Sunny crossed the crumbling highway and climbed the steep tree-covered hill on the other side, looking for life.
“Hello?” she called, climbing a fallen and overgrown chain link fence to approach the darker shadows of houses she could see in the forest. Had she not known where the village was from her father’s explorations in childhood, she wouldn’t have had any idea there was a village there at all.
“Anyone here?” She paused in the center of the village. In general, the houses looked less dilapidated than the rest of the buildings she had seen around Thunderbird, but aside from relatively tidy trails between homes and a brief whiff of wood smoke, she saw no sign that anyone was actually living in the village. She stopped short of entering the homes without permission, however, knowing that, in a place like this, it was a huge act of disrespect, and if anyone saw her do it, it would probably get her shot.
Sunny paused as she passed the Russian Orthodox church and its famous cemetery.
The spirit houses had all once been bright and colorful, but after ten years without access to civilization, the paint was peeling and the boards weathered. She was walking the gravel path when she saw a little clump of hand-picked wildflowers sitting in a vase outside one of the waist-high houses. She paused and glanced up at the empty village. Raising her voice again, she called, “Hey, I’m new here and I was hoping someone could help me get a message back to my sister!”
No answer. Reluctantly, Sunny left, knowing that if any place beyond the wall would have been able to help her, it would’ve been Eklutna. She headed south up the old highway, stopping here and there to investigate fresh-looking trails.
Sunny wasn’t sure how far she walked looking for some sign of life, but by the time the sun went down, her clothes were dry. Along the way, she saw some not-quite-as-dilapidated homesteads tucked away on old 4-wheeler trails in the overgrown brush, but aside from a couple shadows ducking into the brush at her approach, she didn’t see anyone to ask for help.
She wasn’t surprised. Things outside the Domes, especially on this end of the Domes, was pretty much every man for himself. Trapped here, with no Dome Commission projects to put people to work and no income from the logging, mining, and paper mills that the more northern Iceboxers had access to, she couldn’t imagine many people had survived the last ten years.
Considering she was alone and unarmed north of Chugiak, and that most people out here were teetering on the brink of starvation and anarchy, Sunny was actually surprised she hadn’t been robbed or killed, or both.
She camped along the northern edge of the Chugiak Dome. The road, which had once entered the Fabriglas barrier, now veered to the right, circling around towards the inlet, where a single massive door—barricaded from the opposite side—separated Eklutna from the rest of the world. Weeds now grew in the old highway that stopped at edge of the Dome. The Fabriglas of the Dome itself was almost a foot thick, but so clear it was almost like peering through spring water.
Seeing it now, an impenetrable, dispassionate barrier keeping her from getting back to civilization, Sunny felt herself empathizing with the would-be rebels. The government crackdown and closing off of the north entrance would have, in effect, driven the people there to barbarism. No water, no electricity, no way to even buy diesel. If there was even anyone still living here in twenty years, she’d be surprised.
Then again, that’s probably exactly what Banks’s crackdown was aiming for. Rather than address the issue publicly and give it legitimacy, he might have planned to simply starve them out, then reclaim the land for another Dome in a decade. Then, even more disquieting, she wondered if that had been the plan from the beginning. After all, how hard would it have been to rebuild those four bridges? Didn’t the Dome Commission have tens of thousands of people endlessly dropping granite blocks in the ocean to build a seawall?
It didn’t sit well with her.
It had, at one time, back when she was an EMT and life was easy as a Necessary. She’d been paid well, had a good apartment, had a man who she thought had loved her…
Then that little girl had entered her life in a spinning cacophony of sirens, bullets, and blood, and Sunny had started to get a glimpse of how shitty life on the other end of the spectrum could be. She began to wonder just how much of the crap she was going through now was Karmic retribution for her dispassionate dismissal of the plight of the less-fortunate, back when she’d had a good job, a full stomach, and money in the bank—and she’d thought that those who didn’t have those things were simply not worthy of them.
