by Dan Wells
Marcus saw a movement from the corner of his eye—just the shake of a leaf, but he’d learned from experience not to take anything for granted. He watched the leaf, and the foliage around it, with a keen intensity, his mind racing with any number of horrifying possibilities: It might be one of Delarosa’s guerrillas, or it might be a Partial soldier; maybe a whole squad of Partial soldiers, slowly surrounding them, getting ready to attack. Maybe it was a Partial sniper, buried in leaves and sticks and camouflage, lining up the perfect shot to drill Marcus right through the eye.
This is when the little bird hops into view and I chuckle derisively at my own paranoia, thought Marcus. Nothing moved. Come on, little birdie. You can do it. He stared at the foliage for two minutes, for five minutes, for ten, but no bird appeared, and no soldiers. Probably just as well, he thought. If I chuckled at my paranoia, I’d probably give myself away and get sniped. Thanks for throwing me off my guard, hypothetical bird.
Commander Woolf crept up beside him, settling into position where they could whisper the latest report.
“Anything?” asked Woolf.
“Just cursing imaginary animals.”
“Crazy or bored?”
“Well,” whispered Marcus, “it’s so hard to pick just one.”
“Vinci hasn’t linked any other Partials,” said Woolf, “so we’re pretty sure there are no patrols in the area. I don’t know if that makes us more or less likely to find Delarosa, but there it is.”
“It makes us a lot less likely to be killed by Partials,” said Marcus, “so I’ll take what I can get.”
Delarosa’s White Rhinos, as she called them, had been evading the Partials for months, thanks to a combination of keeping her groups small, sticking to familiar terrain, and executing a clever system of decoys and distractions—all classic tactics of a defensive guerrilla force, and all devilishly effective. Marcus and his companions had had no more luck than the Partials in finding the elusive army, but they had a few tricks the Partials didn’t. Now and then they’d come across other human refugees, just lone fugitives, lying low from the occupation, who assured them that the White Rhinos were heading north, in a slow, secret march toward the shore. Some of the refugees had been rescued by the Rhinos, others had been fed or given other supplies, but all told the same tale. The human resistance had a plan, and they were coming this way. All Marcus’s group had to do was wait for them.
But they’d been waiting for days, and they were running out of supplies.
“You’re due for sleep soon,” said Woolf. “Go early and try to get some rest; I’ll take over your watch.”
“How much food do we have left?” asked Marcus.
“A day’s worth,” said Woolf. “Maybe more. I don’t think Vinci is eating a full share.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have to,” whispered Marcus. “For all we know he’s . . . photosynthetic or something. Or he’s been eating these.” Marcus picked at the vines growing across the interior wall. He pulled too hard, the leaf failed to break away like he expected, and the whole section of tendrils shook—inside and out. Marcus looked up in shock at the unexpectedly massive display. “Crap.”
A flurry of bullets slammed into the brick wall, punching through and sending a shower of broken clay shards spraying wildly through the room. Marcus threw himself to the floor, Woolf diving down beside him, and they covered their heads as they crawled for the hallway. The gunfire was quieter than usual—not silent, but more like a nail gun than the harsh gunshot explosions Marcus was used to. They reached the hallway, taking cover behind the extra layer of wall, just as the hail of bullets ceased.
“Can they see us?” asked Marcus.
“Let’s find out,” said Woolf, and stuck his hand back into the open doorway. Nothing shot it. “Probably not.”
“Or they don’t want to bother with just your hand,” said Marcus.
“If they could see us that clearly, they’d have hit us,” said Woolf. “More likely they were passing close by, saw the sudden movement, and thought it was an ambush.”
“All the shots I heard were silenced,” said Marcus. “That means Galen didn’t shoot back.”
Woolf shook his head. “They wouldn’t have hit him, they were shooting at your movement.”
“Good yet embarrassing news,” said Marcus, nodding. “But then why didn’t he shoot? From where he’s stationed he should have had a good angle on the source of that attack.”
Woolf rose to a crouch, checking his own weapon as he prepared to run. “In that case, this is the best news we’ve had all month. Who would Galen see but not shoot at?”
