They cooked food out here? Burning… wood?
Raven picked up one of the split logs, surprised at the weight and texture. Knowing that wood existed didn’t prepare her for the sensation of actually holding a piece. People could use wood to build things. But they also needed trees to purify the air. Destroying trees to make houses or furniture or even fuel to cook with seemed self-defeating. Every tree removed made the air worse. Then again, considering the number of trees that could exist in the world, one small village couldn’t do significant harm.
We still need to be careful. Not take too much.
Once the curiosity of wood wore off, she dropped it back on the pile and approached the door. The Saints had constructed a dwelling from large sheets of metal, some smooth, some corrugated, as well as spars and scrap they bolted together. A simple one-room cabin contained a table, four chairs, four crude beds, and some storage cabinets. Plastic trunks like the one she used for her father’s things contained some articles of clothing, canteens, and a few pairs of boots. Judging by the style of the inside pants, all four of the Saints had been men. A cup on the floor by the table and a knocked-over chair suggested that someone had gotten up and run outside in a hurry.
Nothing inside gave any clue of violence or why the men had disappeared.
Raven went back outside and walked around the cabin. A bucket hung on a hook near the roof connected via a clear hose to a shower head above a metal plate that offered cleaner footing than mud. She blushed at the idea of showering outside in full view of anyone. Eager to proceed with her original mission, she hastily looked around the surrounding area. A patch of dirt had boot prints as well as bare footprints.
The shoeless tracks reminded her of the one she’d seen in the storage building. To be certain, she slipped one boot off and held her bare foot over it to compare size. Whoever made the print had noticeably larger feet than hers, at least an inch longer and half an inch wider on each side.
“Definitely a man.” She stepped back into her boot. “Not big enough to be a monster, or a bigfoot.”
It remained anyone’s guess if the Saints—the most likely source of the boot prints—had been chasing or chased by the barefoot man. For all she knew, they might have been walking together as friends. Or the Saints found tracks and followed them, never having seen what made them. That didn’t seem too likely or they wouldn’t have disappeared for good—or rushed off in a seeming hurry.
She looked up from the ground, out over several hundred yards’ worth of grassy meadow to a forest line. “Did they go exploring and get lost?”
Nothing here appeared broken, ransacked, or showed any signs of violence. No blood splashed anywhere. She doubted the Saints would decide to abandon the Arc and simply leave, but the ‘evidence’ here pointed to that as the most likely scenario.
“Or one feral lured them to chase it into the forest and an ambush happened.”
Going exploring for that wouldn’t address her immediate concern of finding a safe haven for the people of the Arc. Going too far away from water, food, and electricity didn’t sound like a great idea either. If the silver sphere turned out to be something her father imagined, she could always try convincing Noah to trust their safety to the security team learning how to fight the ferals. Assuming, of course, that those beings both existed and represented a threat. Being creepy, following people, and grunting a lot didn’t prove they had bad intentions. Nothing she’d seen here backed up Noah’s belief that ferals had killed the Saints.
Of course, the lack of evidence didn’t prove the contrary either.
Raven sighed and gave up on that mystery for now. She jogged back to the windmill farm and scaled Tower 14 for a high vantage point to get her bearings. Up on the platform, the whuff-whuff-whuff of spinning ten-foot fan blades on top of the whine of the generator guts spinning made the already unstable tower even more unnerving. At least the tarp remained as she’d left it, keeping water out of the machinery.
At the platform edge, she fished out the binoculars and searched for that other tower. It took her a minute to find, her memory of where it had been a little fuzzy. Upon locating it, she zoomed in, hoping to spot the mysterious figure. Alas, the tower held nothing but dangling scraps of wire from the uppermost reaches. Despite being empty, it still gave her an idea of direction. Before setting out generally ‘east’ in search of the silver ball her father found, she had to check out that tower.
She would either find evidence that she hadn’t imagined another person up there—or find the plastic bag she’d mistaken for a human.
