Future Rebuilt: A Post-Apocalyptic Harem (Future Reborn Book 2)

by Daniel Pierce

  Lyss had him around the neck, and the second man was driving a knife into his lung. He bellowed in rage, kicking the man full in the face. He fell back into me and I brought my elbow down on his collarbone in a savage arc, shattering the bones as he tried to spin free, but my grip was solid. He was going nowhere except to hell.

  With one arm behind his skull, I drove him into the wall, face first and at such speed that his face was pulped into a mass of bone shards. He slid down, strangling on his own blood as I jumped yet again in the low light of the hallway. Two lanterns threw faltering glow that jumped around, turning the scene into something straight out of a nightmare. Salyers was bleeding heavily, trying to shake Lyss free, but she released him and rolled back, slamming a heavy steel door behind her that left me with no one but corpses, Salyers, and Chloe. Silence fell like a hammer, then Salyers took what I knew would be his last breath.

  “Heart,” he said, and I saw the second wound.

  I nodded, easing him down to the cool floor as his lifeblood pooled down his ribs, their motion slowing even as I watched. “Easy, friend. Easy.”

  “It is easy,” he said. “Easiest thing I ever did.” Then he died.

  I felt a new kind of rage building in me, but the time for grief would be later. “Can you shoot?” I asked Chloe.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Take this.” I handed her Salyer’s weapons, then slid his knife into my belt before grabbing his pack. “Come with me?”

  “I’m not staying here, that’s for damned sure,” she said, and we pelted down the hall to the only sure way out of the facility. Up.

  The main room was quiet, though I could feel the rumbling storm outside. “When we get out there, keep your hand in mine, no matter what. We go to the path, hit open ground, and get the fuck away from here until we can find shelter. All that matters is getting away to fight another day, okay?”

  “I know of shelter, if you can head due south,” she said as we moved in swift, quiet steps toward the door.

  “Good enough for me. It’s going to be brutal out there, but we have no choice. Where are the other girls?” I asked her.

  She shook her head in grim resignation. “I don’t know. They’re not in our rooms.”

  I cursed and looked around, finding the second hallway. “We have to look. What else is down that hall?”

  “A locked room. I don’t know what’s in there, but I know we weren’t allowed in,” she said, pointing to a double door at the end of the space.

  A pair of heavy locks gleamed in the lamplight, but I accelerated and launched a kick at the door, tearing it form the hinges to rattle inward in an explosion of wood and concrete.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed in the still air.

  It was a lab. Or it had been at one point, and I knew what the needles were for. “He found nanobots, but he doesn’t know how to use them.”

  “Nano—what?” Chloe asked.

  “Machines. In the blood. Hightec, from my time. It’s why he looked like shit when I saw him. He doesn’t know the doses, but he found them. That means there are more,” I said, tearing through the lab, but expecting to find nothing. Rowan was too smart to leave anything exposed to theft, no matter how slim the chances. “Nothing. Okay, let’s go. Where are the girls?”

  “Not here, not there,” she said. “Up top?”

  “Maybe. Up we go.” We went back to the doors, braced ourselves against the fury of the storm, and stepped out into an apocalypse of wind and rain. The shock was like a slap to the face, the rain stinging and cold, coming in near horizontal in gusting sheets that scoured at my face in painful waves. Chloe was young and strong, but she faltered in the face of such wind, dragged along by my iron grip as she struggled up the concrete stairs that were now a waterfall, covered by several inches of gushing water. Lightning cracked overhead, followed by a peal of thunder so deep it rattled the air in my chest.

  I said nothing, climbing in grim determination as Chloe valiantly tried to keep up. When we got close to the top, she faltered under a savage downgust that pushed her to the steps, scraping skin from her knees and elbows as she slid out of control, her feet careening out over the thirty foot drop. Without thinking, I swung her up and over my shoulders, moving my legs from sheer spite as the rain continued to lash me without mercy.