Marcus grinned. “You think?”
“Let’s go find out.”
They scurried down the hall to the stairs, and from there to the main floor, where Galen was crouched in another concealed gun nest. “Humans,” Galen whispered.
“How can you tell?”
“Too many body types,” said Galen. “Partials are all young men, like Vinci; this group has women, one of them pretty old.”
“Smart,” said Woolf. “You haven’t hailed them?”
“Waiting for you.”
Woolf nodded and moved away from Marcus’s window to a separate window—partly for the different angle, but Marcus realized nervously that it was also a safety precaution. If the enemy fired again when Woolf hailed them, he was the only one they’d hit. Marcus admired the wisdom of the move, but the need for it twisted a dull knot in his stomach.
“Rhinos!” Woolf shouted. He wasn’t looking out the window, but lying below it, using a small credenza as an extra layer of makeshift armor. All three of them held their breath, waiting for the reply—would it be words, or bullets?
“Stay quiet!” It was a woman’s voice, and Marcus almost thought he recognized it, but it wasn’t Delarosa. Too young, he thought.
It was the only response. Marcus peered through the gaps in the kudzu, but saw nothing. Galen shook his head. “They’ve disappeared. Now that they know we’re here, it’s too easy to hide from us.”
“You heard from Vinci?” Marcus whispered. Even if this was Morgan’s group, they would want to keep Vinci’s true nature a secret at first. A Partial ally was a valuable asset, but they needed to explain it properly first.
Galen shook his head. “Still upstairs, I think. Staying quiet.”
“Hey,” said Marcus, “it’s not my fault I gave us away.”
Galen looked at him, raising his eyebrow. “You gave us away?”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “It’s also not my fault that I told you that.”
“I can’t believe you gave us away.”
“Not on purpose,” said Marcus. “Next time you don’t know about something stupid I did, let me know you don’t know before I say it out loud.”
“How can I—”
There was a sudden thump from the back room of the house, and a strangled shout that got cut off just before it became loud enough for the sound to carry outside. Marcus spun to face the sagging kitchen door, his rifle up and ready, but stopped in surprise when he heard Vinci’s soft voice.
“It’s just me.”
Marcus furrowed his brow, confused. “What on earth?”
“They sent flankers through the back of the house,” said Vinci. “I don’t know if they’re Delarosa’s people, but they’re definitely human.”
“So you attacked them?” asked Woolf.
“Just disarmed them,” said Vinci. “Don’t shoot, I’m opening the door now.” He pushed open the kitchen door and led two cloaked figures into the front room. Marcus stared at them in surprise, then jumped up eagerly as he recognized the girl in front.
“Yoon?”
The cloaked girl looked at him, a slow smile spreading across her face as she realized who he was. “Marcus?” The smile disappeared almost immediately, and she frowned at him sternly. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“We’re trying to find Delarosa.”
“By scaring the hell out of us,” asked
Yoon, “and then shouting loud enough to attract every Partial in the forest?”
“Sorry,” said Marcus. “None of that was really how we intended this to go.”
“I recognize you,” said Woolf, standing up. “You’re one of the Grid soldiers who went with Kira and captured the Partial named Samm. I remember you from the disciplinary hearing.”
“I was reassigned to an outpost on the North Shore,” said Yoon. “When the Partials invaded we fled south, and the unit broke apart, and eventually I ran across the Rhinos.” She pointed to her companion, a young man who looked sixteen years old at the most; Marcus realized with a start that this made him one of the youngest humans left in the world. “This is McArthur.”
Marcus shook the boy’s hand. “You have a first name?”
“No, sir,” he said, and Marcus nodded. It had become common for some of the youngest humans to drop their first name altogether, preferring their surname because it linked them to the past. A three-year-old kid who lost everything he ever loved usually remembered that he had parents, but wasn’t likely to remember much of anything about them. Identifying himself by his surname told people like McArthur that he came from somewhere, and helped him feel connected. Sometimes that was more important than an individual identity.
