“I have an idea about that,” Raven said. He brought up an image of a small furred animal with wings. “This is a bat. There used to be millions of these important pollinators. But pesticides and a fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome wiped them all out. They were some of the first creatures I brought back in the de-extinction lab, and now there’s a growing population of them in the forests above. They use echolocation to find their insect prey. I think night stalkers hunt in the same way. In the bat population, I’ve noticed that they’ll sometimes use their echolocation to jam the radar of another bat, essentially messing with its ability to zero in on an insect. Then the second bat zooms in on the moth itself. We use a similar jamming system to keep the bats away from our wind turbines. If we could build a small device that uses similar technology—”
Rowan’s face lit up. “We could essentially jam the night stalkers’ radar. But couldn’t they just see us if we do that? With their regular vision?”
“We think night stalkers have very limited eyesight,” Raven told him. “They abhor bright light and hunt mainly in the darkest part of the night. From the few close observations we’ve made, they seem to suffer from some kind of genetic deformation that has hindered their sight.”
H124 watched Rowan already turning over possibilities. “What frequency do they echolocate at?”
“The ones we’ve recorded on ultrasonic mics pulsed at 1 kHz to 72 kHz.”
“So we’d need an emitter in that range.” Rowan brought a hand to his chin. “I think I can build one.”
“You might be able to adjust our existing bat jammer design to make it more mobile. Something we could wear.”
“Can you build four of them?” Byron asked. “I’m going.” He glanced around at them. “I don’t think we can expect Astoria to come with us. There’s no way she’s going to leave Dirk in his condition.”
H124 agreed. “No way.”
“We’ll need weapons,” Byron added. “What do you have?”
Raven gestured down the hall. “You’re welcome to take a look at our armory.”
“I will.” He left the room.
Rowan turned to Raven. “Where can I get to work?”
“I’ll walk you over to the engineering lab,” Raven offered. “Rivet should be able to fix you up with space and materials.”
“I’ll go find Gordon,” H124 told them. As they left, her stomach knotted. She had a bad feeling about this.
She found Gordon out on the airfield, tinkering with the Flying Flapjack.
“H! You’re back!” He hugged her. “How did it go?”
“The hurricane was easier.”
“Ouch. That’s saying a lot.”
“How’s it coming on the plane?”
He stepped back, looking the craft over. “I hope to get it up in the air in a week or so.” He smiled. “This place . . . the Rovers . . . if I’d known they were up here, I’d have come a long time ago.” He chuckled, pulling a rag out of his back pocket and wiping off his hands. “I admit I was starting to feel pretty dusty and old before you found me. Now I feel like I’ve started a whole new life.”
She smiled. “I feel that way too, Gordon.”
“I’ll bet you do, kid. Your lot in life wasn’t a pretty one before this.”
She thought back to New Atlantic, dragging the bodies of the deceased to the incinerators, catching glimpses of the citizen lifestyle she’d never have. It was all gone now—the entire city vaporized.
He clapped his hands together. “Tell me we’re off on another adventure.”
She couldn’t help but crack a smile. “We are. This time to a place called Basin City. Have you heard of it?”
He cringed. “I have.”
“From what Rowan and Byron told us, it’s not going to be an easy trip.”
“I’ll say. No one goes there anymore. Not even Death Riders. And . . .” He cleared his throat. “They say it’s haunted.”
“Haunted?”
“Things moving in the dark. The ghosts of everyone who’s died there.”
“Great! What can possibly go wrong?”
He puckered his lips and blew out. “With our luck? Everything.”
Chapter 18
Rowan worked late into the night. H124 checked on him a few times, helping him build the emitters. In the wee hours, she finally turned in, leaving him to the finishing touches. She slept poorly, constantly worrying about Dirk and infiltrating Basin City. Finally she got up before it was light, and got dressed.
She went down to the med lab, and stared through the window. Dirk still lay unconscious in the medpod, and Felix had fallen asleep at his work station. Astoria sat next to Dirk, asleep in her chair. H124 looked at Dirk’s vitals on the display. No change from the day before. Felix stirred as she turned away.
“There’s no change,” he whispered, not wanting to wake Astoria. “But that thing is still counting down.”
H124 brought a hand to her forehead, and felt her temples starting to pound. “This is terrible. I’ve contacted my friend in Delta City. I’m waiting to hear what he can find out.”
“Thank you.”
H124 crept away, letting Astoria sleep, and walked to the armory to meet Raven and the others. “There’s no change with Dirk,” she told them as she entered.
They all exchanged looks. Everyone was on edge.
Raven spoke up, gesturing to four red suits hanging from wall hooks. “These heat suits have been modified. They’re much more lightweight than what we wore to the radar facility. They also have built-in gas detectors, so if we come to sections with toxic emissions, we’ll be protected.”
Rowan moved to a table in the center of the room. “I’ve built emitters for each of us.” He held up small round disks with red lights on them. “They clip on to our heat suits. We can’t hear their ultrasonic signals, so if they’re working, they’re blinking. Keep an eye on them at all times.”
