by Peter Clines
There were about a dozen ships. Like Barry had said, the core was a trio of large ones. St. George tried to work up from the smaller boats on the edge to estimate size, and decided the tanker and cargo ship were each somewhere around twelve hundred feet long. The ship between them was a few hundred feet shorter, but loomed over the others.
The center one was a multidecked cruise ship, the kind Carnival or Disney sailed. There’d been a logo on one of the cruise ship’s big smokestacks, some kind of fish, but it had weathered away and left a blue blur. A thick carpet of dark green covered the top decks.
A cargo ship rested against the cruise ship on the side facing them. Two long staircases reached down from the cruise ship. Stacks of steel containers spotted its deck, and a dense garden covered the rest, just as Barry had said. At least two dozen people worked the plants and soil.
“The other side’s the oil tanker, right?” asked St. George.
Yeah. And there’s also a big stone foot with four toes.
“A what?”
“He’s doing the Lost thing again,” said Madelyn.
Come on, he said. How often am I going to get to make crazy island references?
They swung to the right and circled around. There was a large yacht alongside the front of the cargo ship, and an industrial-looking fishing boat with a pair of cranes crossed in front of both of them. Boarding planks and ropes stretched between the ships, and across to a larger but less elegant yacht alongside the fishing boat that extended across the cruise ship’s bow.
People on the deck of the cargo ship pointed. The wind caught shouts and cries and carried fragments of them up to the heroes. More figures appeared at the railings of the cruise ship, and some ran out of the yachts.
I see guns, said Zzzap. Shotguns. A few pistols.
“Yeah, I see them too,” said St. George. They swung around the front of the ships and headed behind the island. Many of the people scrambled along to keep them in sight. “Looks like some people have weapons. Two or three on one guy, nothing on the people around them.”
“Maybe they don’t have any exes to deal with,” said Madelyn. “Not everybody at the Mount carries a gun.”
Fair point.
On the far side of the cruise ship was the oil tanker. It faced the opposite direction from the cruise ship, so its tall bridge and towers blocked their view of its deck. The heroes sailed around and saw the long expanse stretching out alongside the cruise ship. More people were here tending to another long garden spread out across the deck. St. George noticed a raised slab at the far end of the tanker. A bright white-and-yellow target spread across the slab, and it took him a moment to recognize it as a helipad.
Small ships ran along the side of the tanker. A yacht-sized boat. The tugboat Barry had mentioned. Another fishing boat. They were connected by planks and walkways at odd angles.
“I don’t mean to sound all bitchy,” said Madelyn, “but this place is kind of a dump, isn’t it?”
Once she said it, more of the little details leaped out at him. Ropes and chains ran back and forth between the vessels like a dyslexic spiderweb. Blankets and sheets hung from railings on all the ships, making small lean-tos and tents. Alongside the elegant gangways from the cruise ship, there were extension ladders braced between the different vessels.
About two hundred people watched them from the assorted decks. St. George saw male and female faces. Most of them looked thin, but none of them seemed unhealthy.
He looked over at Zzzap. “You see anything we should know about before we land?”
The gleaming wraith shook his head. Kind of a big lack of stuff. The only major heat sources look like campfires. No electrical currents here at all. No batteries. No radio signals. No solar cells anywhere, unless they’re covered. He shrugged. There might just be a lot of stuff belowdecks. All the layers of metal make it tough to see.
Madelyn craned her neck as they flew. “If they’ve got campfires, what are they burning for firewood?”
“Seaweed, I think,” said St. George. “Or kelp, maybe? They’re drying a bunch of it on a couple of the ships.”
I’ve always wondered, said Zzzap, is there a difference between kelp and seaweed?
“I don’t know, to be honest.”
“Kelp’s a type of seaweed,” said Madelyn. “Didn’t you guys ever take a biology class?”
You can remember that but not why you woke up in a life raft?
She shrugged.
St. George nodded. “Okay, then. Where do we land?”
