory would take her to her objective, but something seemed wrong.
Off.
Incredibly not-right.
Then it hit her.
“Where are all the people?” she wondered aloud.
From her vantage point, high above
, Daisy realized not a human soul was moving down below. Wrestling the controls with one hand, she pulled a pair of ancient binoculars from the emergency bag under the pilot’s seat and put them to her eyes, ignoring the crumbling rubber covering that cracked under her fingers. Sure enough, there was no one. Empty vehicles filled the roads, but there was not a person to be seen.
A flash of movement caught her eye. A pack of what appeared to be wild dogs emerged from a building, looking up at the sky in curiosity.
And the buildings. They were intact, at least mostly, but there were huge swaths of the outlying municipalities that appeared to be stripped bare, as if a swarm of metal-eating locusts had whipped through, devouring nearly everything in their path.
Looking closer as she glided silently overhead, Daisy realized it wasn’t military destruction she was looking at. No bombs had gone off. Instead, it was a neat and orderly kind of destruction. Mostly, anyway. A few small patches appeared to have seen fighting once, long, long ago, but the vast majority had the distinct look of a massive-scale dismantling.
A deconstruction.
Someone, it seemed, had been systematically tearing down the great cities on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Something moved, far off to her left.
Daisy spun in her seat, pressing the binoculars tightly to her eyes. A human form, or at least so it appeared, caught her eye as it trudged along a main street, dragging a piece of something behind it.
She desperately wanted to turn, to circle back for a better look, but with no power and a rapidly approaching date with the ground, that simply wasn’t an option. She’d be on terra firma in a minute, one way or another, as the shuttle rapidly closed the distance to Los Angeles proper.
“Please work,” she implored the non-sentient shuttle. Then she pulled the small red lever.
Five small explosions barely shook the craft as the landing gear covers flew free, two of the three wheels snapping down into position. The third, the wheel on the rear-right, stubbornly refused, only lowering partially before jamming. With no readouts to tell her its status, Daisy had little choice but to hope for the best, while preparing for the worst.
“Uh, Daze?”
“A little busy, here, Sarah. Trying to land a shuttle with no power.”
“Yeah, but have you noticed where we are?”
Daisy looked more closely out the window. The scenery was familiar, buildings she knew and the network of roads below them. Then it hit her.
“We’re not going to make it, are we?”
“Too far from the spaceport. You’re going to have to land on the highway.”
Daisy scanned the thousands of cars beneath her, lining the roads, but not a body in sight.
“Nowhere to land. Maybe the LA River?”
“You see that thicket? That’s the river.”
Daisy realized the banks of what had once been a concrete-lined “river” were now completely overgrown with not only shrubbery and vines, but full-grown trees. A landing was out of the question.
“This is going to suck,” she lamented. “I guess the one good thing about losing all our fuel is at least we won’t blow up when we crash.”
“That’s the spirit! Way to look on the bright side!”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Duh.”
Daisy allowed herself a grim little smile as she dropped the shuttle down on top of the rows of abandoned vehicles.
The impact immediately buckled the front landing gear, slamming the shuttle’s massive nose down onto the highway, where it easily plowed through its vehicular obstacles like so much tissue paper. Metal and glass flew in every direction as the ship’s underbelly casually crushed all that got in its way, until it finally slid to a grating halt.
Didn’t die. Okay, then. That wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, Daisy noted.
She unbuckled from the pilot’s seat, left her larger toolbag and all unnecessary gear behind, then grabbed the small survival backpack stowed beneath the seat, and popped the hatch.
A blast of crisp air washed over her, replacing the dangerously stale carbon dioxide-heavy mix on which she’d been surviving. She breathed deeply, and despite the lingering dust from her crash landing, at that moment, the air to her was by far the freshest she had ever breathed.
Daisy crawled from the ship and cautiously lowered herself to the roadway, careful not to land on the rough edges of the destroyed vehicles, then took a long moment to look around.
Empty.
No people. No sounds. No smells. Not even a siren in the wake of her crash landing.
The city was empty.
Where small gardens had once stood in front of the varied buildings, massive trees and sprawling vines now clogged sidewalks and smaller streets. As for the vehicles on which she’d come crashing down, the reason for her softer-than-expected landing was apparent. They were ancient, falling apart from disuse after what appeared to be decades, if not more, their fuel cells long dead.