  We reached the top, and the storm’s power was fully revealed. How we would travel, let alone survive such an event, was beyond me, but I knew it started with me going to the sanded path and sliding down it like a flume. It was too risky to walk or fall a hundred feet in such conditions, so I staggered to the trail head and sat down, pulling Chloe close to me as the ground began to give way under my legs. In seconds, the flow of water began pushing us downward like a slide in some demonic amusement park, our speed increasing until we hit a turn some twenty feet above the desert floor, sailing into the air as Chloe screamed into the chaos of the storm.

  We landed in a sodden heap, the pooled water helping to break our fall. I pulled her to me and shouted in her ear to look for the guns, but I saw her smile in a flash of lightning.

  She had them both in knuckles so white they would look good on a corpse.

  I said nothing, merely pulling her along again as we careened southward, leaving the wind shadow of the outcropping only to be hammered by the full horror of a desert hurricane.

  “South,” Chloe barked, her mouth close to my ear as we struggled to hear anything at all over the constant symphony of thunder.

  “Got it.” I held her to my side, on the lee of my body as pellets of hail began to hit my skin, their frigid impact adding to my misery as I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, south, south, always south.

  My sense of time abandoned me in the storm, so we walked, crawled, and stumbled until a darker shape began to loom in my vision, the cracked rock face illuminated by the storm flashes, guiding us south toward a dark slash in the rock that I knew to be a cave.

  We collapsed inside, crawling forward to escape the storm. The cave was warm and dry, rising slightly as it grew wider, until it was a channel some four meters wide, sanded on the bottom and free of anything more harmful than a cricket.

  “Told you I knew about shelter,” she said, falling down on the sand as water streamed from her hair.

  “I’ve never been so happy to see a cave in my whole life,” I said. “Here. Get undressed,” I told her, pulling thermal blankets out of my pack. Salyers had three, which gave us five. I shucked my soaking clothes and stood, naked and dimpled with the cold before her, as she did the same. “I know we just met, but I’m going to have to ask you to get under the blankets with me, or you might die.”

  She sneezed, wiped her face, and began to undress. Her body was a maze of tiny marks, already bruising from the punishment of the storm, but when she was done she stepped onto the blanket I used to line the cave floor, managing a weak smile. “If you wanted to see me naked, you could have asked. No need to end the world in a flood.”

  I settled next to her, smiling at her strength in the face of our situation. Pulling her to me, I layered the blankets over us, but not before checking my shotgun and putting it right by my side. The storm might fade, and that meant Rowan and Lyss could move on us, if they could find us. How they would track us through this was unknown, but it was always best to expect the worst.

  Chloe’s lithe body was stippled with cold and pushed against me in a soft curve. She exhaled, her muscles relaxing, and in seconds, she passed out, hair dripping on my shoulder as her breathing became deep and regular. I could feel the blankets go to work, a gentle heat growing between us, and then, when I was sure the storm was still in full gallop, I slept.

  8

  We slept the night away, and part of the morning. A slight graying of the rain-drenched sky was the only indication it was a new day, but the storm was still going strong.

  “We’re not going anywhere in this,” I said with disgust. Even as I was bitching, part of a cactus streaked by in the
hurricane-force wind. “Do these happen often?”

  Chloe looked up from our makeshift bed, her expression pained. “I—uh, sometimes. About two or three a season, though this one is really early.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her. “Are you in pain?”

  She looked sheepish. “Kind of?”

  I knelt by her side, looking for obvious injuries, but she waved me off with an embarrassed grin. “Kinda have to pee. Okay, I really have to pee.”

  I laughed in relief, then pointed to the back of the cave. “If you don’t want to get your bum wet, then go back there. I’ll stand watch and make sure no one sees,” I said, waving gallantly toward the gloomy space behind us. When she didn’t move, I raised a brow. “What is it?”

  “Can I have a torch?” she asked.

