And then he just went away.
It wasn’t poof, vanish, like in a traveling magician’s show. No puff of smoke. Just a little red mist, and One–Ear folded in around his middle and flew sideways behind a rock. I cleared the bad round from my gun, stepped around the rock and shot him in the face, just to be sure, then turned to help Athalia finish off One–Eye. He was already finished. Athalia had him in an arm bar and was driving his nose out through the back of his skull with the heel of her steel–shod boot. One–Eye spasmed once, then lay there like wet laundry.
Then I remembered there was still one more guy with a shotgun, but as I turned to face him, he was done too.
Funny thing about bullets, especially when they’re traveling at mach something or other — the crack you hear isn’t the gunshot. That’s the noise they make breaking the sound barrier. The actual gunshot, it comes along slowly by comparison, about as fast as a little boy tracking a caterpillar. So I didn’t hear the gunshot that killed the shotgunner until the he was already on the ground with his jaw missing.
Athalia rolled behind one of the posts that held the raiders’ victims and peered anxiously in the direction the mysterious shots had come from. She looked at me.
“Friend of yours?”
I step behind the post that held Vargas. “I hope so, but I’m not going smile and wave until I find out for sure. Maybe they’re just a terrible shot.”
“Don’t worry,” croaked Vargas. “I’d know that shootin’ anywhere. That’s Angie.”
I froze.
Angie.
The name plucked my heart like a guitar string.
– Chapter Three –
I holstered my pistol and drew my knife, then cut Vargas loose as Athalia did the same for the villagers on the other two posts.
Vargas slumped to the ground, hugging his ribs and wheezing like a concertina. “Thanks, buddy… I—”
He stopped as he looked up at me, frowning. Then he called me by a name I recognized, but which fit me the way a grown man’s boots fit his five year old son.
“Was… was that you on the radio a few hours back?”
“Yup. Why?”
“‘Cause we heard you were dead. You and your whole team. Killed by mutants.”
“Mutants? No. It was robots. I… Who told you that?”
“You did. ‘Bout three days ago. Your dying words.”
Now I was really confused. I didn’t remember that at all. And the bodies in Sleeper One had been dead a week at least. Why would I have called in about it two days ago?
“I’m sorry. Got some gaps in my memory. I—”
“Forget it. Who am I to look a last minute rescue in the mouth? You’re here and you saved my sorry ass. That’s what counts.”
I slid the knife back in its sheath and knelt to check his wounds, which were many. I got out my first aid kit. “How’d you get yourself in such a mess in the first place?”
“Heh.” His laugh sounded like dry sticks rubbing together. I gave him some water from my canteen, and he continued. “Me and Angie and Ace were lookin’ for Sleeper Base One like General Surgrue ordered, just like you and your team were, and we split up to cover more ground.”
“We found it,” I said. “The base, I mean.”
“Glad to hear it. Wish to hell I had. I…” He winced as I got to work with the peroxide and the bandages. “I found these jackasses instead. I was so busy scannin’ the horizon for that damn bunker I tripped over ‘em campin’ in a ravine. They was lickin’ their lips as soon as they saw all my gear, and they lit out after me like a pack of dogs. Still woulda’ given ‘em the slip, but I got snake bit and had to stop and bleed myself.”
He looked around at the shacks and the townsfolk who were gradually drifting back to the square now that the killing was done. “I was headin’ for here when I called. These folk coulda given them pricks a warm welcome if they’d had any warning. I didn’t make it. Finally got jumped near the river.”
“Yeah, we saw the marks where they’d dragged you off.”
“Dalton’s boot heel trick saves the day again.” Vargas chuckled, but then looked at Athalia again and frowned. “When you say “we,” you mean you and her? You’re really the only one left of Team Foxtrot?”
Foxtrot. So that had been the name of my unit. Good to know. I nodded and pulled the ranger stars I’d found on the bodies in Sleeper One from my pocket. He stared.
“Jesus. I… I can’t believe it. I’m sorry.” He called me the same name again, and again it didn’t feel right. I held up my hand.