“I think there was a helipad back on the oil tanker,” said Madelyn. “It had more seaweed on it, but I think that’s what it was.”
They continued around the cluster of ships and swooped down toward the helipad. St. George’s boots hit the slab. Madelyn unhooked herself and bounced on the tarmac. “Oh, wow,” she said. She took a few stiff steps and shook her legs out. “Oh, solid ground feels good.” She reached back and pulled one foot up toward her shoulder blades. One of her joints popped.
St. George sniffed the air. “Is it just me, or does it smell…bad?”
The wraith waved a hand at his head. I can’t smell anything.
Madelyn sucked in a deep breath through her nostrils. “I smell…something,” she said. “My nose doesn’t always work that great anymore. Sorry.”
Hey, people coming, said Zzzap. He floated a few feet higher into the air. Looks like…well, everybody.
“Anybody with weapons?”
A couple of them. Maybe half a dozen?
Madelyn went to push her goggles up onto her forehead, but St. George waved her to stop. “Hold off showing them your eyes for now,” he said. “Let’s get a better feel for everyone here first.”
She gave him a quick salute. “Yes, sir.”
“Don’t joke around too much,” he told her. “You can be friendly, but remember we don’t know how long these people have been cut off out here. We might be the first strangers they’ve seen in years.”
“Okay,” she said. “Sorry.” She prodded one of the seaweed piles with her boot.
“Don’t be. I’d just love to do one of these that doesn’t involve gunfire.”
This is going to be it, Zzzap said. Did you see how excited all those people were to see us? There’s no way this could go wrong.
“Did you actually just say that out loud?”
Yeah, but I just said it to be funny, so we’re safe. Don’t worry.
They heard the clang of feet on metal stairs, and people came streaming up either side of the pad. They hung back as more bodies spilled onto the tarmac. Their clothes weren’t ragged, but were very well worn.
They were all lean. St. George remembered that lack of body fat from the first year of the Mount. Enough food to survive, but nobody worried about gaining weight.
The crowd and the heroes exchanged glances.
“Hi,” called out St. George. He raised a hand to the dozens of people looking at him.
Then a handful of them marched forward. A tall, heavily built black man with a thick beard. A big, square-shouldered woman with short, dark hair. A bald man with a biker beard and nicks and scabs across his scalp. A wiry woman with strawberry blond hair and leathery skin.
The two men and the leather-skinned woman swung shotguns up to cover the heroes. The dark-haired woman pulled a pair of pistols. More weapons appeared back in the crowd.
“Dammit,” St. George muttered.
Wow. Okay, I guess I shouldn’t’ve said anything.
DANIELLE CHECKED THE bolts for a third time. “Okay,” she said, “I think it’s ready.”
They’d put the exoskeleton together in the small courtyard of the main building. A dusty soda machine that had long since been emptied stood off to the side, next to a wall-mounted first aid kit that had been refilled with some basics. Danielle had wanted to do the initial start-up inside, but Cesar and Gibbs both pointed out the room had standard-sized doors.
The Cerberus Mark II battlesuit stood almost
nine feet tall. Without the armor plates, it reminded Danielle of an old man or woman, a bony thing robbed of its vitality. It was a gaunt framework of exposed wiring and components. At more than a few points it was possible to see straight through it, past cables and pistons and load-bearing struts to the sunlit walls of the courtyard. A few wire loops sagged out around the forearms and calves, and Gibbs tucked them back in, making sure they weren’t endangered by gears or hinges. He held out his hand, and Cesar put a roll of electrical tape in it.
Danielle looked up at the battlesuit’s head. The helmet had been finished, but still lacked an armored faceplate. Two large round lenses dominated the gaping hole. The speakers were a set of blocks at the bottom of the opening.
Cerberus hadn’t been whole for almost a year. She hadn’t been strong for a year. A year of being weak and defenseless.
