Shattered Lands

by ALICE HENDERSON

  Raven rose steadily. She could feel hatred washing off him. He brought up his PRD and hacked into the airship’s navigation system, shooting them high into the sky, then bringing them down at a screaming velocity. This time he didn’t stop a hundred feet up. He drove the ship straight into the crater, where it crumpled and smoldered, a wreck of fiery, twisted metal.

  She saw his chest heaving, his jaw trembling with rage. He stared out at the wreck, tears streaming down his face. She was about to reach out to him when a distant tremor met them. The other airship had returned.

  He switched over to control the second airship, reversing their engines and entering a location for them to travel to hundreds of miles to the west.

  She contacted Gordon. “Okay!”

  They heard his jet approach, watching as he landed half a mile away. Racing down the old streets, they didn’t slow their pace until they reached the plane. Raven commanded the sled to enter, and then they both piled in. Gordon started taking off as H124 slid the door closed.

  She looked at her PRD. “Seven minutes till impact,” she told them. They had to get those sixty miles out to escape the majority of the airburst. Even that far out, it would rock the plane, hitting them just minutes after impact.

  Gordon pushed the jet down the road, the wheels bumping over countless cracks and ridges from years of frost-heaving. At last the plane went airborne, and H124 buckled in as he pushed the engines.

  They climbed so fast that her head pressed back into the seat.

  Raven stared out, watching the crashed airship recede from view. Then he closed his eyes, and gripped the armrests.

  The jet raced away as Gordon pushed the engines to their limit.

  She checked the impact time. “It’s about to hit.” She strained against inertia to look out the window and to the east. They were too far away to see the incoming fireball over the horizon, but she was compelled to look anyway. She looked back at her PRD. “It’s hit.”

  The jet raced over the terrain, Gordon climbing higher. The engines roared in the confines of the cabin. H124 braced herself against the seat. Four minutes later, the airburst hit.

  The jet’s windows shattered, showering them with broken glass. A searing pain erupted in her ears, and she swallowed to equalize the pressure, which had dropped in the cabin. She grabbed her backpack as it flew off the seat next to her, before it was sucked out. The tarp covering the spacecraft piece tore off, and whipped out of a side window before they could seize it. The sled shifted, and the craft wrenched free. As it toppled by her, she grabbed it, clenching it with both arms. Raven leaned over and seized the other side. Together they held firm as the violent pressure threatened to fling them out of the plane. Her seatbelt cinched hard across her lap. The air felt thin, and every breath was agony.

  Gordon lowered the plane. “The air pressure should equalize soon!” he shouted above the wind. “I’m slowing the plane and bringing us down to 10,000 feet!”

  At last the pressure diminished, and H124 felt her weight return to her seat. She and Raven set down the spacecraft piece. Wind still whistled through the broken windows, but it was bearable.

  “Everyone okay back there?” Gordon called.

  “Yes,” she answered. Then she looked at Raven. “We are, right?”

  He pulled hair out of his eyes. “Somehow.” Blue skies lay ahead. “We did it, didn’t we?” He leaned back in his seat with a triumphant exhale. “I can’t believe it.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “We have the first piece.”

  Chapter 9

  Carston was not having a good day. He’d just been bawled out in the producer’s office for his latest failed reality show. He thought he’d really been on to something this time—a show about what scarves to pair with what media streams. But hardly anyone had chosen to watch it.

  And right now was the worst time. BEC City had upped its signal strength, and now many citizens were tuning into it instead of New Atlantic’s feeds. And that meant that their task windows were seeing to maintenance in BEC City. Infrastructure was compromised in New Atlantic now, and other than offering fresh new streams, the producers didn’t know what to do to combat the competition.

  Carston let out a breath as he sat down in his swivel chair, turning to face the city below. He lived and worked on the seventy-sixth floor. But he’d gotten this promotion twenty years ago, when he’d been a hot new director rising up from the PPC ranks. He’d had fresh new ideas, real game changers, back then. He’d risen quickly.

