Shattered Lands

by ALICE HENDERSON

  A wind kicked up, mercifully covering their tracks in the dirt.

  “Do you think they saw us?” Gordon asked. “Is that why they changed direction?” She heard his dry swallow.

  “I don’t think so,” she told him, her heart hammering.

  Scanning the procession, she spotted a vehicle with a large, flat top. Three Death Riders stood atop it, strapped beside a man tied to a stake. A fenced-off area had also been built on top, with flames licking along its length. H124 didn’t want to see, but something compelled her to keep staring. As they watched, a woman took a long knife and sliced off the man’s calf. His mouth opened in a scream, drowned out by the engines. She stuck the muscle over the fire, searing it, then threw it to her comrades, who devoured it eagerly. H124 felt sick as she saw the exposed bones on the man’s arms, where they’d already carved away flesh.

  “Oh, god,” Gordon breathed.

  Now the Death Riders thundered close, so much so that H124 could feel tremors in the ground. Small pebbles and soil fragments sifted down through the entrance of the mine. She backed away, out of sight, the others doing the same.

  The rabble was going to drive right over the hyperloop doors, coming dangerously close to their location.

  H124 retreated farther into the mine, backing up until she bumped into Raven. He brought his hands up and clutched her shoulders. Gordon stood a few inches away. She could hear his quick and shallow wheezes.

  The dull thunder soon became a clamorous roar as the combustible engines drew near. They passed over the hidden hyperloop doors, giving them no notice. H124’s breath stuck in her throat as the first Death Rider reached the wash by the mine, his car screaming down the embankment and up the other side.

  Then dozens more poured into the arroyo, like beetles swarming over a carcass, their engines deafening and sharp. They streamed up the far side of the embankment, passing within a hundred feet of the mine entrance.

  Raven’s hands tightened on her shoulder and she pressed back into him. Gordon eased back, moving alongside her. She gripped his arm.

  The Death Riders became a steady stream of cars and trucks, each mounted with decaying bodies, spitted and spiked, with tattered streamers tied to their antennas. The booming noise began to shift as the bulk of the Death Riders drove off to the north. Then came the last few vehicles, dragging the mangled corpses.

  The dust cloud drifted into the mine, the clamor faded to a dull roar, and the vibration died. They were gone.

  H124 realized she was holding her breath. Gordon gripped her hand, and Raven peered out of the entrance. “I think we’re clear.”

  Gordon exhaled and slumped against the jeep.

  H124 clapped his shoulder. “That’s two times we’ve been lucky with them.”

  Raven turned in the mine doorway. “That was a little too close.”

  Gordon looked up at him. “Let’s just hope they haven’t found my little jet and stripped it to pieces, or this’ll be a real short trip.”

  They waited another half hour to be sure their enemy was well out of sight, and resumed their trek.

  * * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, they pulled up outside an abandoned airstrip. It looked like it hadn’t been used in more than a century. All the buildings had collapsed, and the methane refueling pump had exploded sometime in the past. The south end of the compound had been torched recently. Soot and dirt covered the fallen buildings.

  “Your plane is here?” Raven asked, downcast. “I don’t think it could have survived.”

  As Raven stopped in front of the ruined methane pump, Gordon climbed out and walked along the central airstrip, where planes had once taxied into their respective hangars. He studied the ground carefully, at times stopping to bend over, hands on his knees, peering intently at the runway. A few times he kicked and lifted away debris—fallen metal sheets, shattered cement blocks with protruding rebar. Approaching a large piece of crumpled aluminum, he picked up one corner and dragged it aside. Beneath lay a small hatch, barely visible, flush with old asphalt.

  Gordon entered a command on his PRD, and the hatch ground open, sliding to one side. “Wait here,” he called to them.

  He climbed down into the opening. H124 and Raven waited, expecting Gordon to come back out. But he didn’t.