  “Oh. Sure,” I said, rummaging in Salyer’s pack. He had small torches, wrapped in skin to keep the heads dry. I struck a tinder and lit one, handing her the torch with a little bow. “This will keep the giant bloodsucking cave spiders at bay while you—”

  “I could do without the commentary, thank you very much.” She made a face and retreated, the torch lighting walls that glittered with crystalline deposits and occasional fractures.

  After a long moment of silence, I saw the torch move forward, and back, and then to the side in a slow, deliberate arc. “Jack? Can you come back here?”

  “It’s not a spider, is it?” I asked her, but her voice was too subdued.

  “No. There’s someone here,” she said, again in the kind of voice that meant she was trying to stay calm.

  I stalked back into the space, gun out and knife in my left hand, but when I came in sight of her, she motioned that I should lower the weapons. “I don’t think he can hurt me.”

  It was a mummy, and he was wearing a uniform that I knew very well. Unites States Air Force.

  “Holy shit. One of my people,” I said, kneeling to look at the corpse. The cave kept him in good condition, but his uniform was frayed at the edges, as if he’d gone in here after a prolonged period of hardship. He’d been dark haired, about six feet tall, and an officer. His skin was sunken parchment, the teeth yawning up in a death’s head grin that gave him an oddly cheerful aura. He didn’t have a name on his uniform, so I turned him gently to begin searching for identification.

  I found something far more important. A key.

  Around his neck, he wore a metal key, the design somewhere between skeleton and tumbler design. I counted the ridges and found nine distinct variations along the swooping edge. The only variation on the smooth metallic surface was an embossed name that sent everything I knew about my world into a whirlwind of doubt.

  Fortress: Cache

  “What does it mean?” Chloe asked.

  “Can you read this?” I pointed to the lettering, clearly done by hand with a sharp instrument. There was no way the military would have compromised operation security by giving away a project name, but that’s what the words felt like. It was his dying wish; a secret to be passed on by someone who had run until he couldn’t run any more, and the new, terrible world had killed him, here in this forgotten cavern.

  “I think the first word is . . . fort?” She pronounced it with the hesitancy of someone not using their primary language, but who understood the letters of a different alphabet. I wondered, not for the first time, how much language and writing had shifted since my time, then said yet another quiet thank you to my ‘bots.

  “It is. Fortress, but in this case, I think it refers to a plan instead of a building. My military was addicted to riddles when it came to naming secret plans, and I don’t think they broke their habit in the few years since I was—since I’d been out of the service,” I said.

  “What do you mean? Were you sick? The only reason people quit being soldiers is from wounds, usually,” she said.

  “Not exactly.” I stared at the mummy as possible explanations rose and fell on my tongue, then decided to go with the simple truth. “This man? How old do you think his body is?”

  “I don’t know. It’s from the time of Hightec, right?” she said, peering down at the man out of time.

  “He is. And so am I,” I told her, waiting for a reaction.

  It wasn’t what I expected. “Go on.”

  “You don’t seem shocked. Why?” I asked her.

  “Rowan. He . . . did something with Hightec, and it changed his body. Why couldn’t you do the same? I know you’re different from him, because you have already shown yourself to be so. I don’t think you would lie about something like this, because men only lie for the same reasons, and I was under the blankets with you, yet you did not touch me. You have not tried to harm me, yet you could. So, because of all those things, I will listen, and then decide if you are truthful, or just mad.” She crossed her legs and looked up at me, face a mask of attentiveness.

  “Okay. Point one: I didn’t touch you because I won’t ever force a woman to be with me. As to the rest of my story, that’s easy. This man—and me—are 2000 years old, but I’m alive because of Hightec in my blood, and a device that kept me asleep while the world fell apart over my head as I dreamed of nothing except my own heartbeat.”

  She took my words in slowly, emotions flickering across her face as she watched me for a sign of deceit, but seeing none, asked a question of her own. “What happened to the world? Was it always this way?”