  But he hadn’t had a hit in more than six years, which his producer Langstrom had so delicately let him know just now by launching a glass sculpture at his head. He had ducked though, and it had shattered against the wall, kindling her ire even further. Did she expect it not to break? It’s not like he threw it. He’d never liked that sculpture on her desk anyway, a sort of abstract grotesquerie that had always looked vaguely like an angry pickle, making it very hard for him not to snicker every time she was in the middle of bawling him out.

  He didn’t want to think about how the meeting had ended. He’d left her office, thoroughly chastised, then realized he’d left his PRD on her desk. He’d doubled back to get it, and found two Repurposers leaving her office, with that unnerving look of sadistic anticipation on their faces.

  Had she ordered him to be Repurposed?

  He’d hurried back to his office without retrieving his PRD. Now sweat beaded on his upper lip, and he loosened his tie. He stood and approached the window, surveying the endless streets. They were clean and empty, a vision of order and control. He liked working here. He’d gone to Delta City once for a conference, and had been horrified by the ugly sights sprawling out from the PPC Tower there, the starving rabble climbing over one another like mice eating their own kin when left too long in a cage.

  Something in the sky caught his eye, a bright light high above the horizon to the far right. He watched as it brightened, streaking down through the sky, flaring up so luminously he had to squint. It was coming his way. Beyond the atmospheric dome, the grey ocean waves surged and churned, their small whitecaps tossed by the wind. He could see the tops of ancient buildings sticking up out there, and had often wondered how old they were and who had lived in them.

  The light flashed down through the sky, a trail of fire in tow, and vanished beyond the skyline. He’d never seen anything like it. But he had other things to worry about. He sat back down, eyes burning, and cradled his face in his hands. He had to come up with a smash hit. Something that would make up for his string of failures.

  He made himself a drink and returned to his seat, fishing his older backup PRD out of his desk. He brainstormed ideas into it. He was so damn tired. He’d barely slept, worrying he was getting the axe. Now he had to worry if the Repurposers would pay him a visit when he was of no further use.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, leaning his head back.

  Then he jerked awake. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, maybe just a couple minutes, perhaps more. But he’d drooled down one cheek. The whole building was quaking, and the windows pulsed and hummed. Wiping his face, he rose from his chair, and turned to the window.

  What he saw astounded him. The sea had receded, so far back that those mysterious ancient buildings he’d marveled at for years were now completely exposed. He could see the old roads between the buildings, now buried under layers of wet sand. Beyond the buildings stood a giant statue of a handsome woman holding a torch. She leaned to one side, splotched with grime.

  He grabbed his diginocs from his desk, focusing on the scene before him. Something grey was moving out there, beyond the unearthed buildings. Something massive that spanned the horizon as far as he could see. It grew and grew, towering over the old structures, a living wall surging to the heavens.

  He was transfixed. It was a wave, he realized, roaring inland, armed with all the water it had sucked up.


  It barreled toward the coast, inundating the ancient city once again. A corroded building toppled under the water’s weight, crashing down beneath the wave.

  The waterwall rushed toward him. It was going to hit New Atlantic. He gripped his desk behind him, heart pounding, not sure what to do. His first thought was to call Langstrom. He lifted his old PRD, brought up the communication window, and waved through the floating display until he came to her. The connection went straight to her messages. She probably didn’t want to hear from him right now. He wondered if she were looking out at this, too.

  The window before him vibrated. The building continued to shake, but the glass didn’t shatter. He stared out. The wave would short out the atmospheric shield, and all that water would get in. Citizens trapped in their life pods on lower floors, not looking out the window, would all die. Then who would enter the commands to keep New Atlantic running? It was bad enough his media stream hadn’t been getting enough followers. If there weren’t any followers at all, he’d surely get the sack.