“Well then,” said Marcus. “Yoon, McArthur, say hello to Galen, Vinci, and Commander Asher Woolf. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“We’re not easy to find,” said Yoon. “Though there’s probably a better way to say hello than just shaking the hell out of the kudzu on the side of the house. We thought it was an ambush.”
“That was an accident,” said Marcus, giving a small, embarrassed nod. “It did work, though, so there’s that.”
McArthur frowned. “How are you still alive? We thought you all died months ago.”
Woolf clapped the young man on the shoulder. “I like this kid. But we’ve made enough noise here to attract every Partial scout in the forest, so what do you say we get back to your group and continue this conversation where it’s safe?”
Yoon looked at Vinci. “Can we have our weapons back?”
Vinci handed them over freely—two sturdy rifles and a wide, curved blade. “Just making sure we didn’t have any more accidental ambushes.”
Yoon took a rifle and the knife, sliding the latter into a slim leather scabbard on her back. She stepped to the window, whistled a short birdcall, and waited silently for an answer. Marcus was expecting another whistle but was surprised to hear a low, rumbling growl. Yoon opened the door and a massive black cat peered in, yawned, and stalked away into the trees.
“That’s a pet?” asked Marcus. Small cats, the kind the old world kept as pets, had adapted perfectly to the post-Break world and were practically ubiquitous across the island, but Marcus had never seen one so large. “It looks like a panther.”
Yoon grinned wickedly. “That’s because it’s a panther.”
“You keep panthers?” Vinci’s voice was calm and even, though Marcus had come to know his moods well enough to view this as surprise.
“Not typically, no,” said Marcus. “Yoon is . . . special.”
“We found wild ones in Brooklyn,” said Yoon. “I think they escaped from a zoo. On patrol last year I found this one as a baby, and I’ve been raising him. He’s pretty tame.”
“Until Yoon tells him to rip somebody’s head off,” said McArthur. “Then everybody has nightmares for a few days.”
A man in a dark-green cloak stepped up to the doorway, a rifle in his hands and a pair of night-vision goggles pushed up across his forehead. “You sounded the all clear. What’s going on in here?”
“Commander Asher Woolf,” said Woolf, holding out his hand to shake. “We’re looking for Delarosa.”
The soldier looked over the group quickly, sizing them up. “You and you I recognize from the Grid,” he said, pointing at Woolf and Galen; then he looked at Marcus. “You look like Marcus Valencio.”
“I am,” said Marcus. He’d become a minor celebrity after helping Kira bring back the cure.
The soldier frowned at Vinci, though, and Marcus felt a pang of nervousness. Did they know what Vinci was? Did they suspect?
“You I don’t know,” said the soldier.
“I vouch for him,” said Woolf. “Now we need to get out of here.”
The man thought a moment longer, and finally nodded. “Let’s go.” Marcus and his companions grabbed their packs—little more than bedrolls at this point, with their food and ammo almost completely gone—and followed the White Rhinos into the trees. Though they called it a forest, it was really just an overgrown subdivision; derelict houses and weathered fences crumbling from thirteen years of disuse, with the neighborhood’s old trees and an explosion of new young ones growing up in the abandoned yards. Woolf had chosen their house because it sat on a small rise, giving a slightly better view of the path they’d expected Delarosa to take; that the White Rhinos had come right past them instead of sticking to the more obvious route was, Marcus thought in hindsight, a big part of why the group had been so hard to find. They knew the Partial army was looking for them, and they knew how not to be seen.
The rest of the group was farther out in the trees, arranged in attack formation around Marcus’s hiding place, safely concealed in cover. Delarosa herself was near the center of the group, near a low wagon. Marcus frowned at this, wondering what could possibly be so important—and so heavy—that they would risk the ruts and tire tracks of a wagon in order to haul it around. He didn’t get a chance to ask, for Delarosa recognized Woolf and nodded brusquely, cutting off all conversation with a single question.
“The Senate sent you?”
“We haven’t heard from them,” said Woolf. “We assume they’ve been taken.”
