Intense warmth and daylight fell on her face.
Trenton started to emit a cry of fear, probably expecting the horribly toxic mess that existed in all the stories to melt the flesh off his bones, but the noise coming out of him morphed into a startled yelp of pain at the light.
“Well, damn.” Shaw sneezed. “That’s kinda bright.”
Lark grunted. “Worse than last time.”
Tinsley scrambled up off the ladder.
“Bad weather then. Rainy.” Unable to see much other than glowing radiance, Raven exited the shaft by feel. “This is probably close to as bright as it possibly gets.”
The others emerged one by one, both men cursing the glare. Lark, having experienced it once already, merely shielded her eyes and waited. Everyone sat still for a little while, waiting for their eyes to acclimate.
Tinsley pulled her tread socks off and tied the plastic sandals on. “You guys shouldn’t wear socks out here. They’re too fuzzy and nice to ruin. Outside, they’ll get all muddy and dirty and nasty and blech.”
Lark and Trenton murmured in agreement.
“Son of a bitch, look at that,” said Shaw.
Raven glanced at him, then around, not noticing anything unexpected. “What?”
“The damn turbines are covered in rust. Them two towers are sagging bad.”
“Oh. Yeah. I already told you guys that.” Raven forced herself to keep her eyes open to look at the windmills. Eighteen huge white fans spun lazily in a calm breeze that rustled leaves, tossed her hair about, and made the blue tarp they’d put over number fourteen flap. “Next thing we need to talk to Ben about is doing a survey on those towers and trying to shore up as many as we can with everything we’ve got before they collapse. One of those things dies, it won’t be long before the rest of them overload.”
“If Ben’s right about the scrubbers not doing anything, we should bypass them and save the electrical drain.” Lark tried to look around and gasped at the sunlight. “Wow, it’s so bright.”
Shaw walked up to stand beside Raven, using his hand as a sun visor. “Might be something we can do to prop them towers up, yeah. Lark’s got a point. Shuttin’ them useless things down would take a bunch of stress off the system.”
“They need to double or triple the amount of active growth beds in the farm,” said Lark.
“Plants won’t grow fast enough to help.” Raven glanced at the hatch, decided to leave it up, and started off to the west.
“Same weird smell I remember the day I checked the hatch.” Shaw adjusted his filter mask.
“You’re smelling trees,” said Tinsley.
“Been to the farm often enough to know the smell of plants,” said Shaw. “This ain’t it.”
“Fresh air.” Raven took in a deep breath.
“That’s still smelling trees.” Tinsley grinned up at her. “Sienna says they used to make the air nice.”
“It’s like the pictures.” Trenton spun in a circle as he walked, looking around. “How is there so much green stuff out here?”
Raven shrugged. “Not sure how it happened. But it happened.”
“How about that.” Shaw chuckled. “I expected it would be… scarier out here.”
“Scarier?” asked Tinsley.
“Yeah. Clouds of green smoke rolling across the ground, black sky, puddles of bubbling acid… stuff like that.”
Lark shuddered. “Maybe a hundred years ago.”
“Or two,” said Raven. “Or three. We’ve been underground a long damn time. No one really even knows for sure when the Great Death happened.”
“I hope the Plutions went away.” Tinsley squeezed her mother’s hand.
Raven eyed the woods, on high alert for large, furry monsters. “Me too, kiddo. Me too.”
20
The Lost
The best way to find something you misplaced is to get a new one. – Ellis Wilder.
No sign of ‘Chewie’ appeared during over an hour of walking.
Even though she’d only made the trek once before, Raven found it easy to retrace her steps. The trees mostly looked alike, but fragments of the prior civilization peeking out from under the foliage made for good landmarks. Half a wall here, a road sign there, familiar wreckage of a car after that. Also, that the least troublesome route into the woods followed the path of a buried highway made it somewhat difficult to go the wrong direction.