Or something. I gotta know.
Raven scrambled down the ladder and hastily left the windmill farm behind. Dirt soon gave way to grass as tall as her waist. She drew the katana and sliced a trail into the meadow, snickering to herself at how the characters in that Shogun novel would react to someone using a katana as a gardening tool. They’d probably have me executed for it. With each step she took closer to the tower, the greater her anticipation and curiosity became. The potential danger of a long trip away from the Arc didn’t weigh much on her mind at all, only the need to discover—and the need to find a way to protect her daughter. Twenty-two years spent underground, and now she had an entire planet to see. If not for worrying about the Arc’s systems collapsing at any minute, she would have been tempted to collect her daughter and just keep walking.
Is this how Dad felt whenever he went out here?
26
Feral
It’s normal to accidentally touch a hot wire. Don’t trust a fool who keeps touching it on purpose. – Ellis Wilder.
On the other side of the tall grass, Raven entered the forest once again. Here, the underbrush didn’t require a blade to get past. She glanced down at the compass every so often to keep herself on course toward the tower, a heading a few degrees south from directly east. Dad’s notes about finding the giant silver sphere didn’t give specifics about where he’d gone more than ‘east.’ He hadn’t seen something flash from the tower, so would have had no reason to consider it significant, merely another piece of ruins from the society before.
Fortunately, it ended up being on the way, requiring little detouring. If she’d simply followed her father’s notes and ‘gone east,’ she’d have come within sight of it anyway. A structure like that tower, an open lattice of steel struts, didn’t offer any shelter, nor did it support a windmill or other useful device.
The only reason anyone would be up there is to look around.
If the 1409 part of the Arc’s name truly meant that other such shelters had been made, hers couldn’t be the only group of survivors. Perhaps she had seen a scout who’d gone exploring. They probably saw the windmills.
If they came from an Arc, they’d know what the wind turbines were. Why didn’t they investigate? She smirked. Maybe they did. Level one is empty. No one would have noticed people knocking.
Not long after the trees behind her concealed the meadow, she became aware of an unfamiliar rushing sound coming from up ahead on the right. The oddity of it allowed curiosity to distract her off course. Arms high to protect her face from leafy branches, Raven advanced toward the weird sound, which increased in volume as she neared. Soon, a vaguely familiar smell added to the atmosphere of vegetation and wet earth.
Water? She sniffed, thinking about the water filtration works on level six. Take away the metal pipes, dusty cavern, and hydroponic fluid stink, the air here smelled similar to standing beside the underground reservoir. The rushing noise made her think of a large broken pipe gushing.
The expected leak turned out to be a fast-moving flow following a channel in the ground, contained only by the dirt. She stood there aghast at the sight of water crashing over rocks. A hundred feet or so to her left, the surface calmed once the terrain leveled off.
Once the shock wore off enough for her to understand she’d found a stream, like she’d read about hundreds of times, she crouched at the bank, dipping her fingers in the cold water. It looked and
smelled clean, but she didn’t dare try drinking any. The melted Saints she’d found in the wind farm proved at least some of the stories of a highly dangerous environment had been true. With no idea how long ago conditions had improved, she didn’t trust unfiltered water.
Granted, this stream hadn’t been consumed, excreted, and filtered thousands of times. The water she’d been drinking in the Arc might actually be worse. However, she’d been consuming it her whole life and hadn’t suffered a problem yet, so she’d trust her water bottles for now.
Something rustled in the leaves behind her.
The sudden motion nearly made her fall face first into the water. She saved her balance, springing up out of her crouch while spinning to face a tall figure lurking in the branches. The mental image she’d built up of ‘Chewie’ filled in thick fur and powerful limbs over the vague hint of a humanoid shape. Heart pounding, she backed up a step. Branches crackled as the creature pushed them apart, advancing toward her into clear view.