A clang from outside made her tense up. Voices laughed and mocked each other. The Unbreakables had a bunch of barbells, dumbbells, and a bench outside, under the big canopy just outside the courtyard. At least three of them were there working out at any given time. Danielle wasn’t sure where the weights had come from, although she was going to be pissed if she found out later she’d only been allowed one tool chest because they’d brought gym equipment from the Mount.
She walked around and checked the rear camera. It had its raised protective ring, but not the housing that blocked rain and larger objects. The leg joints were exposed, too. Cerberus had always been a “face front” machine, but in this state a six-year-old with a sharp stick could cripple it from behind. She reached down and brushed some imaginary dust from the right knee.
Gibbs watched her move around the titan while he taped an errant bundle of cables in place inside the thigh. “You sure?”
Danielle glanced at Cesar, then took in a slow breath. She looked the battlesuit in its eyes. “Yeah. Let’s bring it online.”
Cesar rubbed his hands together. Gibbs followed a line of cables back to the laptop on a courtyard picnic table. He flicked at the track pad a few times, tapped a few keys, and hit ENTER.
A tremor washed over the exoskeleton as dozens of servomotors and gyros powered up. Tiny lights flickered throughout the battlesuit. The gray circles of the lenses lit up, then surged to full brilliance.
Cesar shrugged his sweatshirt up and pulled it over his head. Underneath was a tight spandex shirt, the type of thing worn by cyclists. Two different shades of green swooshed back and forth across his chest. He tossed the sweatshirt on the picnic table bench and peeled off his driving gloves. His scars were bright pink against his palms.
Danielle looked at the shirt. “What’s with the green?”
“You like it?” He flexed his arms, then set his fists against his hips. “I’m thinking this could be my uniform, y’know?”
“Your uniform?” echoed Gibbs.
“You know, bro, like, my costume. My super-suit. If I’m stepping up like this, I got to look the part, right? Green for go, like driving. Get it?”
“You know,” Gibbs said with a smile, “thanks for the reminder. Every now and then I forget how young and stupid you are.”
Danielle coughed. “You don’t think all the green’s maybe a little…tacky?”
Cesar looked at her. “What’s tacky about green?”
“About green? Nothing.” Danielle pushed her chin up, but still stood two inches shorter than him. “About gang colors? I think there’s still some people who might have a problem with that.”
“Been years since the Seventeens went down,” said Cesar. He reached up and touched his sleeve. Danielle and Gibbs had both seen the tattoo there. Cesar didn’t show it off, but he also never went out of his way to hide it. “Can’t keep judging people off the past. Or ’cause they’re wearing a color.”
Danielle shook her head. “Seeing green still makes a lot of people nervous.”
“It’s a color. That’s all.” He smiled. “I’m takin’ it back. From here on in, people see green they’re going to think of the Driver.”
“Oh, Jesus,” muttered Gibbs. He turned his attention back to the laptop.
Danielle smiled. “Please just stop talking and get in the suit.”
Cesar winked at her, and her stomach flopped. She couldn’t keep being friendly with him. She had to keep a good, professional distance.
He stepped forward and set both of his scarred hands against the battlesuit’s chest. Static electricity sparked between his fingers and the metal, and the sparks grew into long arcs that twisted up his arm and around the exoskeleton. There was a flash of light, a tiny thunderclap, and Cesar vanished.
Cerberus jerked up. “Ow!” wailed the speakers. The battlesuit hopped on one leg as the hands reached down to grab its shin. “Owww! Left foot, left foot!”
“Watch the leg!” snapped Danielle. “Let go. And stop moving.”
The skeletal titan straightened up and lowered the leg. Metal toes tapped on the concrete again and again. “Oh, jeeeez, that hurts,” said the battlesuit. “Something down in the foot. I think it’s some kind of…crystal? Feels like I got a splinter in my toe.”
“One of the piezoelectric sensors,” muttered Danielle. She glanced over at Gibbs. “Take fourteen through twenty-six off-line, all the evens.”
Gibbs’s fingers danced on the keyboard, and Cerberus sighed. “Ahhhh,” said the exoskeleton. “Thanks, bro.”