“This isn’t right,” she said in disbelief. “This can’t be. I was just here not that many years ago.”
Daisy circled the shuttle, taking in her surroundings in shock. They were exactly as she remembered them, exactly as they’d been in her dream less than an hour earlier, but different. Empty. In ruins.
Pull yourself together, Daisy. You survived this far, don’t lose it now.
Her posture straightened, the defeated slouch that had been quietly settling in to her shoulders shrugged off in an instant as grim determination kicked in.
Time to move, before it gets dark.
“Good call. I know you saw those wild dogs you flew over. Who knows what else is living in this city.”
“Besides humans, you mean,” Daisy replied.
Bending down next to the shuttle, she pried a piece of metal free from a wreck and felt its sharp edge.
This should do, she thought, wrapping the narrow end with a strip of material pulled from the debris. She gave it a test swing, cleanly slicing through a nearby vine weaving through an abandoned vehicle’s frame. Yeah, this should do just fine. Shouldering her bag, she laid out her course and headed off into the city, her makeshift machete clearing a path where the overgrowth blocked her way.
As she moved farther into the maze of buildings, the silence was deafening. Oddly enough, though, as she walked alone, she couldn’t shake the uncomfortable sensation of being watched.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Daisy had been walking for well over an hour, tracing a basic reconnaissance pattern outward from the shuttle, then arcing over and heading back. Gradually, street by street, she covered most of a circle surrounding the craft. Once that was done, well, she didn’t quite know what she’d do next.
Her stomach grumbled uncomfortably as she exerted herself in the balmy weather. It was perfect out, sunny and temperate, but after days in space on extremely limited rations, Daisy was desperately in need of substantial nourishment.
She’d been hoping for a proper sit-down dinner after she’d been debriefed about the incident aboard the Váli, but instead, she was stuck fending for herself in a desolate city. At the very least, she hoped to find a supermarket of some sort where she could perhaps scavenge some canned goods. All she had to do was continue her sweep. She knew statistically it wouldn’t be long, but as she walked, she felt more and more alone as the miles passed beneath her feet.
Throughout the city, something odd struck her. Not a single corpse was to be found. Not even any bones, though she figured wild animals could easily have taken care of that. Nevertheless, not seeing even a trace of anyone with all those thousands upon thousands of vehicles abandoned in the streets in a city of tens of millions—it was unnerving, to say the least.
With aching feet, at long last, Daisy came upon a large market on the ground floor of what appeared to be a residential tower.
Oh yes! Finally!
The power, while apparently sporadic, was still on, as seemed to be the case with much
of the empty city, thanks to many buildings’ solar arrays and power backups. The doors ground open on dusty tracks as she approached, welcoming her to the silent halls of food and drink.
The smell hit her like a damp fist covered in rotting shit, making her eyes water immediately. She quickly pulled her shirt over her nose and mouth to at least partly block the stench, then proceeded inside, squinting against the irritating fumes.
Rows upon rows of sealed food packets had rotted open, bursting from internal bacterial growth. They were supposed to have a shelf life of over fifty years, yet here they were, ruptured and rotting throughout the store. Worse yet, the ammonia stench hinted at dead wildlife as well. Sure enough, several partially decayed raccoons and dogs lay scattered across the floor.
“Don’t eat anything here, Daisy. I’ve got a bad feeling about all this.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. Looks like whatever they got into turned toxic. I’m going to try the residential units upstairs instead. Unless they’ve somehow sprouted opposable thumbs, I don’t think we’ll have any run-ins with wildlife up there.”
She quickly exited the store, sucking in deep gulps of fresh air. Once most of the smell had been purged from her nose, she crossed the small courtyard to the building’s lobby and stepped inside.
It was a modest tower for the area, only seventy stories tall. Visions of her dream flashed in her head as Daisy called the elevator and picked a floor at random. Random, yet high enough to afford her a better view of the area, even if the building didn’t have an observation deck.
Forty-fifth floor. Not too high, not too low. Don’t want to be hoofing it down from much higher if the power should go out.
She stepped out of the elevator and walked to the nearest unit.
Okay, here we go.
Daisy turned the knob, ready for the stench of death and sight of corpses.
Locked.
Figures, she thought, then kicked the door open with a single swing of her boot. Damn, that was easier than I expected.