If there was justice in life, it probably was Karma. Before the accident, she’d been just as cruel to blockkers and Unnecessaries as the Necessaries and Ordinaries now were to her. Cocky and callous, and it hurt to see her own disdain in their eyes.
Sunny started a fire with her hunting knife and the attached ferro sparker—something that her always-in-the-wilderness biologist father had insisted she carry ever since she was a small toddler, teaching her and Daphne to use it on backpacking expeditions to study mountainous fish populations when they were eight and Mom was trapped in Canada. Sunny propped the rod against a wad of feathery birch bark peelings, scraped the back of her knife against it, and blew on the result until she had enough flame for larger peelings, small twigs and brush. She kept the flames relatively small to avoid attention, knowing that if someone died this side of the Dome, the BPI didn’t investigate.
Thank god it wasn’t raining. As it was, the mosquitoes were coming out of the woods in droves as the sun went down, and she had to wrap the jacket around her head and chest to keep them off her neck and ears. She hunkered next to the fire as her boots dried, peering through the bulletproof Fabriglas panes of the Dome at the warm jungle and granite buildings as she fought off a massive swarm of mosquitoes.
Some domers, Sunny mused, trying to cover her exposed skin with spruce branches to keep away the bugs, didn’t even know what a mosquito was. Hell, a good quarter of them never even left their birth Dome, perfectly content never to breathe fresh air, convinced that their tropical plants and carefully crafted waterparks were better than the dirt and chaos of Mother Nature. Even most tours of the wilderness were carefully arranged, to be viewed by megarail in carefully-sealed environmental bubbles. Nobody wanted to leave the Eden that Mr. Edward Banks had created for fear they, like the Eklutna outdomers, wouldn’t be allowed to return.
About an hour after she built a fire, five men and women in dirty, scruffy clothes slid out of the brush on all sides of her camp, surrounding her in silence. They were armed, most carrying knives, while the girl in the lead had a shotgun, and one old man was carrying a spear made from a birch sapling and scrap metal. Two of the five—the elderly woman and the girl—were native. Two of the bigger men were white, and the shriveled old guy was Chinese. While it would have been an awkward mix before the Four Bridges Rebellion, Sunny had heard that after they got cut off from civilization, the wilders north of Chugiak had been adopted by the Athabascan tribe of Eklutna who refused to relocate their ancestral village, so the survivors were now a weird blend of rednecks, natives, and Chinese who’d been displaced after the Alaska-Canada war.
“Who are you and what are you doing out here?” the girl—she couldn’t have been more than sixteen—demanded, a short, skinny native with a short pixie cut. They were all skinny—skinnier than Sunny, which was saying something. Most were covered in dirt, scratches, and old blood.
It was the blood that worried her. Sunny fisted her hand on her knife and tried to remain calm. “Would you believe I have no idea?”
The group chortled. “No.” The native girl seemed to speak for them—some sort of chieftain’s daughter? She circled, looking Sunny over suspiciously. “How’d you get those bruises?”
“I fell,” Sunny said. Then, before they could accuse her of trying to burgle the outdome wilders or some other bogus made-up excuse to take everything she owned, she said, “Look, I don’t know how I got here. I just want to contact my siste
r and get home. I’m not here to make trouble.” Five against one were pretty shitty odds, especially when one of them had a gun. She wasn’t going to back down, though. Daphne was right—for all the trouble it got her into, that wasn’t in her nature. She’d rather walk on nails.
The biggest of the guys, the Viking wearing a red bandanna and carrying a machete, looked impressed. “Looks like you got in a fight. Who won?”
“I did,” Sunny lied.
“She’s lying,” the wrinkled old Chinese man said. The four others glanced at him, and suddenly the power structure shifted in Sunny’s eyes. He was wearing black leather embossed with a stylized red thunderbird—probably moose leather, but its complexity and the great care that went into making it meant she was probably looking at some sort of war chief or whatever form of leader these people had now that Banks had basically reduced them to savagery.
“Okay, so I lost,” Sunny said. “I thought that was pretty obvious.”
The girl glanced curiously at the Fabriglas beside her fire. “How’d you get over the Wall?”
