Shandin had loaned them the six-wheeler for their trek into the heart of the wasteland. Fresh paint decorated the body, and the rims and mirrors appeared intact.
“This just keeps getting fishier,” Bossy mumbled as she circled the Rover before hopping in through the passenger side. “No one has this kinda coin.”
“Yeah,” Agracia said, revving the engine. It turned over easily and purred like a giant cat, waiting for her to put it in gear. “Good thing I got us an insurance policy.”
She heard Bossy sucking on her lollipop through the mike. “Whaddya talking about?”
Agracia rummaged around in her suit to find the pocket where she had stashed her prize.
“Wheredja get that?” Bossy exclaimed as Agracia produced an extra datawand.
Agracia tossed it to her companion for inspection. Unlike the high-tech one packed with intuitive functions and fluid modifiers that Shandin had given them, the extra datawand had an adaptor at the tip to interface with ancient computer modules from the Last Great War.
“It’s pretty old and beat-up.”
“Yeah, well, I lifted it off Jade.”
“That old prune!” Bossy snorted.
“So...?” Agracia said, prompting her to think of the next step.
Bossy smacked on her lollipop as she thought about it. “We make a copy of whatever information we find on Jade’s datawand. Nice insurance policy—it’ll keep our Tourist bosses honest.”
“Yup!” Agracia said brightly.
As their vehicle rumbled across the wasteland and into the boundaries of Ground Zero, Agracia watched the dashboard computer’s radiation and plague monitor tick upward.
Bossy fiddled nervously in her seat. “Been a while, yeah?”
“Yeah... At least a few.” Memories of the Deadzone made her heart beat faster. And we were lucky to come out alive.
The Necros had established a strong foothold in the Deadzone since the Last Great War, and no Jock with any sense had taken a job on the inside, not even for all the booze and hard cash in the galaxy. But the rumors of viable cryotubes still running deep in private underground vaults baited her in her younger years. She figured if they could find war survivors still frozen in tubes of prototype cryon, then maybe she’d garner a name for herself. Well, at least that was back when she thought she had a legitimate shot at getting off Earth, back when—
No.
She gripped the steering wheel with all her might. Wait... that job came off of a telegram from an unnamed Tourist. It read just like that stupid letter I got several weeks ago, right before I met Jetta Kyron.
“Dichit,” Agracia said, slamming her fist against her wheel.
“What’s your problem?”
“Chakking Skirts,” Agracia muttered. She explained to Bossy the connection between their first treacherous job in the Deadzone and the recent letter hiring them to dig around the surrounding wastelands for the passenger lists. “Those Alliance ratchakkers orchestrated all of it!”
“Mother chakkers!” Bossy shrieked into her headset and sprang up on her seat. She rolled her window down and blasted away at decaying structures with her sidearm until Agracia yelled at her to conserve ammunition.
For some reason Agracia’s thoughts drifted to Commander Unipoesa.
Were you a part of it? she thought.
No, he couldn’t have been. He was her idol. He was her closest thing to a father—
The rolling wasteland disintegrated into rows of desks and a teacher’s board at the head of the class.
“Cadet Leone,” Commander Unipoesa said, checking over her battle plan on her datapad. Her heart lodged itself in her throat as she waited for what seemed like days for him to finish his thought. “Excellent work.”
He returned her datapad and continued his inspection down the rows.
This was a special day, she remembered. A visit from the commander was a major event, and every cadet rallied for his arrival. Even Li had seemed more animated, and he had stepped up his efforts on his homework.
“Marginal work, Cadet Li,” the Commander remarked, giving Urusous back his datapad.
She could feel Li’s eyes shooting daggers into the back of her skull as Unipoesa moved on to other students.
Something warm and wet touched the base of her neck, and her left hand reflexively went to the site. “I will kill you...” he said just loud enough for her to hear.
She slowly brought her fingers back, finding them smeared with blood.
“Gracie, watch out!”
“Sycha!” Agracia screamed as they banked off the lip of a wrecked superstructure.
