Daugher of Ash

by Matthew S. Cox

  “I could put my hands on you if you want,” she purred, crawling toward him.

  He flattened into the wall and slid down. She hovered over him, swiping her tongue across her lip.

  “Knock it off, you two. No fraternization on company time.” Bernie’s voice crackled from a tiny speaker in the center of the rear wall.

  She sat back on her heels, tucking her hair over her ear. “Relax. Just repaying a tease with a tease. We’re not going to do anything.” A sigh slipped from her nostrils. We can’t.

  Esteban sat up and closed his eyes, breathing slow and deliberate.

  “Why are you thinking about an old woman in her underwear?” asked Kate. “Oh, wait… never mind. I think I understand.”

  He laughed.

  “I might not always be like this,” she whispered, stretching out on her side with an arm between her head and the metal floor. “There’s a doctor in the west who thinks he can turn it off.”

  Esteban settled against the wall, shifting and squirming. “I hate these damn vests.”

  With the sun down, her camouflage outfit took on a ghostly luminescence. She picked at the heat-resistant band, dreading the sound of Bernie’s voice demanding she get rid of whatever is making the light. If I stay down, nothing should see me.

  “I don’t think many people would enjoy wearing a bomb.”

  “Thanks for reminding me of that. Damn thing is rigid, and locked on. Not comfortable. Try to get some sleep if you can.”

  “Yeah…” Kate sighed. “I’ll try.”

  She awoke to the sound of her teeth chattering some time later. It took a few minutes for her curse to kick in and chase away the cold of nighttime. Esteban snored. Whispering voices above and behind debated which of the two men on watch stood a better chance of getting her in bed. Fortunately, they sounded intent on trying to talk her into it rather than force the issue. Kate shot a dirty look at the wall and tried to go back to sleep.

  A hand squeezing Kate’s shoulder woke her. Esteban leaned over her, a look of confusion on his face. Before she could think, she leapt up and rushed a clumsy kiss. He jumped back, rubbing the side of his neck where her arm had made contact.

  “Ouch.” He looked at his hand, finding no blood. “That wasn’t as bad as you made it sound.”

  Crimson-faced, she averted her gaze to the distant sunrise. “It takes a minute to get going after I’ve been asleep. I’m sorry; I don’t know why I did that.”

  “I’m used to it.” He turned to catch another pair of ration packs thrown at the coffin. “Ladies can’t resist the Esteban.” He laid a thick Spanish accent over the name. “Steve, not so much. Not bad for a first kiss.”

  She attempted to become part of the wall.

  Wilma goose-stepped to the end of the trailer, rendered a Nazi salute with a ration pack, and dropped them. He spun on his heel and ran off giggling like a twelve-year-old girl.

  “Palak paneer or tuna mushroom casserole?” He held the pouches up. “Which one do you want?”

  “Uhm. What the hell is that?”

  “Indian. If you can’t taste what you eat, you might as well take the tuna.”

  Kate moved closer. “Okay. Actually I meant that.” She pointed over her shoulder at the wall. “What’s his damage?”

  Esteban laughed. “The head-doc at the prison can’t even tell. He’s probably just doing it on purpose. It’s too far over the top. You’re the psychic, why don’t you take a look?”

  “Uhm. No thanks. Some doors are better left closed.”

  After eating, Bernie gave them ten minutes to use nearby bushes to relieve themselves. Much to Kate’s surprise, the men were respectful and turned their backs to her. Once everyone had returned to their cubbies, the truck got underway, giving her a great view of a dust cloud in their wake.

  “I wasn’t expecting them to be so polite.”

  Esteban laughed. “Everything that happens here is on camera. Except for Wilma, every one of us is hoping for early release. Those corrections shitbags would dock us three months for sneaking a peek.”

  “Oh, damn. I almost thought they were decent human beings.”

  “Some things are worth three months.” He winked. “Perhaps they are.”

  Several hours passed in relative silence. A few burned-out buggies on the side of the road contained blackened skeletons draped over hollow tube frames. Off to the south, a walled-in settlement stood sentinel amid a sea of grass. The road leading to it passed by soon after, decorated with more destroyed vehicles.