Raven’s fear of a feral monster stalled at the sight of a clearly human man, quite lacking in clothes. Shaggy brown hair reached past his knees, his beard mostly covering his otherwise bare chest. Despite his body hair being thick, it didn’t conceal his manhood, which fortunately hung at ease. The wildness in his brown eyes had nothing to do with lust. She figured him for early thirties. If he lived in the Arc, he’d likely have been as pale as Noah, but out here, his skin had taken on a dark tan that reminded her of Baylee, the white girl who spent most of her wake standing around artificial sunlamps.
The sight of a stark naked man, filthy and hairy, left Raven staring in stunned silence.
He had no possessions other than the mud smeared all over him. No weapons, no clothing, not even a primitive necklace of wood beads. From the look on his face, he didn’t know what to make of her either.
Probably the first time he’s seen anyone wearing clothes. She swallowed the saliva that had built up in the back of her mouth. “Hello?”
He grunted, then thrust his head closer in a sudden motion that made her jump back.
Is he… sniffing me?
“Can you speak?”
He tilted his head in the manner of a curious dog and took a step closer.
Raven couldn’t help but look at his crotch. Still no sign of arousal. Whatever this guy wanted from her didn’t involve sex. That could either be comforting or more terrifying. Unsure if this man experienced the discovery of another human being for the first time in his life—or sized her up for food—she continued backing away.
“Do you understand words?” asked Raven.
“Ngh,” grunted the man.
“Guess not.” She patted herself on the chest. “Raven.”
He tilted his head the other way.
“I’m Raven.” She gestured at him, hoping he understood she wanted him to say his name.
The man lunged, grabbed her by the wrist, and shoved her hand into his face, sniffing at it.
“Gah!” She struggled to pull her arm back, but he held on, continuing to smell her. She froze, tentatively hopeful the gesture wasn’t hostile. Maybe this is how they say hello? “Umm. Hi.”
He licked her finger.
“Oh, hell no. This is going into weird territory now. Licking’s never a good sign.” Raven strained harder to get away from him. “Can I have my hand back, please?”
The man’s expression shifted from curious to pleased. He opened his mouth, angling his head as if to bite her fingers off.
“No!” Unable to pull her wrist from his grasp, she hoofed him in the balls.
He went up on tiptoe for a second, releasing her arm to grab himself in both hands. Grunting, he stumbled forward and went down on one knee.
“Not food.” She pointed at herself, made a chewing gesture, then shook her head.
“Ngh! Rrm. Bah!” The man leapt at her.
She scrambled to her right, too slow to avoid being tackled. The tools in her satchel clanked in a metallic jangle on impact with the ground. Her katana scabbard didn’t make for a comfortable landing pad, ramming into her back. He climbed on top of her, grabbing her shoulders, biting at her like a feral dog. Stink like he’d gone swimming down a sewer pipe choked the air out of her throat.
Screaming, she shoved at his chest, barely holding him off. His teeth came far too close to her face for comfort. Raven tightened her two-fisted grip on his chest hair, wrenching him to the side. He howled in pain and forgot about trying to bite her, instead clutching at her wrists. She threw him to the left, rolled the other way, and scrambled to her feet.
Snarling, the man sprang up to all fours, crawling after her.
“Shit!” Raven yanked the sword out and pointed at him. “Stay the hell away!”
He paused, gazing at the blade in confusion.
“Why am I bothering? You don’t understand a word I’m saying.” She backed up. “I’m going to leave now. You go that way.” She pointed with the sword to the left. “I’ll go this way.”
He grunted.
“Yeah, well ngh you too.”
Crying out a whoop, he leapt at her, reaching.
Raven jumped back while instinctively swatting at his hand. The katana sliced into the flesh at the base of his thumb, sending a spritz of blood into the air. He gave off a horrible scream, clutched his wounded hand against his beard-covered chest, and loped off into the forest, howling.
She turned in place to watch him flee, shaking from adrenaline. No one had ever been violent with her before. Some of the other kids when she’d been school-aged had gotten into fights with each other. Raven had seen fights, but never participated. She had no patience for drama and would rather be alone reading, or hanging with Sienna.