“I said I don’t know,” Sunny said. “I just…arrived.”
“How ?” The irritated question came from one of the two white men.
“I was in a fight,” Sunny said. “I got dragged into a sewer. I woke up here.”
The girl laughed. “This place ain’t connected to no sewer.” Nearby, the elderly native woman was subtly moving to get behind her.
“Believe me, I’m aware of that,” Sunny replied, twisting to keep the older woman in sight. Tensions were rising, and it didn’t seem like there was anything Sunny could do to stop it.
“Who were you fighting?” the other white guy asked, trying to take her attention away from the others. “Why’d he let you live?”
“I guess it was my charming personality,” Sunny said, making a smile that was all tooth. Her knuckles were white on the hilt of her blade. “Seriously, guys, I don’t want to fight.”
“Was it someone around here?” the girl asked. She took a confident step closer. “’Cause that’s just like a domer—come out to the wilderness to pick fights with the locals.” She stopped directly in front of Sunny and fiddled with a buckle on Sunny’s jacket. “Problem is, you don’t know who it is you just picked a fight wi—”
Sunny grabbed the shotgun out of her hand and kicked her backwards, aiming the gun at her head. “Back off. All of you. Right now.” One of the bennies of being twin-in-law to a big-time muckety-muck in the police force was free self-defense lessons in Daphne’s name. Daphne, of course, had never partaken, but Sunny had gone to every damn class until they’d realized who she was and kicked her out.
A few feet away, the girl did a flip off the ground that bespoke ill of Sunny’s ability to survive if the night’s entertainment came down to fisticuffs.
Oh shit, Sunny thought, unable to back up due to the man behind her. Meanwhile, the girl in front of her was clenching her fists and slowly moving towards her.
“I don’t wanna shoot you but I will,” Sunny warned. “Everyone back up. I’m not here to cause trouble, but I swear to god I’ll bring it if you push me.”
The girl sneered at her. “You think we still got fuckin’ bullets out here, domer, you’re as dumb as that Fabriglas wall.”
Oops.
“Yeah, shoot her,” the shorter of the two white men chuckled. “Come on, domer. Shoot!”
And it was then that Sunny realized just how screwed she really was. She could pull the trigger on the shotgun and figure out, gee, she had one bullet for five people or gee, the gun was empty, and either way, the girl’s four companions would pile on her the moment she tried.
But she didn’t put the gun down because she was Sunny Day and she would rather chew broken glass. “I said back off.”
The girl was too confident for the gun to be loaded. She kept creeping closer, a look of concentration on her face, like she just need a couple more inches…
“You want a fight?” Sunny threw the gun at the girl and yanked the knife from her belt. “Fine. I will stab as many of you fuckers as I can before I go down, and I know where all the important bits are. I know for a fact I can kill a couple of you on my way down.”
All their faces darkened at that except for the wrinkled old man, who was now leaning on his spear as he watched the action, looking almost entertained.
Sunny, meanwhile, was spinning to keep them all in sight. “Arteries, organs, nerve clusters…”
The girl bent, picked up the shotgun, and aimed it at Sunny’s head. She started pacing around Sunny, her face was even, calm, and deadly. “Drop it.”
“I don’t think so,” Sunny snorted, twisting to keep her in view.
“It’s got bullets,” the bigger white man chuckled.
“Prove it,” Sunny retorted.
The girl’s eyes narrowed, still pacing. “You make me pull the trigger, you won’t live through it.”
“Shells are hard to come by,” the elderly woman agreed. “Best saved for moose or bear.”
“Or killing domers who deserve it,” another piped up.
“Go ahead and try,” Sunny growled. “I’ll skewer you like a pot roast.”
“You’re pretty mouthy for someone outnumbered five to one,” the native girl said, still pacing.
“You attack me and I’m taking at least two of you down with me,” Sunny growled at her. “I know where all the arteries are and I’m not going down without a fi—”
The Chinese guy slammed the butt of his spear into the back of her head, making the rest of what she was about to say explode into a thousand tiny lights. Sunny fell forward onto her knees, dazed, as the native girl chuckled.