  He had to do something. He ran out of his office, taking the elevator back up to the producer’s floor. Racing down the corridor to her office, he passed another director.

  “What’s the fuss?” the man asked him.

  “Huge wave’s about to hit New Atlantic!”

  The man just looked confused, so Carston ran on, reaching her office at the end of the hall.

  He pressed the doorbell, but she didn’t answer, so he started pounding on the door. Finally it hissed open. She sat at her desk, looking up at him with disgust. “You’re not doing yourself any favors,” she said.

  “Turn around!” he demanded.

  “What?”

  He ran over to her chair and grabbed her hands, trying to pull her up.

  “Have you lost your mind?” she snapped, yanking her hands from his.

  He pointed to the colossal wave beyond her window. It was now past the ancient city, looming over New Atlantic. It had breached the shield wall, so that the new wall filled their view as it rolled toward them, grey and foreboding.

  Then it hit.

  The building shook and swayed. Langstrom gripped her armrests, mouth agape.

  He could see things in the water beyond the window: debris, twisted metal, rusted pipes, parts of ancient vehicles that had once littered the ruined city off the coast. A long, rusted I-beam surged forward, its tip cracking hard against the building below.

  “No, no, no, no!” cried the producer, leaping up. She ran from the room. Carston followed her, wondering if the higher-ups had some kind of shelter. “Put out a message!” she cried to no one in particular. She reached the stairs and tore up a flight, Carston in tow.

  At the top she banged open the door and flew down the hall to one of the hundreds of transmission rooms where they broadcasted their media. She burst through the door, panting. Carston followed her in as the entire building tilted and groaned. Elsewhere he could hear glass shattering.

  In the small, windowless room, a startled broadcaster looked up from his console, his face masked in sweat. “What’s going on? Why is the building moving?”

  “Tell all the citizens to take cover. We could lose everyone! New Atlantic will fail! We’ll never be able to replace all those people in time.”

  The broadcaster turned back to his console, started to enter something on the floating display, and paused. “Tell them to take cover where?” His face was bewildered.

  The producer opened her mouth to speak, raised a brow, then shut it again. The ground shifted beneath her feet, and she lost her balance. Carston caught her elbow before she fell. “I—I don’t know,” she said, gaping up at Carston. “I don’t know where anyone can take shelter.”

  The electricity flickered and went out, sending them into a pit of darkness. Carston gripped a table as the building moved again, and before long his eyes adjusted to the dark. He could make out the forms of his two colleagues, frozen where they were.

  Equipment slid off tables and shelves, crashing all around. Every time the building rocked Carston thought it would crash to the ground and kill them all.

  But the swaying subsided. The building stopped moving.

  They all exchanged confused looks, as if in disbelief that they still were alive. Then came a flicker of hope, and relief.

  “I’m getting to a window,” said Carston, hastening out of the room. Langstrom followed close behind. He rushed down the hall to a conference room, and opened the door.

  Light flooded back into their world. Huge windows spanning the entire far wall overlooked the city. The water level was dropping, now dozens of floors lower. As the waters receded, he stared in horror at the destruction below. All of the citizen housing from here to the edge of the atmospheric dome lay in ruins.

  He withdrew the diginocs from his pocket and scanned down below. Debris from living pods floated in the grey water: bedding, ruined doors, light fixtures. Then he saw the bodies. Scores of them, limbs flung out, surging out to sea.

  One person was still alive. He flailed in the water, mouth caught in a scream, trying to grab on to anything. He found a floating table and held on desperately, but the surge was too powerful, and it ripped him away from his salvation. Carston could see an edifice right behind him. Still the man cried out and flailed, trying to swim inland. His head went under, and the water gushed around the building’s edge. Then he saw the man again, head above the waves, fighting the current as hard as he could. But it was all for nothing; the water slammed him against the building, with all the force the surge could deliver. The man stopped moving, and sank down into the grey depths. Carston didn’t see him again.