Kids trying to punch each other’s lights out is kinda different from a dude trying to eat me, literally. She pulled the sword closer, examining the trace of blood near the tip. Despite being attacked, watching a naked man run off screaming in pain from such a small injury almost made her feel like she picked on a child. Defending herself with a sword against an unarmed man had only one way to end: in blood.
He’s lucky I didn’t cut his hand completely off like that samurai in the book. She wiped the sword off on the grass and eased it back into the scabbard. Maybe if I actually knew how to use this thing I could’ve smacked his arm aside without hurting him. Oh well. At least he learned something. Trying to grab me equals pain. He’s either going to leave me alone or come back with friends.
“Time to go.”
She fast-walked away from the stream, using the compass to get back on course.
A few minutes after the sound of the stream faded into obscurity, snaps and rustling in the forest approached from behind. Expecting the man to have come back with a big stick or pipe, Raven yanked the katana out and spun. The instant she spotted a moving branch, she charged, raising the sword over her head in both hands.
Shouting a war cry, she burst into the foliage toward the motion—and stopped short, staring in confusion at a long-haired woman wearing a poncho and filter mask. It took her a second to recognize Sienna with most of her face covered.
Her ‘sister’ screamed, crossing her arms in front of her.
“Oh, shit…” Raven lowered the blade. “Sorry!”
Sienna took a step back, hand to her chest. “Dammit, girl. What’s got into you?”
“Some crazy wild man tried to bite me.” She put the sword away. “What the heck are you doing out here?”
“You know what you’ve been saying about the air?” Sienna fanned herself. “I started feeling it. Tins and Arianna passed out in class. Even Cheyenne got loopy.”
“So… you chased after me to tell me I’m right?”
“Not exactly…”
The children emerged from the forest, stepping around the trees they’d been hiding behind. Except for Tinsley, the others were all barefoot in ponchos and filter masks. The six-year-old’s filter mask hung down over her chest. Since her job required standing or sitting in
a classroom rather than crawling around maintenance tunnels, Sienna didn’t have hard shoes, only tread socks, which hung partially out of the thigh pocket on her pants.
Tinsley ran over and hugged Raven.
She looked around at the kids, then at Sienna. “You’re all out here? What the hell?”
27
Expedition Plus Six
Not everything that looks like a dumb idea turns out bad, and sometimes, it’s the smart ideas that get us in the most trouble. – Ellis Wilder.
The other children approached, clustering around Sienna.
Four wide-eyed hopeful faces—covered by filter masks—stared up at Raven. Josh wore a backpack big enough for Tinsley to crawl inside, most likely containing food and water.
“Thanks for the obvious trail you cut across the meadow,” said Sienna. “Tins found the notebook you left out. Figured you’d go east.”
“That still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here… with all the kids.” Raven squeezed Tinsley close.
Sienna fussed at Ariana’s hair. “They were all wheezing and dizzy. None of them could focus on school. I got light-headed, too. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what you’ve been saying. Got a little panicky that the canaries would start dropping.”
“Sorry, Mommy.”
Raven peered down at Tinsley. “What did you do?”
The girl ground the tip of her plastic sandal into the dirt while flashing a cheesy smile. “Sienna said we were gonna get sick and had to go outside. So I showed her the secret.”
Shocked, Raven gasped and crouched to eye level with her daughter. “You remembered the way in the tunnels?”
“Uh huh.” Tinsley nodded. “I couldn’t move the metal. Sienna had to do that.”
She’d only taken her into the maintenance passage to the exit corridor twice. That her kid had remembered the route through that maze impressed as well as worried her. This kid is smarter than she looks. That’s going to get her in trouble. The irony of her thinking that after defying the rules to sneak outside made her chuckle. Wondering if her father ever thought the same about her brought a sad sigh.
The Girl Who Found the Sun Page 26