Raven joined him at the table, where four black handheld devices lay. They almost looked like pistols. “These are the pyrometers. Point one at the ground, pull the trigger, and an infrared beam measures the temp there. Don’t step anywhere without first using one of these.”
“And we’ll all need weapons,” Byron said. He’d made a cursory visit to the armory the night before, but now it was time to choose.
Raven gestured at the far wall, which held a rack with a number of guns. Byron paced alongside it. H124 joined him, selecting an energy rifle that could both stun and kill. Rowan took an energy rifle and a sonic weapon, and Raven chose a handheld flash burster.
“I’m not taking any chances,” Byron said, rejecting those choices. He stopped at the edge of the rack. “I’ll be,” he said, taking down a rifle with a wood and metal stock. “Is this a Henry repeating rifle?”
Raven nodded.
“You got ammo for this thing?”
Raven pulled down several boxes from a nearby cabinet. “Here you go.”
Byron loaded up a satchel with the boxes. “Excellent.”
They all gathered their gear, then took one last look at the armory. Byron grabbed a pocket torch. “In case we need to cut through any doors. We won’t have Dirk with us this time.”
“Okay. Let’s go hitch a ride,” Raven said, turning the lights off.
* * * *
Out on the airfield, they met up with Gordon, climbing into the Lockheed Vega and stowing their gear. In moments they were off, flying south, leaving the wondrous green land behind them.
H124 dozed on and off as they flew, the turbulence waking her up now and then. The others did the same. She checked for a message from Willoughby, but there was none. At last they neared their destination.
The broken sprawl of the megacity was staggering from the air. H124 could see the curve of the shield wall, eerily naked with no shield glowing above it. The st
reets themselves were dim and hazy, obscured by a layer of smoke that hung in the air above the city. Black fissures snaked through the streets, as heat waves lingered above them.
There were no open spaces for Gordon to land the Vega inside the city, and due to the tectonic instability, he decided it would be safest to land just outside the western wall, at a location closest to the aerospace facility, Bering Aeronautics. He banked, and she saw Basin City’s PPC Tower in the distance, its grand spire and massive antenna broken off and lying twisted below. It had taken out several city blocks when it toppled.
As they descended, she peered out of the window until the gigantic retaining wall blocked her view and the plane’s wheels touched down on a flat, dry section of land. The plane bounced a few times, slowing to a stop. Gordon turned in his seat. “I’m going to find a place to refuel. Call me when you’re ready to be picked up.”
They each grabbed their pack, Raven checking over the maglev sled before he zipped his up. As she passed the cockpit, Gordon reached for her hand. “This place . . . I don’t like it. If those emitters don’t work, you get the hell out. Spacecraft be damned. You hear me?”
She nodded, even though they both knew that the spacecraft was of utmost importance, more so than any of their lives. She leaned down and hugged him, feeling the rough of his white whiskers against her face. “I’ll be careful.”
“I’ll be waiting on your call,” he said, pointing at his PRD.
Outside the plane they suited up in their lightweight heat suits. The built-in oxygen tanks contained CO2 scrubbers to recirculate their air. Each of them checked their pyrometers, and Rowan attached the ultrasonic emitters to the fronts of their suits. The emitters started blinking, letting them know they were operational.
They set off, H124 checking her O2 supply and blinking light.
It wasn’t hard to find a break in the retaining wall. Most of it had crumbled or collapsed into fissures in the steaming ground. Raven led the way, holding out his pyrometer. She could see the ultrasonic emitter pulsing on his chest, its red light flashing against his sleeve.
“Don’t step anywhere without first testing the ground temp,” he reminded them.
H124 adjusted her oxygen levels as they stepped through a wide opening in the wall. Fissures split the ground everywhere as smoke billowed up, the ground white and chalky in places.
Whole blocks of buildings had collapsed into gaping holes. She checked her pyrometer, aiming its infrared beam ahead. About fifty feet in front of them, the ground temp measured 217°F. They skirted around the section, then angled back in the direction of the aerospace facility.
In a few places buildings still stood, their windows shattered. On a few streets, crashed autotransports blocked the road and they had to weave between them. Byron and Rowan were right—in any other place, these transports would have been stolen or stripped clean. But these still had all their tech.
She could move much more freely in the lighter heat suit, and the fire boots felt solid on her feet. Slowly they made their way across the western part of the city, having to take long detours as they went. Her PRD read high amounts of hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide in the air, hovering in pockets over deep black cracks of hissing smoke.
They reached a more stable section of the city. Most of the buildings here still stood, and her PRD read only trace amounts of sulfur dioxide. She aimed her pyrometer at the ground, and it came back as 90°F, not that different from the normally blistering temperatures in this area.
In a few places, rooftop gardens had grown out of control, crawling down the sides of buildings. In other places the toxic air had killed them, leaving only brown shriveled vines. They moved through this clearer area more quickly, making good progress.
A low rumbling sounded from the ground, and moments later the earth shook. H124 went down on one knee, bracing herself on the ground. Rowan went off balance, but Raven caught his arm before he fell. The tremblor passed, and they forged on.