“Don’t call me that. I… that guy died there, with the rest of them. I’m… I feel like some kind of a revenant. Call me that instead.”
“Revenant?” He shrugged. “Kind of a mouthful, but if that’s what you want. So, did you find the high–tech gear we—”
“Snake!”
Vargas and I looked up. A woman was running across the square toward us with a shaggy–headed guy in mechanic’s overalls jogging along behind her. I gave the woman all my attention. She was a redhead, whip thin and freckled, with a ranger’s star on her cowboy hat, a pistol on each hip, and a long gun on a strap bouncing on her shoulder. She dropped to her knees beside Vargas without even a sidelong glance at me and started checking his wounds.
“How bad are you? Can you walk? Do you need a drink?”
He laughed. “Stop fussin’, Angie. I’m fine, thanks to your old friend here.”
“Old friend?” Angie turned as he nodded in my direction. “I….”
And all of a sudden she yelped, looped her arms around my neck, and hauled me in close for a kiss.
I was less than a day old, and I’d killed more folks than I’d kissed, but truth be told I can’t believe there’s ever been a better first kiss in the history of mankind. It was firm, sweet, wet, and warm in all the right ways, not to mention shy and brazenly familiar at the same time. My surprise melted into hunger, but before I could slip my arms around her and go back for seconds, she backed off just as abruptly and slapped me clean across the face.
“W—who the hell are you?”
“Another kiss like that and I’ll be anyone you want me to be.”
Anger blossomed in her eyes and I realized I’d said that out loud. I quickly brought my hands up. “Wait, listen. I—”
Her green eyes tightened. She cut me off. “You look like him, but no suntan, no scar on your forehead. And apparently your finger grew back.”
I glanced at my hands. So did Vargas. He gawked.
“Well I’ll be damned. I shoulda noticed that.”
She pointed at the offending digit. “Little one, right hand. You got bit by a gila monitor. I took its head and your finger off with the same swipe of my knife.” She brushed her long red hair off her shoulders. “Saved your life, then you saved mine, which is why I ain’t shooting you right now. But if you don’t tell me who you are, that may change.”
Athalia came to my rescue. “He can’t tell you. He’s a clone of whoever you knew.”
Angie made a sound like cat with a hairball. “A… a clone?”
“Yes. There is a cloning chamber in Sleeper One. He used it. I call him Ghost because of it. Who are you?”
Angie pulled her eyes away from me reluctantly. “I… Uh, Angie. Angela Deth.” She took a slow gander at Athalia. “And who are you?”
Athalia bowed her head. “Sister Athalia of the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud, at your—”
A new voice broke in from behind me. “Wait. Who is this guy again?”
I raised my head. It was the guy who had been following Angie — clean shaven, mop of curly hair, Las Vegas gang tattoo on his neck, sub–machine gun slung under one arm. He was standing stiffly behind Vargas, hard eyes giving me a pretty cool once over. Angie looked at him and got a look on her face like she’d run over somebody’s cat and didn’t feel so good about it.
“Uh, Ace, remember the guy who died? The one you wan
ted to help me forget?”
Ace looked pretty sick too. “He’s not dead after all?”
Angie looked back at me, frowning. “I… it… it’s more complicated than that.”
“Seems pretty simple to me.” He turned and walked away.
Angie called after him. “Ace!”
He didn’t look back, just went to one of the other poles and started helping with the wounded. She cursed under her breath.
“So who’s Ace?” I asked.
She looked unhappy. “A mechanic we saved in Quartz. We…” She looked unhappier. “I’m sorry. I thought you were dead.”
“So,” I said. “That means we, uh… You and me were…?”
Angie shot me a look. “You don’t remember?”
Images of rolling around in an army cot with a redheaded wildcat flashed around in my brain, mixed in with snapshots of walking and laughing with her, drinking and talking with her. They didn’t fold together into a full memory, but there was enough to get a pretty good picture.