“Bring ’em up one at a time,” she said.
The keyboard clicked and clicked and clicked and Cesar yelped.
“Flag it,” she said. “I think we’ve got two spares up here, right?”
“Yep,” said Gibbs as he scribbled on a notepad.
She looked the exoskeleton in the eyes. “Anything else?”
The metal toes hinged up and down. The fingers flexed. The whir of the servos seemed loud without the armor muffling it. “Think we’re good,” said the battlesuit.
She waved at his arm. “Up.” The power cable was still plugged into the exoskeleton’s hip. She gave it a firm twist and unhooked it. The glowing lenses flickered for an instant, and the battlesuit gave her a thumbs-up.
While the teams had been setting the garden up, they’d stripped dozens of solar panels from nearby homes. The roof of the main building was covered with them, as was part of the outside canopy, the greenhouse, and the big steel storage shed. Cerberus would be sucking up four-fifths of Eden’s electricity every day. Not great, but it was only for a week.
The battlesuit took a few steps. Its toes chimed on the concrete. Then it took a few more, ducked its head through the door, and stepped out beneath the canopy. Danielle and Gibbs followed.
The canopy had been a shade area once, forty-odd yards of netting spread between six steel poles, where gardeners met to trade cuttings and seedlings and composting tips. Now a baker’s dozen of crates were stored between the storage shed and the weather-beaten greenhouse. A weapons rack had been set up to hold a squad’s worth of rifles. The canopy area looked like any one of half a dozen military depots seen on the news or in movies. Back when there were news programs and movies.
A weight bench sat just past the crates with a stack of iron plates. The Unbreakables stopped their workout to look at Cerberus as it stepped out under the canopy. Kennedy stood nearby with a set of huge dumbbells. Sergeant Johnson let the barbell clang down against the rests and grinned up at the exoskeleton. Truman gave a thumbs-up. “Good to see that up and moving again,” he said.
Cerberus managed a loose salute that got a few smirks. The battlesuit took a few more steps, its half-armored head brushing against the canopy, and then it was out in the sunlight. The brightness turned cables into curved lines, supports into thin shadows.
Once again, it struck Danielle how many places she could see through the titan.
She took a few steps of her own but stopped at the edge of the building. Any farther and she’d see the chain-link fence off to her left. Bad enough she could hear it from here. The sound of clicking teeth was much cl
earer outside, like a swarm of enamel crickets. She could see the fence in front of her, too, another long section backed by wooden planks. If she stared at it for a few seconds, she could see flickers of movement between the boards.
She focused on the battlesuit. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t get cocky. You’re strong, but you’re not as solid as you’re used to being.”
“Feels solid,” said the exoskeleton.
“You’re not going to fall apart, but be careful if you run into something or try to hit it with your arm instead of your fist. Just remember, everything’s exposed.”
The battlesuit nodded. “Anything else?”
“Keep an eye on the power levels. You should get a little more battery life because you’re not carrying around all the armor, but you don’t want to get stuck somewhere.”
“Got it.”
“I’ll go with him over to the fence line,” said Gibbs. “We’ll get in a long walk before dark, see if I spot anything in the stride once he gets moving.”
Danielle nodded. “Good. Let me know.”
He glanced up at the lenses. “Here we go. Don’t screw up.”
“Hey, don’t worry about me, bro.”
They walked off together. Gibbs had to take long, limping steps to keep up with the exoskeleton. His mechanical foot scraped in the gravel, its gears whisking as it moved. He was never going to wear the Cerberus suit again. His foot was the wrong shape, and its materials wouldn’t react with the sensors the same way. At best, the battlesuit would have a severe limp when he wore it. At worst…
A hand touched Danielle’s shoulder, and she bit back a scream. The muscles there knotted up. Her arms tensed.
“Looks like a dinosaur,” said Kennedy.
“Sorry?”
“The foot you built him. It looks kind of like a dinosaur, doesn’t it? Long toes in the front, short one in the back.”