  “No. And it was a virus. It made the ogres, and the other beings that hunt us in The Empty and beyond. My time was—complicated, but good. What’s left over is harder, and I intend to change it. That’s one of the reasons I went to see Rowan, even though I suspected he was full of shit. I need to reclaim parts of my world in order to build this one again. Does that make sense?” I asked her.

  “Perfectly. And you have a place already? A place I can go?” she asked me, her eyes pleading.

  “I do, and you can. I only ask that you help us all work toward making a new life. Something better, without slaves and chains and blood. That’s what I want, and it’s the only thing I’ll accept until I’m all out of fight,” I said.

  She reached up, taking my hand, and I pulled her to her feet. She was surprisingly light, her body held against me, wrapped only in one of the blankets. A peal of thunder hammered at the sky outside and she flinched then leaned in closer as the rain lashed at the cave opening from a new direction.

  “Storm’s moving. It won’t be long until we can move,” she said.

  “We can wait it out, but then we’re going to have to move quickly. I don’t know what to expect outside, but none of the dry stream beds are going to be anything less than a raging torrent.” I rubbed at my face, planning steps to save time and effort for our ultimate goal. The reactors. “If we can’t move, they can’t move. Is there any reason they wouldn’t come after us right away? If it had been me, I would have given chase.”

  “The patrols. They were still out, and maybe Rowan thinks some of them will survive the storm,” she said.

  “Patrols? Plural? How many people are we talking about?” I asked, more than a little concerned about her oversight. And mine.

  “Maybe fifteen men, a few women, and of course, Lyss. They weren’t far out, but most of them were seasoned desert fighters. They would know the storm was coming and streak for the base,” she said. “They stay out overnight, scavenging and looking for girls. That’s why we didn’t cook for them.” Her eyes lowered, but I reached down to lift her chin.

  “My fault, not yours. I should have asked, but we got our guts beaten out by the storm, and we’re just now coming around. Thank you for telling me.” She brightened, and I felt myself smile. Her beauty was pure, and she was tough enough to survive a storm that would kill most people. “What did you do before they took you?”

  “Hunting and ranching, and damned good at it, if I say so. My family was among the best in the area, but we had two bad years in a row thanks to divine intervention,” she said, her face darkened with anger.

  “Wha
t kind of intervention?” I asked her, unsure if I’d heard correctly.

  “Taksa and Senet, last year, and the year before that, a group of big cats that took more than half our herds. We were lucky to survive, let alone eat, and my father took a leg wound that never healed right. He lingered over the summer and died just as the weather began to cool. Mom died three years back, and my brothers were killed fighting in the trade wars when I was little.” She looked stricken, then nostalgic. “We had such perfect beasts. Amazing muscle and horns, and big healthy calves, all the time. We had turkeys and goats, and the meanest brood sow you’ve ever seen. She threw twenty piglets at a time and we had everything we needed. Then the fucking wars started bleeding us, a little at a time until it was me and pa and a lot of broken fences.”

  “You can have all of that again,” I told her.

  “How?” Her eyes were bright with angry tears.

  “I want those things too, and I don’t know a damned thing about pigs other than the fact that bacon is delicious. The last pig I saw tried to eat me,” I said.

  “They tend to do that when they’re rogue.” She wiped at her face, then looked at me with an intensity that pushed back the chill. “Why would you help me get that life back?”

  I laughed and settled to the blanket, grimacing at the sensation of wet pants on my skin. “It wouldn’t be charity. The Free Oasis needs all of the things you can do. You could be the person who makes us self-sufficient for the next stage of our existence. Build a herd. Build a stable. Whatever you can build, do it, because you would be helping all of us take a giant step forward.”

  “Okay. We would need stock,” she said.

  I raised my hands in surrender. “No idea. That’s up to you, but you would have help. We have people joining us with a wide variety of skills, and like I told you, you would be welcome. And safe.”