“Some,” I said. “My former self’s brain–box got pretty badly cracked before he managed to clone me. I think a lot got lost in translation.”
She smirked. “Well, I hope you remember the good bits.”
I smirked back. “I hope there’s more to come.”
Her smirk died, but a shy–eyed young woman joined us before she could speak again. The young woman bowed her head to us.
“Greetings, rangers. I’m Kate, apprentice to our village healer. The village would like to offer you a meal for saving us from those men, and our healer and I can help with your wounded. If you can walk, it is this way. If you can’t, I can call men to carry you.”
Angie and I helped Vargas to his feet. We exchanged glances over his head as we walked him to the healer’s shack, but we didn’t speak.
***
While the healer and his young apprentice got to work on Vargas and the other two human punching bags, the townsfolk dragged the bodies of the raiders off and burned them, then got to work on preparing a celebratory meal, which wasn’t exactly a feast, even by wasteland standards, but looked to be all they could manage.
Vargas was all bandaged up by the time it was ready. He, Angie, Athalia and I sat down for a chat with the village mayor as we ate. Ace was there too, but he ate by himself off to one side and contented himself with shooting longing looks at Angie.
“These ain’t the first raiders to come through,” his honor told us. “Been more than usual lately, all comin’ out of the north. First bunch took near to everything we had, and all the others that followed beat on us ‘cause we didn’t have nothin’ left.”
Vargas nodded. “From what those boys were saying as they were draggin’ me along, they got chased out of their usual stompin’ grounds by robots. Happenin’ to everybody up there.”
“More robots,” said Angie. “Robots attacking Vegas. Robots rousting raiders. Robots killin’ farmers. Every other S.O.S. we get at Ranger Central is about robots these days. Seems impossible they’re all comin’ from this Base Cochise. How can one place hold ‘em all?”
“And where is Base Cochise?” I asked. “Do we know that?”
Vargas gave me a look. “Guess your memory is messed up. You got the location from us when we radioed for help lookin’ for Sleeper Base One. A fella name of Max told us it’s northwest of Vegas, but we already kinda figured that out from all the reports coming from up that way.”
“Gettin’ there ain’t the problem,” said Angie. “Apparently there’s so many robots around it we’ll never fight our way through. At least not without that robot–proof gear Max told us about. We’ll be ground hamburger without it.”
She turned to me. “Did you find it? Max said it was supposed to be in Sleeper One.”
I didn’t know who Max was, but the gear I knew about. “It’s there, but we couldn’t get to it. It’s in a locked room, bombproof glass. Need a sec pass. Apparently there’s one in some place called Project Darwin. Another old facility, I think. Got a map to it right here. Athalia and I were about to head there when we got Vargas’ distress call.”
“What?” Vargas was laughing. “Why the hell would the key to get into a room in one base be in another—”
I held up a hand. “Athalia asked the same thing. Found a note at Sleeper One that said the guy who had the key went to Darwin because of some problem and never came back.”
Vargas growled. “Buncha bullshit. Alright, gimme that map, and I’ll see if I can get Thrasher and Hell Razor on the horn and give ‘em directions to meet us there.”
“You might want to call the general too,” said Angie. “Keep the ol’ bear in the loop.”
“Haven’t been able to raise Ranger Center for days. Robots must have downed one of our relay towers.” He turned away from the fire and pulled his radio from his pack while the rest of us finished our meal. “Vargas calling Razor. Vargas calling Razor. Come in?”
A scratchy voice answered Vargas through the static. “This is Hell Razor, good buddy. Go ahead.”
“Hmmm,” said Angie, staring into the fire as Vargas continued his call. “A Sleeper Base guy going to Darwin? Makes you wonder if these places — Darwin, Cochise, Sleeper One — were all part of the same thing. Some old pre–apocalypse government organization? A military thing?”
“Could be,” said Athalia. “Makes sense.”
“But what was it all for?” I asked.
Nobody had an answer, and by then we were all fading faster than the last red of the sunset.