  “Don’t feel sorry for them,” said Esteban. “They’re pirates and raiders. They’ll kill you without hesitation to steal whatever we’re carrying. Even if it’s a truckload of toilets.”

  She laughed. “Why?”

  “The only law out here is inside those settlements.” He gestured at it. Indistinct figures moved along the wall, rifles obvious. “Scattered Lands isn’t much different from the Badlands to be honest, ‘cept there’s no runaway cyborgs or strange mutated things. Settlements are a lot bigger too, but they’re all independent.”

  Kate looked at her hands. Maybe I should stay out there. I think I qualify as a ‘strange mutated thing.’

  “What are you thinking? You did sign on as a guard… You can get in legal trouble if you don’t help repel an attack.”

  “Nothing… That’s not a problem. I’ve killed before.”

  “Really? You don’t look like a killer. Couldn’t have been too long ago if you’re still making that face at the idea of it.”

  She looked up in a slow, deliberate gesture, staring into his eyes. “I was seven years old the first time I killed a man. I don’t regret it. They were going to kill me.”

  “Umm.” He scratched his head. “I have nothing to say in response that won’t sound stupid or patronizing.”

  “It’s okay. Like I said, killing doesn’t bother me.” She leaned on the railing, squinting into the wind at the road ahead. “I’m no Wilma, though. I don’t get off on it… it’s just something I have to do sometimes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have a girl?” Why am I bothering?

  “Already told you, Gina ran off to some colony to make babies. No joke. Some corporation was paying big for wanna-be mothers. She wanted a big family like in the old days, and she wasn’t gonna get that on Earth. Free ride, too. Helps she’s got a degree in finance.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now what’s wrong?”

  She stretched up on tiptoe for a moment and leaned against the inner wall with one foot braced against the opposite rim. “I’m angry. I never thought I’d meet someone who didn’t freak out about what I am. Talking to you reminds me how much I hate my life. I hope what you’re thinking about me isn’t all based on pity.”

  He coughed.

  “Yeah, I am reading your mind.” She glanced at a herd of deer bounding through the grass to flee the rumbling behemoth. “I suppose that’s rude of me, but I’m not going deep. Only what’s on the tip of your brain.”

  “You’re definitely not a pity case, at least by looks. No, I’m not trying to flatter my way into your pants.”

  “Don’t even say it. You’re trying to set up for a ‘you’re not wearing any’ joke.”

  He held his hands up. “Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood. If you spend your whole life angry at the world and the man upstairs, you’ll never be happy.”

  “Man upstairs?”

  “God,” said Esteban. “He made you that way for a reason.”

  Kate lowered her foot from the railing, unconsciously covering up again. “I don’t know much about religion, but it wasn’t anything divine. I was made by a bunch of morons in white coats.”

  “Mmm. Oh, well… I had to try. My grandmother always said that whenever I got upset. Thinks there’s some divine intelligence guiding humankind, and whenever something bad happens, she said it was part of his plan.”

  “Think she’s right? Or, do you think she’s ignoring reality?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t think about it at all.” He went to pat her on the shoulder, but reconsidered. “If it makes her feel better, I’m not gonna pop that bubble.”

  Kate glanced up at puffy, white clouds. “I’m not gonna bother. I got too much blood on my hands.”

  “I think you’re about to get a little more on them.” He hauled one of the rifles out of the holder, shouting over his shoulder. “Incoming!”

  A cluster of small buggies burst from the billowing mass of dust, flanking an old pickup truck with slabs of armor welded to the body. Two compact cars took the lead, both with the roof cut away and replaced with machine guns on posts.

  “Bernie, arm the fucking rifles!” shouted Esteban.

  “The unidentified vehicles haven’t closed to within policy threat range,” said the tinny voice.

  “Look at them,” shouted Kate. “They’re not coming to ask for directions.”

  Esteban’s rifle chirped and buzzed as he tried to shoot.

  The buggies accelerated and spread out, filling all six lanes of highway. A goggled, bald head peered up over the roll bar in the pickup, a manic grin spread over his face. He looked at the convoy truck, down at something in his hand, and back up. Behind him, a camouflage-painted metal box, far more modern than the vehicle carrying it, extended upward and pivoted.