The sky became indistinguishable from the ground as the Rover flipped and rolled until it came to a wobbly rest near the foot of a partially collapsed billboard.
“Holy jeez...” Bossy braced herself against the dashboard. “I think I’m gonna vom.”
“Hey, no puking in here!” Agracia said, reaching over her and cranking on the door handle. The passenger door flipped open and Bossy spilled out, whipping off her helmet and emptying her stomach onto the cracked pavement.
As her companion continued to retch, Agracia tried to restart the engine, but she paused when she saw the billboard. Whatever advertisement had once graced its canvas had long since faded, replaced by centuries of graffiti and drifter art. The main theme, as it had been for the last five hundred years, remained the same: The End of the World.
“Welcome to Paradise,” Agracia said as Bossy crawled back inside.
“What the hell happened back there?” Bossy asked, putting her helmet back on and checking her exposure levels. “Ya fall asleep?”
“No,” Agracia whispered.
She looked back and saw Li’s shattered datapad in pieces on his desk. Embedded in his hands were the neo-plastic splinter casings from the rim of the device. He didn’t seem to register the pain as he made tight fists, squeezing the shards even deeper into his own flesh.
He mouthed the words again. I will kill you.
“Just thought I saw something.”
I’m still not right, she realized, but she tucked the thought away.
“Well, you ain’t drivin’ no more, so shove over,” Bossy said, trying to fight her for the keys.
Agracia pulled them out of the ignition and stuffed them down her suit. “I ain’t. And neither are you. We’re walking.”
“Walking?!”
Agracia pointed to the billboard.
“Chak,” Bossy muttered.
Traveling in Necro land was too dangerous in a Rover. Loud noises attracted the undead predators, and in the tangled jungle of steel and urban ruin, navigation was only possible by foot.
“I hate walking,” Bossy reminded her.
“Awhh, buck up,” Agracia said, punching her in the shoulder. “You need the exercise. A girl your age is liable to get a beer gut.”
Agracia was stunned that her partner did not have a retort. Instead, she picked at the ribbed knee guards on her suit.
“Gracie... how old do you think I am—really?”
Never in all their years together had Agracia heard that tone in her voice, or such an old sound, one that came from far beyond her pigtailed, youthful figure.
“I dunno,” she said stupidly. But she knew better. There wasn’t anything natural about her friend’s appearance or supposed age, and they both knew it.
Bossy stopped sucking on her lollipop. “You happier now that you know?”
Agracia didn’t respond right away. “At least I know, right? No one can chak with me anymore. I’m not happy about what I was or what I was made to believe... but it doesn’t matter now. I am Agracia. I’m a survivor. And I plan on making the rest of my life mine.”
Bossy nodded. “Yeah.” Then, after a moment of consideration, she added a more emphatic, “Yeah! Chak ‘em all!”
Springing out of the Rover, gear bag and weapons in hand, Bossy made for the nearest shelter. Agracia raced after her, the wind whipping savagely against her suit as she he
aded toward the safety of the fallen beams of the old elevated railroad about four hundred meters from their location.
Agracia leapt over a pile of debris to find Bossy already hunkered down with a holographic map of the area. Skeins of ash swirled over their heads as they studied their surroundings.
“We didn’t have a map the last time we came here,” Agracia said, keeping her voice low, even though the helmet muffled much of the sound.
“Yeah, this is gorsh-shit anyway. Scale is whack, and half these buildings are dust now.”
Agracia took the hologram from Bossy. Shandin had given them all the information he had on the area, but the map he had provided was one from the first century post-war, when a band of humans had returned to Earth for the first of many failed recolonization efforts.
Shaking her head, Agracia turned the hologram over in her hands. The landscape had changed so drastically in 1,100 years that most of it would be unrecognizable to any pre-war human. Only buildings designed or reinforced with synthetic steels had survived the holocaust; the rest had become heaps of indiscernible rubble. Worse yet, bioweapons and radiation had destroyed nature’s usual methods of reclamation, but somehow a strain of mutated flora blossomed in the heart of the wasteland.