I turned to the Mayor. “Any place we can sleep for the night?”
***
There was a small room in the mayor’s shack and a stable out behind it, but the healer insisted that Vargas spend the night in his surgery where he could keep an eye on his bandages, and Athalia said she would spend the night off in the desert somewhere communing with her god, so that left Angie, Ace and me to figure out how to split up the two rooms. Ace didn’t seem interested in sharing with me, and I agreed with him — that was an awkward conversation I would be happy to avoid — which put Angie in the spot of having to pick between us. Ace didn’t let her.
“I ain’t gonna play kiddie games. When you know your mind, let me know.” And with that he walked out to the stable.
I looked after him, then back to her. “You can send me after him. It’ll be a bit uncomfortable out there, but who cares? I know I’m not the man you knew.”
“No,” she said. “You’re not. And I been thinking on whether or not that matters.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
She laughed. “You sound like you, you look like you — a younger you, which has its merits — but you’re not you. It’s very weird.”
It was weird. I certainly thought I felt like me. But then what else was I going to feel like? The question was, did I feel like him? And I had no idea about that. There didn’t seem to be any way of ever knowing.
Angie sighed. “Alright. You can stay.”
I blinked, heart thumping. “Really?”
“Yeah. You hit the sack while I stand first watch, and I’ll wake you up in three hours.”
She laughed at my expression. “Oh, come on. You didn’t really think…?”
“No, no, I guess not.” I shrugged. “But then why didn’t you go after Ace?”
“Because I’d never cheat on the man you were. And if you’re not the man you were, well, Ace is a good enough guy that he won’t mind waiting a bit.”
“So… you’re givin’ me a test drive? Is that it?”
She stepped to the door and unslung her long gun. “I’m givin’ you the chance to show me who you are. Sleep tight, Ghost.”
My fists clenched as she pushed through the curtain and vanished. I got the feeling that the old me might have gone after her and given her a piece of my mind for saying what she had, and I was definitely a little hot under the collar, but at the same time I saw her point. I was the new kid
— literally. I had to prove myself.
I hung my gunbelt on a peg and kicked off my boots, then sat down on the narrow wooden bunk, pulled off my shirt and wadded it up for a pillow. Stripping down completely would have made sleeping easier, but if trouble arrived in the night, I didn’t want to die getting dressed.
The aches of the day’s exertions and the sting of my sunburn made me groan as I lay back, but it felt good to stretch, and pretty soon I crashed and crashed hard. I don’t remember dreaming, but I must have because I woke up sweating, the memory of the gun battle with the eight raiders fresh in my head again like it had just happened, and my heart pounding with horror at what I’d done back there.
Not only had I pulled Athalia into a dangerous situation without bothering to give her any explanation or get her consent, I’d also thought drawing on five men with shotguns was a good idea — a plan, even. What had I been thinking? Even if my gun hadn’t jammed, I would probably still have been dead without the timely intervention of Angie and her long gun. Yes, I’d evaluated my enemies, figured out who was the most dangerous, and picked my targets accordingly, and I could tell myself that I’d made my choice because it was the one with the greatest chance of saving the most people, but part of me wondered if I had been that careless because I was a clone. It wasn’t my life, after all. How, though, did I explain being careless with Athalia’s life too? Was that something the guy lying dead outside the cloning chamber would have done? Was he rash like this? Or was that me?
And now that I mentioned it, was even he the man I was?
Angie’s comment about my loss of a finger and a scar on my forehead hadn’t penetrated when she’d said it, but now that I was thinking back to my former self, I remembered that the dead body at the base had all its fingers and toes. Was I the clone of a clone? Did it stop there? Maybe I was the clone of a clone of a clone. I had no way of knowing how far removed I was from the original.
Thinking on that was the kind of thing that could keep a man awake for days. I wondered for a bit if I was the sort of man who would worry on that. Or if I had been the kind of man who would. I decided, either way, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to be the kind of guy who worried about it.
Ghost Book One: The Earth Transformed Page 3