  “They have some kind of missile launcher,” shouted Esteban.

  “Come on, you idiot!” roared one of the other cons.

  “Wilma hears the call,” said Wilma. “I am coming, Father.” He looked skyward.

  “Unidentified vehicles have not crossed into threat range,” said Bernie, triggering a cascade of profanity from everyone but Wilma, who smiled. “We cannot assume everyone out here is hostile.”

  “Yeah, maybe they’re on the way to the mall,” said an unidentified con.

  She looked back and forth between the speaker and the road. “Those buggies have old engines. I can feel the fire.”

  “If he doesn’t arm these rifles, we’re in deep shit,” said Esteban.

  The truck picked up speed, edging up to forty miles per hour. The pursuers kept pace. Goggles reached up and slapped the roof twice, causing the driver to veer left and step on the accelerator.

  Kate focused on a buggy right in front of the pickup. Her concentration snuffed the engine, and the little cart decelerated as hard as if he’d stomped the brakes. The pickup rear-ended it, knocking the small aluminum frame sideways. Wheels caught the road and sent it rolling like a log. Screaming, the driver spilled out of his seat as the metal cage jammed under the pickup’s bumper in a shower of sparks.

  A long red smear emerged along the road.

  Esteban’s rifle continued to buzz error tones. Azure flames coalesced into a sphere above her right hand, which she hurled at the closest buggy. The driver swerved out of the way, gaping at her wide-eyed.

  “What are you doing?” barked Bernie. “They’re still beyond minimum engagement dist―”

  “Fuck your engagement distance,” yelled Kate, throwing another fireball. “You ever hear of Darwin? You’re about to prove him right.”

  Her attack scored, immolating the exposed driver. Molten skin separated from his face, flapping in the breeze on either side of his skull. He shrieked loud enough to be heard over the roar of engines and veered off the road. Ancient concrete debris clanked and scattered as the buggy tumbled into a ditch and exploded. Her psionic reach pulled at the expanding cloud of ethanol fire in an effort to focus it at another car, but the convoy passed before she could get the conflagration to the highway.

  Bernie lost his mind, screaming at her about protocol and liability, most of which degenerated into unintelligible sounds.

  The pickup skidded to a halt, backed up, and drove around the wreckage. Goggles, covered in black soot, lifted his eye protection, exposing a negative-raccoon effect. He thrust his hand down, out of sight, and two circular holes opened on the front of the pod.

  “Bernie, they have missiles,” said Esteban, sounding far too calm for the situation.

  “There’s no law out here!” shrieked Bernie. “We can’t kill them for having weapons.”

  Kate threw two fireballs at the pickup, doing little other than darkening the paint. “You are an idiot, Bernie. You’re going to get us all killed!”

  “I have to follow policy!”

  “I can’t burn metal,” she rasped at Esteban.

  From the farthest lane, what would have been oncoming traffic centuries ago, the pickup maintained distance as the missile pod rotated toward them.

  Esteban kicked the speaker. “They’re going to fire it at us, Bernie! Guns. Now! They’re staying out of range on purpose. They’re exploiting your fucked policy.”

  “I can’t see the damn missile,” said Kate.

  “What’s that got to―”

  A line of smoke appeared in an instant, connecting the launcher to the ten-foot tall left drive wheel on the cab. The sense of combustion appeared and ended in less than a second, too fast for Kate to interfere with. With a great boom, the massive vehicle jerked to the right as if kicked by a giant. Sparks and debris flew out from the electro-motor core, through a hole she could’ve climbed into. Two-foot-thick rubber treading snagged on the road as the motor failed and stopped on that side, dragging the truck into a severe and unexpected swerve to the left.

  Bernie screamed over the speakers and overcorrected. The swaying truck flung her to the ground inside the coffin as the sound of automatic weapons fire erupted from everywhere. From the floor, she looked up at Esteban, struggling to keep from getting thrown out of their kill box. The arming light went green and he held the trigger down. Tiny flakes of metal foil snowed out from the bottom of the rifle. A fusillade of metal clanks preceded a softer bang and the crunch of great metal hunks tumbling over grass. Clicks and clanks hit the metal wall behind Kate’s head, bullets failing to penetrate the truck.