Red Polyps. Even the thought made her nose wrinkle. The Scabbers named the strange vegetation after the pungent plant’s crimson tinge, but Agracia thought they should have named it after the smell. What name did Bossy come up with? ‘Fart Factories?’ Heh. That’s much more accurate.
Smelling like rotten eggs, the plant-like creature grew in gnarled clumps in the cracked patches of poisoned Earth. Deeper in the Deadzone, closer to Ground Zero, it was widely whispered that the Red Polyps had stalks bigger than six-story buildings with massive, bloated heads the size of domed stadiums. Though they flourished around sites with heavy Necro activity, rumor had it that they were spreading beyond undead territory, fouling the air with their sulfuric stink.
Agracia hated them more than anything. Stepping on one was worse than getting stuffed in a dumpster for a week. The Polyps exploded on contact, befouling everything with their toxic stench, and their mushy purple insides didn’t scrub off easily. Even worse was breathing in the spores. Agracia had only seen a few cases of Redder Lung, but it was enough to keep her from ever risking exposure.
“Well, does that thick head of yours remember our old route?” Agracia said quietly, tossing the hologram into the blackened ash.
Bossy muffled her belch. “Yup. Betcha you forgot.”
“Ha, you wish, smartass.”
Lips curling up in an unsure half-smile, Agracia remembered the truth behind the lie. Her Scabber mother always told her she was a worthless imbecile, and she had a distinct memory of failing out of her pitiful dump of an Old Earth school. But after years of surviving the streets, she figured out she was smart enough to beat the odds and learned to believe in her own abilities.
Conversely, the Alliance had selected her because of her superior intelligence, and expectations were high from the start. After scoring leagues ahead of the other cadets in the CDP, the pressure was even greater. If it hadn’t been for her eidetic memory, the same one that helped her navigate the treacherous Pits of Old Earth, she would never have survived as long as she did.
A military genius in one life, a lucky bastard in another. The thought made her uncomfortable, and she immediately shifted her attention.
“We’d better get going,” Agracia said. She took back the gear, surprised at its weight. “What the hell did you add?”
“Some snacks.”
Agracia unzipped the main pouch and found the survival gear she had packed. It wasn’t until she unzipped the side pockets that she found Bossy’s stash of booze.
“Really?” Agracia said, holding up the bottle labeled Mississippi Diesel 999. Bossy must have really liked the booze brewed by Shandin’s thugs to lift an entire case of it.
Snatching it from her, Bossy stuffed it back in the bag. “For celebratin’ later. It’s good.”
Agracia could hear her licking her lips. “God, Bossy; it reeks like gasoline and witch hazel.”
“It was the purest sycha this side of the universe,” she said, hardly able to keep her voice down. “I was pissin’ fire!”
Agracia rolled her eyes. She considered tossing it out to lighten the load, but something stopped her. A memory, locked away somewhere deep, bubbled just beneath her grasp. Keep it, an unseen force urged her. She saw a flash of blue fire and heard an alarm wailing in the distance.
Unsure of what she remembered, but heeding the call of her instincts, she picked up a flat rock with a discoloration on one side. “Heads or tails for carrying the gear bag then, lush-head?” she said, turning over the rock for her to inspect.
Bossy pointed to the discolored side. “Tails. And loser buys all after this crap job is over.”
“Remember, you’re just a kid, okay?” Agracia jibed, flipping it up in the air.
“I’m not a kid!”
As they both waited for the rock to come back down from the mud-colored sky, an uncommon hush passed over, pricking Agracia’s senses. Something’s not right.
The rock clattered to the ground, rolling off into the tangle of railroad spikes and baseplates as both Agracia and Bossy instinctively dove for cover.
Agracia caught the sound of exploding Red Polyps and lifted her head.
“Four of ‘em. Big chakkers,” Bossy whispered, pointing to the north.
Up ahead, four lumbering Necros huddled over what looked like a freshly killed dog. She hated seeing anything or anybody get killed in the wasteland, but the critter population in the Pits was out of control, and if an animal wasn’t someone’s pet, meal, or fighting ring property, then they were usually released onto the surface. Even rats, the skilled survivors of mankind, didn’t stand a chance against the Necros and the wastelands.