  Just as she started to worry that something had gotten him down there, a great boom sounded to their left. She snapped her head that way, seeing the side of a building move. Its fallen walls and roof pushed upward, sheet metal and siding sloughing off to one side. A huge metallic chamber came into view, rotating as it rose, pushing away debris. She could hear the whirring of a motor as the chamber broke through the rubble, revealing a wide freight door on the far side.

  The new room clicked into place. Moments later the freight door lifted, its motor unbearably loud. As the door raised, a small white jet came into view. Gordon sat in the cockpit. When the door opened completely, she and Raven jogged over and started dragging away debris. The little jet, some thirty-three feet long, taxied out, stopping on the main runway.

  Gordon climbed down from the cockpit. “Isn’t she a beaut?” he asked, chuffed. “It’s a modified Eclipse 500. And still in pristine condition. Plenty of methane left down there, so she’s refueled. Just need to do a pre-flight check and we can go.”

  “This is fantastic,” Raven said, impressed.

  “My friend took good care of her.”

  “Where is he now?” H124 asked.

  The smile left Gordon’s face. “He was taken a few years ago.”

  “Taken?” she asked.

  Gordon didn’t look at her, but placed his hand flat on the plane’s fuselage and looked down. “The Death Riders got him.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too. He was a good man.” He turned away, wiping his face on his sleeve. Then he met their gaze. “He’d be happy to know his jet helped in a mission like this.”

  “We’re grateful to have it,” Raven added.

  Gordon went on to perform his pre-flight check and maintenance, going over the length of the plane with various tools he pulled from a chest in the cockpit.

  H124 constantly scanned the horizon for any sign of the Death Riders. But their luck held. The sun set. She was grateful for the dark, which masked their presence. By the time Gordon was ready, she’d seen no dust cloud announcing their approach.

  “You kids ready?” Gordon asked, tucking a dirty red rag into a pocket in his overalls.

  They circled to the side of the plane as Gordon unfolded a small stepladder from the fuselage. Inside, the Eclipse was posh, with blue velvet seats, a sleek bar, and matching cabinet space. She sank into one of the seats, placing her pack next to her. Raven did the same.

  Gordon fired up the engine, taxiing down the runway. She stared out as they lifted off, watching the shrinking scenery in the gloom, a patchwork view of dry, barren land.

  He banked toward the east, and before he’d even leveled out, her lids were drooping from exhaustion.

  Chapter 6

  As they flew over the east coast, drawing closer to the spacecraft section, dawn was breaking. She turned sleepily in her seat to stare out the window. They could see a storm in the air, a monstrous swirl of churning grey clouds. It brewed to the southeast, where the sky was completely socked in. As winds buffeted the Eclipse, Raven clutched his armrest. H124 tried in vain to suppress memories of the previous time she and Gordon had ventured through weather like this. She gripped her seat as they veered toward an old airstrip. “Not long now,” Gordon told them.

  They dipped below the clouds, a shock of turbulence rattling the plane, and the ground came into view. Miles of crumbled asphalt and toppled buildings lay scattered across a desolate landscape. She saw no greenery, just the beige and grey of an ancient industrialized area. The old streets lay clogged with debris: rusted cars, bricks, ceme
nt blocks, and a score of decayed items she couldn’t even make out.

  They’d entered the coordinates on their PRDs for Lockhardt Aeronautics, the facility tasked with building one part of the spacecraft. As she took in the ruined scene below, with all the toppled structures and choked streets, she bit her lip. What if it had long since been destroyed?