When they reached the edge of the high-rise ruins, her three co-workers all stopped short, gawking. The Arc consisted of six levels. Most of the crumbling structures in front of them had thirty or more. Of course, the Arc also spread out far wider horizontally than any of the skyscrapers, filling out about three-quarters of a square mile. Still, the sheer size of the buildings likely made everyone try to figure out how, exactly, people who lived before the Great Death ever managed to build them.
“What is this place?” asked Trenton in a half-whisper.
“Uhh, I think it used to be called Atlanta.” Shaw pulled his filter mask down only long enough to spit to the side.
Lark approached the decomposing wreck of a car, crouching to look at an engine block worn smooth on the outside as though it had been in a sandblast tunnel. “I thought these ruins are Charlotte.”
“Charlotte’s a girl’s name, not the name of a city,” said Trenton. “Cities don’t have people names like people don’t have city names.”
“Sienna said it used to be called Virginny here.” Tinsley scraped her foot at the dirt, unearthing a small metal object. “An’ we’re near a place called Rich Man.”
“Virginny, huh?” Trenton scratched his head. “Did they make people leave after they had sex?”
Shaw sputtered into laughter.
Raven put her hands over Tinsley’s ears. “According to my father’s notebook, this place used to be called Phil.”
“What’d they fill it with?” asked Trenton, snickering.
She rolled her eyes. “Phil, not fill. With a P. Phil Delphi or something like that.”
“Weird name.” Shaw approached the nearest building and fussed at the vines covering it. “Doesn’t really matter what they called it. It ain’t what it was.”
Tinsley flapped her poncho to cool off. Like the previous wake, the sun made it quite warm outside. Apparently, her daughter had fully expected to end up outside again from the moment they woke up, and didn’t bother wearing anything under the poncho beyond her inside pants. Raven contemplated scolding her, but felt a little jealous that her kid could do that and not be embarrassed. Inside pants belonged under outer clothing. Then again, the poncho did basically serve as a dress, hanging almost to the ground. Like any other wake, Raven put on an inside shirt under her poncho plus baggy pants. Being outside while covered head to toe made the heat close to unbearable.
She’s not coughing at all. A mixture of guilt and joy convinced her not to make an issue of her kid’s wardrobe decisions.
“This place is massive.” Lark took a few steps past her, gazing up at the buildings.
Raven advanced into the ruins, taking the same path she did the previous trip. Everyone still in the Arc depended on them to keep the air breathable. There would be time for exploration later. Now, she had a job to finish as fast as possible.
Three blocks from the start of the ruins, Tinsley yelled, “Look, people!” and darted off to the right. Raven whirled to grab for her, but missed by inches. The loud clap of plastic sandals filled the concrete-walled canyon between buildings from the child sprinting down the center of an old street.
“Stop!” yelled Raven, breaking into a run after her. “Don’t wander off.”
Tinsley skidded to a halt, waving her arms for balance, then twisted back with an apologetic—but still excited—expression. As soon as Raven caught up and took hold of her arm, the child pointed. Not far from where they stood, five skeletons lay on the ground surrounded by a circle of wreckage and rubble, almost like they’d built a fortification around their position. Whatever clothing they
may have owned disintegrated completely, either due to the sheer passage of time or the former toxicity of the environment. Only a few scraps remained, too small and grey to even identify the type of fabric it had once been.
Shaw, Trenton, and Lark approached.
The position of the bodies, no two in the same orientation and scattered around, hinted that they had died a violent death and been left where killed. A sunlight glint near the most distant body caught her eye. Curious, Raven climbed over the mangled frame of a car to the interior of the barricade and approached a skeleton seated on the ground, its back against a mound of concrete rubble. Raven imagined him standing inside it as a defender, being shot in the forehead, then slumping to the ground. A hole as thick as her index finger pierced the bone above the left eye. The majority of the skull’s rear portion had vanished, leaving a cavernous opening.
It reminded her of some descriptions of gunshots she’d read in fiction novels. If this person died to a bullet, it would have happened quite a long time ago. Given the total lack of flesh on the bodies and that the skeletons had mostly fallen apart, that made sense.