“We’ll talk later,” said Delarosa, tossing each of them a dark cloak mottled with green and brown. “Wear these, and stay as quiet as you can. If you attract any Partials, we’ll leave you to them.”
“Understood,” said Woolf.
Marcus threw the cloak over his shoulders, covering his pack and weapon and everything, and pulled the hood up over his head. The White Rhinos moved almost silently through the trees, Yoon’s black panther ranging ahead like a malevolent shadow. Marcus did his best to stay as quiet as they did, but found himself constantly stepping on twigs or clattering chunks of broken concrete into one another. Delarosa glanced at him angrily on more than one occasion, but she seemed to glare at Woolf and Galen just as often. Vinci was far more stealthy, though still outclassed by Yoon and some of the more experienced guerrillas. It made Marcus wonder again about the different abilities of the various Partial models—Vinci was infantry, likely not built for infiltration. Heron, who had once terrified Marcus by appearing ghostlike from the shadows, definitely was.
While they walked, Marcus studied the White Rhinos. Most of them were in Partial uniforms—old, weathered uniforms, but still recognizably Partial. Claimed from fallen enemies? he wondered. He also noticed that all of them carried a gas mask, hung from a belt or dangling from their backpacks. That seemed odd, as the Partials didn’t seem to be using any chemical weapons, but when he looked again at the Partial uniforms he smiled, realizing with a burst of excitement exactly what was going on. At the first rest stop he approached Yoon about it.
“You’re disguising yourselves as Partials,” he said, keeping his voice at a barely audible whisper. “The gas masks block the link, so you put them on and wear those uniforms and the Partials can’t tell from a distance that you’re human.”
Yoon smirked. “Pretty clever, don’t you think?”
Marcus whistled softly. “It’s amazing. Everyone’s wondering how you’ve managed to hide for so long, but with a disguise like that you could walk right up to them.”
“Only the ones who look like Partials,” said Yoon. “McArthur’s too young, Delarosa’s too old, but I can pass pretty easily—they think I’m a tank driver, for some reason.”
“Samm said the drivers and pilots are all petite girls,” said Marcus, marveling at the deception. “Apparently they saved the government a lot of money, building smaller tanks and jets. So you’ve actually talked to them? And they didn’t suspect anything?”
“It was hard at first,” said Yoon, “because they usually only wore the gas masks to fight each other—against humans there’s no need for them. We planted the story that the humans were using some kind of biological weapon, and it seems to have caught on.” She laughed. “We’ve even heard rumors of Partials dying from it in East Meadow, so it seems the legend has taken on a life of its own.”
“That’s hilarious,” said Marcus. “Do you use the disguises just for emergencies, like if a group of Partials finds you in the woods, or do you actually seek them out for information and stuff?” Yoon tried to answer, but Delarosa whistled a birdcall, and the group was back on the move.
They walked for hours, almost until dark, and stopped for the night in a thick outdoor grove. This surprised Marcus, because he’d always learned to camp in the abandoned buildings that covered the island—they gave you shelter, they kept you hidden, and they were more defensible if you ever got attacked. Even the Partials used them. Once again, though, the White Rhinos seemed determined to defy expectations, and Marcus decided that they were probably avoiding the houses precisely because that was where everybody expected them to be. Delarosa chose a spot near a babbling stream, to mask any errant sounds with the white noise of the water, and kept everyone low to the ground to reduce the camp’s profile. Guards stayed along the outer perimeter, while the mysterious wagon was brought in near the center of camp.
“Help me dig a fire hole,” said Yoon.
Marcus’s eyes went wide. “You’re lighting a fire?”
“One of the benefits of staying outside,” said Yoon. She held up a pair of rabbits. “How else are we going to cook these?”
“But that’s the whole problem,” said Marcus. “We’re outside. Anyone in the area can see it.”
Yoon rolled her eyes. “Watch and learn, city boy. Hold these.” She thrust the rabbits into his hands, pulled a small shovel from her pack, and surveyed the ground around the camp. “That’s the best spot for it,” she said, pointing at the slight depression where Delarosa had left the wagon, “but we can find another.”