  Her PRD beeped, and she looked down to see that Orion had sent them a countdown for the impact time of the fragments. It overlaid her map, revealing the areas where damage would occur. She waved through the map, reading what the effects would be if they were present at the site of Lockhardt Aeronautics when the fragment hit. The readout read:

  At the time of impact, this location faces the following dangers:

  Maximum radiation will impact you 320 milliseconds after impact

  Irradiation duration will be 1.15 minutes

  Thermal Effects:

  Thermal exposure will be 3.41 x 106 Joules/m2

  Third degree burns over entire body

  Trees ignite

  Grass ignites

  Seismic Effects:

  Greatest shaking will occur 10 seconds after impact

  Richter Scale 7.0

  Air Blast:

  At your location, air blast will arrive 2.53 minutes after impact

  Wind velocity will be 128 m/s = 287 mph

  Sound Blast will be 97 dB

  Damage To Surroundings:

  Collapse of multistory buildings

  Shattering of glass windows

  Any trees will be blown down

  Raven brought up his own PRD and flipped through the data.

  “This is helpful,” she said to him.

  He gave her a rueful smile. “Yes. Now we can know the exact time we’ll meet our doom by fire and shattered glass.”

  She gave a small laugh. Moments later his PRD beeped again. “Great!” he said, reading the message. “I’m sending this to you, too.” The message was from someone named Nimbus. “Nimbus is our meteorologist. She’s up in Sanctuary City. She’s the one who’s been keeping track of methane and CO2 levels in the atmosphere. She’s also got a fleet of buoys in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific that measure sea surface temperatures. So she’s got a pretty good handle on hurricanes.”

  “Hurricanes?” The term wasn’t familiar.

  He pointed out at the storm. “It’s one of the main reasons the first megacities were built along the coasts. As the earth heated up, sea surface temperatures rose, creating ideal conditions for larger hurricanes to form. Instead of using methods that would have cut global warming, they used stopgap measures like building more levees, but these were just destroyed over and over again. These towns were eventually abandoned for the first environmentally shielded megacities.”

  H124’s PRD beeped, and she opened the forwarded message. Data streamed into her map, generating an image of the hurricane, its predicted path and wind speed. She monitored the wind speed churning around the storm’s center. “251 mph winds?” she asked, jaw slackened. She remembered the storms she’d survived on her way out to find the Rovers. She’d thought those were bad.

  “Winds won’t be so high if we steer clear of the eyewall,” he told her, indicating the spinning area near the clear center.

  Wind speeds did vary along the breadth of the storm, but still hovered above 100 mph in most places.

  “That’s a monster brewing out there,” Gordon told them. “I haven’t flown out this way in a long time. It’s all gotten worse.”

  He circled the old airstrip, full of cracks and broken asphalt. The wind tossed the plane around as if it were paper. She gripped her armrest as he dipped low, blasted by a sudden gust. They raced toward the ground, the shattered cement looming up beneath them. She gritted her teeth as the wheels touched down. They jostled to a stop.

  Raven looked at his PRD, checking the coordinates of the facility. “It’s not far from here. We’ll have to hurry. We only have eight hours until the first fragment hits.”

  “I’m going to refuel and come back when you signal me,” Gordon told them.

  She unbuckled her harness and leaned over, gripping Gordon’s arm. “Will you be okay?” she asked him, thinking of the harrowing times they refueled before.

  “Right as rain. At least there aren’t Death Riders out this way.”

  Given their recent encounter, she could picture them all too well, racing toward her and Gordon as they tried to refuel at a remote airstrip, glistening skulls mounted on their cars, the bloodthirst plain in their faces.

  She hugged him and hopped out. “Take care of yourself.”

  “You, too, kiddo.” He smiled warmly.

  Raven grabbed his pack with the collapsible maglev sled out of the back. The rain was already pelting them. She grabbed her own pack, filled with a water bottle and filter, her multitool, some MREs, goggles, and an extra set of dry clothes. They donned their raingear as the wind picked up, and she watched as Gordon turned the plane and taxied down the old runway, lifting off in the opposite direction.

  Catching his long black hair whipping around in the wind, Raven pulled it back and fastened it with a cord. Consulting their PRDs, they headed off in the direction of the facility, the wind so loud they could barely hear each other.