“What was that you were saying?” she asked, casually leaning on her shotgun as she squatted to look at Sunny. “Something about a fight?”
“Nice knife,” the guy said, ducking to snatch it up from where Sunny dropped it in her fall. “And a sparker!” He held up the sparker dangling from the knife hilt and whistled like he’d hit the jackpot. “Man, this is one of the good ones!”
Sunny lunged forward and pulled the trigger on the gun, which went off in the girl’s hand. She cried out and fell backwards clutching her face, and Sunny kicked the guy who had her knife in the nuts and took it back.
“Fuckin’ kill her already!” the girl screamed. “She almost fucking killed me!”
“Your fault for leaning on your gun like a domer,” Sunny chuckled. This time, she kept the old Chinaman and his spear in sight as she backed away. “Now all of you back off.”
“You wasted ammo !” the girl shrieked. And then, like a spoiled domer five-year-old, she threw a tantrum right there on the ground. “My ammmmmmoooo! Nooooo!” It made Sunny blink and do a double take.
“Jesus,” Sunny muttered, more than a little taken aback that someone this far from the luxury of the domes could get away with an outburst like this without someone drowning them at birth, “How old are you…three? Go sit in a corner for time-out.”
The girl looked up at her with Death written on her face. As her hand fell away from her cheek, Sunny saw that there was, indeed, a powder burn on it. It had been close, then.
“Damn,” Sunny laughed, “you look like you stuck your face in a flame-thrower. Where’d you learn to handle weaponry…your local knitting cla—”
This time, when the butt of the spear hit her in the back of the head, it was a lot less gentle. Then it caught her under the knee, flipped her off her feet, and then swiveled to kiss the soft part of her throat with the polished tip of its spear, all in less than a second.
“You are easily distracted,” the old Chinaman noted calmly from above her. “This is bad for you.”
Sunny felt that bubbling of rage. “Or maybe I wasn’t, and I was just trying to distract you . Now would be a good time to shoot them, Bobby.”
The old man looked. So did everyone else. In their disorientation that followed, Sunny lunged out from under the spear, ran a few yards, and dove int
o the underbrush to get out of sight.
Several of the raiders started to follow, but then they stopped and started to mill.
“Someone was here recently,” the white Viking guy said, kneeling in front of Sunny’s fire to hold his hand over it. He glanced around them at the brush, and Sunny ducked down to avoid his glance. “Real recently.”
“Maybe it was a spy,” the younger white male said. “Could be trying to find the tunnel.”
Yes, Sunny thought. Yes, I’m definitely looking for the tunnel. You should go check.
“Maybe we should go check,” the native girl said.
The Chinese man looked disquieted, however. “The qi is not right here. There was a fight. And I smell gunpowder.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” the girl said, cocking her gun to check. “I’ve got a full cartridge of—” She froze, blinking at the chamber. “Who fired my gun?!”
Her companions frowned and glanced around.
“Seriously, guys, who fired my gun?”
“Maybe it went off quietly,” the younger white man said.
The girl gave him a raised brow. “It’s gunpowder , white boy.”
“I don’t like this,” the Chinese man said. “I think we’re dealing with a wū jìyì .”
“What’s that?” the elderly native woman asked.
“Memory witch, my love,” the old man said. “We must have fought him and he escaped.”
“He escaped five of us and a gunshot?” the girl demanded. “I don’t see any blood.”
The elder native woman moved a little closer to the Chinese man. “Take us home. We’ll tell Tadzi. Let the Council deal with it.”
The Chinese man looked around again, sniffing the air. He rubbed his spear tip between thumb and forefinger, then bent to touch the ground where Sunny had been blinking up at him only a moment before. What he found must have scared him, because he stood up suddenly. “Wū jìyì ,” he confirmed. “We go. Now.” Surprisingly, the Chinese man made a gesture and everyone hurried from her camp like it was cursed.
Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass) Page 16