  He didn’t know it would be like this, watching those people die.

  Langstrom joined him at the window. “We made it,” she breathed, incredulous.

  He turned to her. “Not everyone. People are dying down there.”

  She looked at him, a cruel gleam in her eye. “Yes, but we made it.”

  He turned back to the window, stunned by the nightmare below. The light grew brighter, forcing Carston to squint. For a moment he couldn’t figure out where the glare was coming from. Then terror sank his heart, and he lifted his eyes to the sky. He swallowed hard, and his jaw lost its ability to close.

  A second ball of fire streaked across the sky, coming directly at them. It didn’t arc beyond the horizon the way the first one had. It stayed high, coming in so fast that it grew into a colossal blazing orb before his very eyes.

  This one wasn’t going to land in the sea.

  He backed away from the window, toward the door, his heart hammering as the fireball took up his entire view. All he could see was flame.

  Langstrom screamed.

  The windows burst, blowing them back. Carston slammed into the far wall, and all the air left his lungs. He felt his bones break. An immense heat greeted him, burning his hair, his skin, his lungs. Next to him, Langstrom’s clothes caught fire where she lay, crumpled in a broken mass against the wall.

  His whole world was fire. The building went up, giving way to a molten hell . . . and vaporized.

  New Atlantic was gone.

  Chapter 10

  It was slow going to Sanctuary City. In the east, the sky had taken on an unusual red. With the Eclipse’s windows shattered, Gordon had donned H124’s goggles as he piloted, keeping at a low altitude below 14,000 feet.

  H124 dozed on and off, waking up now and again, eyeing the terrain below. Gordon landed to catch some sleep before they could press on, and night enveloped them on a dark stretch of broken road. They took turns watching for night stalkers, then continued their flight after dawn.

  Brown, caked earth stretched as far as she could see, the beds of long dried-up rivers evident in the dust. In a few places she could spot the borders of old farms, square patterns in the dirt. Towering dust devils spiraled around the rui
ned landscape. She was awake as they flew over sprawling Delta City, so she peered down through its atmospheric shield to the jungle of skyscrapers below.

  Finally real sleep took her. She awoke a few hours later and looked out, noting a vast green blanket below. At first she thought it was some kind of chemical spill, but as the plane lowered, it proved to be a forest of trees—not the skeletons of a bygone age, sun-bleached and white like the ones she’d seen when she first flew with Gordon, but a living, vibrant woodland stretching to the horizon.

  She was in awe. Amid the trees, great patches of grasses grew, with other bits of color scattered throughout.

  Raven joined her at the window. “We’re getting close to Sanctuary City.”

  “What are those?” she asked, pointing to a patch of yellow.

  “Wildflowers. That’s a meadow.” He pointed to a wide, glinting ribbon winding through the trees. “See that?

  She nodded.

  “It’s a river. We were able to rehabilitate an old riverbed, make it flow again. Long ago, the river had been dammed upstream from here, as a power source for an oil field.”

  “What’s an oil field?” She couldn’t take her eyes from the verdant scenery. Gordon lowered the Eclipse 500.

  “A place where fossil fuels were extracted. From what we understand, there was a wildlife refuge to the north of here. It was the last sanctuary for a number of species—caribou, musk ox, polar bears. We’ve found evidence that people tried to save it. It was one of the last natural places that hadn’t been developed.”

  “What happened?”

  “Protections for the wildlife refuge were lifted, and the oil companies moved in. There was evidence that a handful of people fought to the bitter end to prevent it.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  His mouth became a grim line. “Their corpses. They’d been killed, buried in shallow graves near one of the old oil rigs. We think this happened around the time of the water shortages, just before people started moving into the megacities after the great die-off.” She’d read about the great die-off. Drought, megastorms, shortage of drinking water, intense air pollution, coastal flooding, all leading to numerous conflicts across the globe. Ultimately, a great many people perished.