A blinking arrow on her PRD’s map showed they were close to Bering Aeronautics, which long ago had stood a half mile from their location. H124’s heart sank as she saw the ground ahead crisscrossed with smoking fissures. The sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide levels here were lethal. Another quake shook the ground, the broken pavement under her feet undulating and throwing her off balance. She caught herself on an old metal pole. The shaking passed, but they had only gone a few more feet when it returned violently, and the ground thrust up under her feet. She went over on her back as a belching crack split open next to her; the ground was tearing itself apart.
Rowan stood a few feet away, back turned to the gaping fissure. “Rowan!” she shouted. He spun, his eyes going wide as he saw the yawning black maw cleaving toward him. He dove to one side, but the crack opened wider, its sides sloping down beneath his feet. He grabbed desperately for a handhold as the ground dipped away beneath him. He slid down the broken pavement toward the smoking fissure. She stood up and ran to him, the ground trembling so powerfully beneath her that she stumbled and fell repeatedly.
As his feet plunged over the edge into the darkness, Rowan managed to dig his fingers into a thin crack in the pavement, stopping his fall. She reached him, lying flat on the ground and extending her hand to him. He gripped it, and she pulled him up. His feet found purchase on the broken cement, and he managed to scramble back up to the others. Raven and Byron grabbed his body and hefted him the rest of the way.
Rolling onto his back, Rowan closed his eyes. “I think my heart’s trying to pound right out of my chest.”
“We need to get out of this area,” Raven said. “Too unstable. Let’s see if there’s a safer way around.” He scouted out, taking readings on his pyrometer. She could see the blinking red on his emitter when he vanished into a cloud of sulfur dioxide gas. He returned and scouted in another direction. “This way!” he called to them.
They helped Rowan to his feet and followed Raven, taking a wide circuit around a section of white chalk earth. She could hear the crackling of the coal seam fire beneath their feet, and had to fight off images of plunging suddenly through the crust and burning alive.
At last they reached the location of Bering Aeronautics. To H124’s relief, the block of buildings there was largely undamaged. The building directly above the spot where the facility had been was now a residential structure. Since the city had no power, getting inside was a matter of brute force, as the TWRs were inoperable.
They slid open the metal doors and filed into the hallway. This residential building looked identical to the ones she’d worked at in New Atlantic.
She walked with them down to the subbasement, where pod cleaners had once delivered dirty linens to be washed, and where corpse cleaners like her had sent incinerated human remains to special holding tanks. As she moved into the lead and couldn’t see the others behind her, her mind tried to play tricks on her. This building was so identical to the countless others she’d worked at in New Atlantic, that as she passed the human remains holding tank and saw that the gauge on it was almost full, she thought she was back working in New Atlantic, that her escape, her journey, had all been a dream, and she was back to her dreary existence.
“See any way down?” Byron asked.
She turned, took a deep breath, and saw the others exploring the room.
“There’s usually a drain in each living pod building,” she told them, “holdovers from before they’d perfected the atmospheric shields. Torrential rains used to flood the streets and seep into the buildings, flooding the bottom floors. Later they perfected the atmospheric shields, and the drains fell into disuse. But they might get us closer to any structure still standing beneath us.”
Rowan passed into a neighboring room. “Here!” he called.
They joined him, standing over a large grate that led into darkness. “Give me a hand.” They all knelt and lifted the heavy lattice away. Raven ai
med his pyrometer into the hole. The reading came back at normal levels. “I’ll go first,” he said, and lowered himself down the drain. He held on to the lip of the floor before he let go, and landed a couple feet down. He turned on his headlamp, sending shadows scattering along the storm tunnel. “Looks good.” His emitter’s red flash bounced off the walls. She checked hers, making sure it still worked, remembering all too well that the night stalkers prowled storm drains during the day, keeping to the shadows.
One by one they dropped down. Raven consulted his PRD and headed toward the old facility.
They came to a place where the ancient rush of flood waters had caused part of the floor to weaken and collapse. Raven aimed his pyrometer beam into it, again receiving normal readings. He lay down and shone his light through the hole. “I think this is it. I see an old desk down here.”
As Raven lowered himself through, H124 aimed her beam back the way they’d come. She could almost feel things staring at her, boring into her back, slowly closing in with clawed feet. Rowan jumped through, leaving her in the tunnel with Byron.
“You okay?” he asked.
She turned back. “Yeah. Just . . .”
“Creepy?”
“Exactly.”
“You next.”
She dropped through, landing beside Rowan, and Byron followed. As his beam passed through the hole, H124 thought she caught a glimpse of a slinking form in the tunnel above, but decided it may have just been Byron’s shadow.
On the lower level, her beam revealed a series of offices much like the ones they’d seen in the other aeronautic facilities. They traversed corridors, passing offices with dusty tables and chairs and old computer equipment. Raven found a set of stairs, and they descended a floor. The next door had a lock like the ones Dirk had hacked back in Delta City, but this one had already been burned through with a pocket pyro sometime in antiquity. The door stood open a crack.
Her brow creased as Raven turned and met her gaze. This wasn’t a good sign.
Shattered Lands Page 21