She shifted her gaze to the relatively shiny strip in the dirt beside the corpse. Curious, she crouched and dug around it, clearing away a layer of hardened silt more like rock than soil. Her curiosity bottomed out at the discovery of a simple pipe, probably a primitive weapon the dead person had been carrying. For no particular reason beyond having already started excavating, she kept pawing at the crusty sediment. Perhaps a part of her father lived on in her, wanting to understand the past by studying their weapons. This person had carried the object, so it must have some significance.
“What are you doing?” called Shaw. “Is that the way to the filters?”
“Aww, leave them. Too far gone to help,” said Trenton.
“Stay back, honey.” Lark kept a hand on Tinsley. “You’re too little to go looking at bones.”
“They won’t hurt me. They’re already dead.”
Raven looked back at the others, all waiting for her some twenty feet away beyond the circle of junk. “Just a minute. Checking something.”
Further digging revealed a rotted leather strap. What she thought to be a pipe had an unusually oval shape. A few patches of black paint remained that hadn’t eroded away to plain grey steel. Upon unearthing a spot with a three-inch disc jutting out around the strange object, the overall shape triggered a memory. A book titled Shogun in the library, one of about a dozen that still had a cover, depicted a man holding a similar object.
It’s a sword!
She grabbed it and yanked it the rest of the way out of the cemented crud. Sure enough, she’d found a Shogun-style sword in a scabbard. The cloth parts around the handgrip had vanished, as had most of the decoration on the outside of the sheath. She didn’t expect much from the blade, but emitted a faint gasp of shock when she pulled it a few inches out. The sword’s blade still appeared serviceable. Curious, she drew it entirely and held it up. The old sword fell far short of gleaming in the sun due to a coating of dirt. It had a couple of rust spots, but astoundingly remained solid given the length of time it had no doubt been there.
“Wow. Mommy found a big knife!” yelled Tinsley.
Raven slid the blade back into the scabbard and stood, gazing down at the skeleton. Makes sense why someone used a bullet on him. But… why would they leave the sword behind? It must have been total chaos. She backed away from the dead person. So much for there being no human remains here. We just got lucky before. Didn’t go the right—or wrong—way.
She vaulted the rubble fortification and jogged back to the others.
“Easy, kid.” Shaw smiled. “Didn’t think we had time for treasure hunting.”
“Sorry. We really don’t.” Raven held the sword up. “Didn’t see any human remains last time. Wanted to check it out to see what might’ve killed them. Looks like someone shot that guy.”
“That rules out bears.” Shaw chuckled.
“Chewie?” whispered Tinsley.
Raven resumed walking, shaking her head. “No. Those people died a long time ago. Whoever shot them is definitely dead purely from age. I think whatever happened there went on during the Great Death.”
She took some cord from her tool satchel, making a sling to hang the katana across her back. Though she didn’t know the first thing about how to use a sword, she carried a knife despite having no real idea how to fight with one of those either. The sword, at least, offered a longer reach. Also, she doubted any bears or whatever ‘Chewie’ turned out to be would be trained in sword fighting.
That creature might not even be real.
A few blocks later, pigeons scattered into the air ahead of their arrival at the fountain square. Lark let out a brief scream of surprise. Trenton dove to the ground. Shaw didn’t show any outward reaction, but his lack of teasing the younger man for his display of fear gave away he’d been startled, too.
“Birds.” Lark ceased cringing and watched the pigeons racing off. “They’re real.”
Smiling to herself at the others’ childlike awe, Raven headed toward the flipped bus at the corner. “We’re almost there. A couple blocks down this way.”
Shaw, Trenton, and Lark trailed after her, still enamored with the birds. They wondered aloud at the significance of finding animals alive, and if that meant larger ones might be present as well. Raven brought up her ‘warm Arctic’ theory that the birds survived only because they had the ability to migrate northward to escape the killing heat.