  “Pickup’s down.” Esteban ducked a spray of bullets; one caught him on the shoulder, stalling in the vest with enough force to knock him backward. “Son of a bitch that’s going to bruise.” He blinked. “I guess this really is armor.”

  Kate scrambled to get up. He used the rifle to push her down.

  “Don’t. They’re firing wild.”

  Wilma let out a long, “Yaaaa-hooo,” and opened fire.

  The driver’s effort to fight the dead wheel dragging them to the left caused the truck to thrash side to side like an angry serpent for a few seconds before the wheels on that side lost contact with the ground. Bernie’s whimpering became a scream as the eighty-ton transport rolled to the right. Esteban floated up into Kate, and howled as her skin burned holes in his prison jumpsuit for the few seconds they remained in contact.

  Screams from the two men in the gunnery pods cut out as the truck slammed down on its side. Their metal enclosures crushed like empty synthbeer canisters.

  The coffin filled with a deafening whump and the grinding scrape of metal on paving; gravity shifted and she fell on top of him again. He shrieked, but she pushed away from him, bracing hand and foot against the metal, standing with her back to a wall that used to be the floor. Sparks streamed away from the new floor as the truck continued sliding. Esteban flew out, clinging to the tethered rifle. He kept his legs raised, trying to balance like a turtle on its back so the vest took all the abuse from the road. His orange jumpsuit darkened to red in a spray of gore coming from under the trailer that used to be two men.

  A prisoner who had been in the eagle’s nest bounced by on the road, snagging Esteban’s leg with a wild, desperate grab. He held on for a second before slipping loose, vanishing under one of the compact cars racing closer. A man leaned from the passenger window with a submachine gun, spraying at Esteban.

  Bullets clicked off the ground, clattering into the coffin. She screamed and ducked, terrified of catching a bullet she didn’t see coming. Esteban swiveled, kicking at the road in short bursts to avoid shredding his legs as he aimed and fired. Smoke bi
llowed from the little car’s tires as it braked, but their evasion came too slow. A scattering of holes decorated the little car’s hood as the truck shuddered to a gradual halt. Esteban kept firing at the compact, until the driver slumped over dead.

  His moment of relief lasted only seconds before he scurried in a backward crabwalk. The now-driverless car continued to roll. Kate cringed back, flattening against the side as he dove in next to her. They both shouted “Shit!” as the car crashed into the truck, trapping them. The mangled metal bumper halted inches from her leg.

  “They had to call this a coffin, didn’t they,” she whispered, gagging on smoke laced with the stink of burning oil.

  “Well.” He gasped, covered in sweat and bleeding from road rash and burns. “I survived a truck roll and now I’m trapped in a confined space with a beautiful naked woman while being shot at. I don’t think life will ever top this moment.”

  Kate’s gaze fell, checking to make sure her holo-projector hadn’t broken. “Shit, you scared me.”

  Buggies buzzed like wasps, circling the stricken semi, trading gunfire with the three remaining convict-guards.

  “You’re worried about your fake clothing right now? Figured you’d be used to it.”

  She winged a fireball through a gap in the wreckage, setting off a fuel explosion in a passing buggy. “You know how they always say you want what you can’t have?”

  A wave of burning ethanol lurched forward over the driver. The shrieking raider jumped out of the vehicle without slowing down, rolling into the scrub at the side of the road, motionless and burning.

  “Yeah.” He stuck the rifle around the left wall, shooting. “Is this car going to explode?”

  “No. I won’t let it.” She missed the next buggy. “Being naked never bothered me until I went to the city and people started looking at me like that. Alone in the wilds, I didn’t know any better. I never felt cold. Now I can’t stop feeling embarrassed. It’s more about what people think than being seen.”

  Esteban held down the trigger, swinging his aim to the right, reducing the second compact car to a bullet-riddled husk. Kate lobbed a fireball into the window, igniting the interior as it careened off the road. Ballistic propellant saturated the coffin with an acrid chemical vapor.