She used to think it was stupid to continue to provide sustenance for the Necros, but many a whispered bar conversation suggested that the Necros survived on something other than animal scraps and the occasional unfortunate Jock. It made sense, too; the undead population remained strong, even after the post-war efforts to douse the cities with chemical fire.
“We can get around them while they feed,” Agracia said, grabbing the gear bag. Waves of disgust rippled up her throat. She swallowed hard, trying to keep her dinner of cat meal from filling her helmet. Watching Necros eat reminded her of the gore-fest horror movies Jade used to show them on something called a “DVD player.”
“Jeezus...” Bossy whispered.
Feeding like crazed animals, the undead tore into the dog, flinging chunks of hair and skin in every direction. Purulent fluid dripped from their porous, flexible mandibles.
Gross, she thought as the dog’s flesh sizzled. She didn’t see how the deranged skeletons with elongated limbs and translucent yellow skin could have possibly ever been human. If it wasn’t for the fine, bristled hair covering their bodies, their ugly mass of decomposing internal organs would be clearly visible.
One of the Necros bit a competitor, causing him to slink back and circle the group, waiting for his chance to feed.
That bastard looks like he’s in the advanced stages of decay.
His red eyes glistened wetly in deep sockets as he got down on all fours.
God I hate when they do that, she thought. Reminds me of spiders.
Old thoughts crossed her mind: How could it have come to this? What drove Josef Stein to unleash a scourge upon his own people?
Even when she was Agracia Waychild, uninterested in anything but booze and a good time, the same question somehow nettled its way under her skin. What could drive a man to destroy the world?
She thought about her experiences in the Command Development Program, but came up answerless. They wanted her to be a razor, a soulless, lethal tool of the military, but even as a lowly Scabber who killed often in the name of survival, she never crossed certain boundaries.
&nbs
p; Her thoughts came around to Urusous Li. It happened a long time ago, but Li was weak and wounded once—
And that’s when Unipoesa struck.
Maybe that’s what happened to Joseph Stein, she thought. Maybe that’s how monsters are made.
“Come on, let’s go,” Bossy said, interrupting her thoughts.
Agracia crouched down and followed her along the broken railroad track. Busy feeding, the Necros didn’t pick up their scent amidst the carnage.
We’re going to make it—
One of the Necros shrieked.
Oh chak—
Agracia poked her head over the lip of a baseplate. “What the hell?”
“Where’d they go?” Bossy said. The Necros had scattered, leaving the gutted carcass of the dog flapping in the breeze.
“Dunno,” Agracia said, lowering herself back down. “It’s like something scared them off—”
The words died at her lips as a massive shadow fell over her and her companion.
“Holy chak,” Bossy said, backing up against the wall. “That’s no four-legger.”
Agracia reached desperately for her sidearm as the hulking monster came into view. Not a regular Necro, the massive creature came straight out of her worst nightmares.
“It can’t be...” Bossy gulped.
A long-held Jock legend of the Deadzone spoke of Necros that congealed together to form massive, symbiotic creatures. The Scabbers called them Behemoths, but Agracia thought it was only a stupid rumor concocted by deadbeat Jocks who needed an excuse to avoid the tougher areas of the wastelands.
“Run!” Agracia shouted, grabbing the gear, but Bossy had already bolted for the next superstructure, leaping over the dog carcass while unslinging her 20-20s and whipping them at the monster.
Agracia shielded herself from the blasts as Bossy detonated her grenades. The Behemoth reared back on its hind legs, its roar like a peal of thunder.
Daring a quick look over her shoulder, Agracia picked up her pace. “Oh sycha—”
An unearthly beast with shimmering black skin, the Behemoth had opaque eyes set inside the deep recesses of its skull. She saw no teeth, only prickly nubs lining the pink gash that must have been its mouth. It spanned the size of a small building, with a collection of mangled arms and legs hanging from its bulky midsection.
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