Their debate about the effect a theoretical complete polar ice melt would have had on the world stalled when they reached the storage facility.
Shaw whistled. “Damn that’s one big building.”
The largest single chamber in the Arc, the hydroponic farm, might have been about half the size of this place.
“Lot easier to build big rooms out here than dig them out underground,” said Lark. “This really isn’t that impressive. All they had to do was build walls, not move thousands of tons of dirt and rock.”
Tinsley crunched over the glass at the door, sticking her tongue out at them before informing the fragments that they weren’t allowed to cut her because of her new shoes.
“Here…” Raven walked to a spot near the quartermaster stations, gesturing at a collection of large flatbed pushcarts. “We can use these to transport the filters.”
Everyone except Tinsley took hold of a cart and followed Raven deeper into the building. She went straight to the aisle containing the air filters.
“There’s so much stuff here.” Lark looked around at the shelves. “It’s amazing that it hasn’t been taken already.”
“By who?” asked Trenton. “Everyone else died.”
“What looter would take lamps and air filters?” Shaw chuckled. “Anyone who would have ransacked this place had bigger problems back then.”
Raven led them to the stash of air filters. “Here we are.”
“Shit,” muttered Shaw. “That’s a ton of filters.”
Trenton let out a whoop.
They split up and proceeded to load the carts, grabbing the filters closest in size to the ones the Arc needed first, then larger ones. Tinsley helped as well. Though she only stood a few inches taller than the bundle packs, they didn’t weigh much. Near the end of the aisle, Raven stooped to pick up a shrink-wrapped stack of giant filters—and froze still upon spotting a man’s bare footprint in the dirt next to the shelf.
The plastic sandals didn’t do too well inside the building on the smooth tile floor. Tinsley, Lark, and Trenton skated around as much as walked, and occasionally slipped. She looked from the print to Trenton, wondering if he’d taken them off, but he hadn’t. Also, his feet were a little smaller than the track. It clearly hadn’t come from Tinsley, who had been in here barefoot hours ago. In fact, the print couldn’t have been here during their last visit or she would have noticed it.
What the hell? We’re the only humans left alive. How is that even poss
ible? The too-human grunts and grumbles that stalked her and Tinsley earlier took on an entirely new meaning in her head. Could ‘Chewie’ have been some manner of mutated creature like Noah believed existed? Was that the reason he looked at them like people asking for permission to kill themselves when he agreed to let them go get these filters?
Fear set her hands trembling. She stood there unable to decide how to process the footprint while the others merrily continued stacking filters up on the carts.
“Pile it high. They’re light. We can tie it all down,” said Shaw.
“Uhh, hey… guys?” whispered Raven. “The Arc has the only surviving humans, right?”
“Of course,” said Trenton. “That’s kind of a stupid question, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Lark nodded.
Shaw walked up to her. “She wouldn’t ask if she didn’t have a good reason. What’s up?”
Raven pointed at the footprint. “Trent, did you take the sandals off?”
“Nope. Whoa. Oh, duh. It’s a footprint. Probably came from someone years ago.” Trenton shook his head and resumed stacking filters.
“Except that this is loose dirt. A breeze would erase the footprint. And I’m sure it wasn’t here yesterday.”
Tinsley gasped. “Chewie!”
Raven whirled, reaching for the katana handle—but her daughter’s excited exclamation hadn’t come from seeing any creature again. She’d merely made the same mental connection her mother had.
“That’s kinda freaky.” Lark squatted next to the print. “Yeah, definitely a man. Bigger than my foot.”
“What if the Arc isn’t the only place humans survived?” asked Raven. “Isn’t it kinda silly to assume that? If we made it, maybe other groups did.”
The others all stared at her in varying degrees of alarm, dismissal, or contemplation.
“The sign we walked by on the way out,” said Raven, “you guys remember it said Arcology 1409, right?”
They nodded.
The Girl Who Found the Sun Page 21