  By the time they drew within a few miles of Lockhardt Aeronautics, the wind was howling, and the buildings groaned. Rain pounded on their backs. The streets started to fill with water, washing in trash and rotted material that triggered H124’s gag reflex. Old poles that had once held signs were now permanently bent from scores of storms that had battered the coast. Winds picked up, tossing more debris. She heard glass shatter on a neighboring street, the final gasp of a building that couldn’t withstand another storm. Water sloshed at their ankles. She leaned into the wind, checking her PRD. They were within two miles of the location.

  She wondered what condition they would find the building in, and hoped they’d followed protocol and built the section underground. Maybe subsequent generations had built on top of the original structure, consigning it to oblivion, which meant it might still be there, buried, like the university she’d discovered under New Atlantic.

  The wind tore at her rain parka, soaking her hair where it blew free from the hood. She tucked the strands behind her ears, shielding her eyes from the stinging gusts. Raven moved behind her, his clothes flapping violently against his body as he gripped the straps of his backpack.

  The storm churned inexorably toward them, moving north, the rain lashing so hard it stung her skin. The surge raised the water above their ankles, and it began to seep into their boots. Detritus washed in with every new wave, and finally she rummaged through her pack for a scarf to tie around her nose and mouth to filter out the stench.

  The sky grew dark as they hiked on, and the terrain grey and dim. The winds bellowed around her, and her ears popped from a sudden pressure change. She staggered to stay upright, the wind rippling her skin in waves. She couldn’t see anymore, so she pulled the pair of goggles out of her bag and struggled to put them on. Raven did the same.

  Wind gusted down her throat and up her nose, and she could barely breathe. Raven called out to her, but the wind stole his words away; she could only see his mouth moving. He pointed to a steel railing sticking out of a broken sidewalk, a bent sign pushed all the way to the ground under the force of innumerable storms.

  As trash and debris flew around her, a shard of metal swirled out of the gloom and hit her side. She threw up her arms, protecting her head as another rusted chunk of sheet metal sailed by, barely missing her. The storm surge intensified, forcing them to wade through calf-deep water.

  As she struggled on, a sudden gust lifted her off her feet. She landed hard on her back, splashing down in the filthy brown water. The gale propelled her along, pushing her through shattered glass and broken bits of masonry.

&
nbsp; Raven tried to run to her as the rain lashed down in sheets, but he was blown off his feet too, slamming into the brick facade of a crumbling building. For a moment he lay there, unmoving, and H124’s mouth went dry. She flipped onto her stomach and tried to elbow-crawl over to him, but the wind forced her back, rolling her along the street. She grabbed a metal pole and held on. The gust weakened, and she seized the opportunity to jump up.

  Raven staggered up, rubbing his head. She hurried over. Once again he pointed to the railing. They fought against the gale, leaning in that direction, unable to make more than a few inches of progress. Keeping her hood up was hopeless. The rain slapped and beat against her skin, needles in her ears. Raven took her arm as they battled their way toward the railing.

  Lightning flashed, illuminating the tumult in a flare of bright silver, and for a brief instant she saw the droplets suspended in the air. A tortured whine sounded to their rear. They turned to see a building looming precariously over them.

  Raven snatched her arm tightly and propelled them forward. They grabbed on to the life line of the sturdy railing, steadying themselves. She looked down to see a refuse-choked stairwell leading to a tunnel. A small hole in the wreckage at the base of the stairs would just barely allow them access if they crawled. Raven went first, using the railing to pull himself down. He hunched down and pulled a stone aside, then stuck his head into the dark opening. She watched as he crawled inside. Seconds later, he stuck out his head and yelled something she couldn’t hear. Again the building behind her whined and shuddered. She peered over her shoulder, watching it topple over in slow motion.

  Clutching the railing, she whipped herself into the stairwell just as one of Raven’s arms snaked out through the opening. She grabbed his hand, and he pulled her through as the building crashed down behind her, spraying stones through the stairwell with a godlike roar.

  The sudden muffling of the storm made her ears ring. She struggled to her feet. She was soaked. At least the water was lower here, only ankle-deep.