Future Reborn Box Set

by Daniel Pierce

  “Then cover it again but use rocks to weigh down the camouflage and leave it behind. We can move faster without it,” I said, imagining myself tied to the cart like an ox. I didn’t like the idea of my first waking days spent working like a beast of burden, especially when I was grieving.

  It was a low hum in my mind, but I felt the loss. I knew my life—and my world, really—was gone forever, but I’d been alone before going into the tube, so my current situation was little more than a giant leap forward. I didn’t have a family to miss. I didn’t mourn for the earth because it was still here, even if in a different form. As to a crushing sense of loss, it wasn’t there, and I was okay with that. The bones of my life had been buried for a long time, and I had more pressing issues to deal with than letting myself be taken over by senseless grief.

  “Jack?” I heard Mira’s voice pulling me out of my haze, so I turned to see her watching me. Bel stood quietly, head tilted.

  “Just thinking. There’s a lot of my life underneath this sand.”

  “Almost all of it, except the important part,” Mira told me with a brilliant smile.

  “And a lot of it is valuable. We could dig here for the rest of our lives if we wanted to,” I said, but the words rang hollow. I didn’t sleep away the years to become a scavenger. I had to look around and decide what was next once we arrived at the trading post. I’d done my share of digging as a Marine. There was no need to die with a shovel in my hand, not with a world filled with opportunity and women like Mira and Bel.

  “But you don’t want to?” Mira asked.

  I shook my head. “No need. Not if we find Hightec that works. I suspect things have fallen apart enough that some tech applied in the right area can make a life for us.” I wondered about the conditions in the trading post, recalling what I saw previously in villages during my tours overseas.

  “The post is not as orderly as the city, but still better than out here,” Bel said.

  “How far is the city?” I wondered if it was an actual city or just occupied ruins.

  “From the post? Five days in clear weather. The road is usually clear, and there’s water all along it. You wish to go?” Bel asked, and there was something hopeful in her voice.

  “Who waits in the city for you, Bel?” I asked, and she blushed.

  “Not a person,” she admitted, but her smile was shy. “A thing.”

  “She likes the concert, where we can dance. It’s a bit different than out here. No masks, no armor. We can relax, well, not completely, but a little more than on the dunes,” Mira said as her sister grinned.

  I tried to picture the curvy Bel dancing and liked the thought. Shaped like a teenage boy’s ideal woman, she had large, round breasts and plush hips; whereas Mira was taller, with higher breasts and long legs. I admired them both and considered the presence of culture in the city. That meant humanity hadn’t gone all the way down, no matter what it seemed like out here in the Empty.

  “There are buildings in the city? Old buildings?” I asked, watching Bel’s hand move with mechanical precision. While we were talking, she worked the blue cloth into a serviceable rucksack with two straps. Handing it over to me, she strained to lift it with both hands. In only my one hand, it was feather light, swinging up on my shoulders without any effort. I’d been strong before, if a little tired and worn, but now my muscles were something more, and this was the third sign my body was something new to be reckoned with.

  “Are we ready?” I asked. There was little evidence of our camp except for the fresh sand, and we were careful to smooth out the piles from our excavations. In hours, the wind would scour away any signs we were here at all.

  “We are. Bel, to the east.” Mira pointed, and we began our trek, but not before Mira handed me two long blades. They were heavier than machetes but well balanced in their hide scabbards. “Put these on your hip mounts. When you’ve got the pack, you can’t carry them on your shoulders, which is how most fighters do, but your belt will have to work for now. These are yours.” She looked at Bel, who nodded in agreement. “We needed to know if you were going to stay before giving you something this valuable. Hightec we can find, but these blades are hard to get.”

  “And you think I’m safe now?” I asked her.

  “No, I don’t. I think you’re a dangerous man who doesn’t really know who he is, but we are not worried.” Mira pointed to the Empty. “That place should worry.”

  “And the post too,” Bel added.

  We were walking along a sandy ridge, tailing away from the ruins into the east. The sun was brutal, but I’d felt worse, and the hike would be a chance to learn. “You said ogres would pull the cart, but I don’t see any. Where would you find them?”

  “Over this next ridge is an oasis. There will be ogres and all manner of things since we have salt,” Mira said.

  I didn’t understand. “Salt? To trade for ogres?”

  “No, to hire them. They can understand some things, and they need salt,” Mira replied. She pulled a chunk of salt out of her own pack; the crystals gleaming rose and brown in the sunlight. “For this much salt, we can hire one or two ogres to pull the cart. They work for things, if not money. I’m not sure they understand what coins are, but again, they need salt.”

  “They like coins, but they’re just pretty things to them,” Bel said over her shoulder. As she spoke, the oasis came into view. It had been a short walk away from the ruins all along, hidden by the ridge we walked on.

  Cacti and other living things, all huddled near the blue scar of water that reflected the sky. There were also several birds, both flying and walking. Something splashed in the water, then dove, leaving enormous ripples that broke the glassy surface.

  “Try your knives,” Mira suggested.

  “Think I’ll need them?” I snapped the two blades out, feeling the balance. I’d always liked knives, but these were something special. It was the weight. Heftier at the points, and sharp as an ex-wife’s tongue. The handles were black wood, bound in strips of leather and secured with hammered metal caps. The blades were stainless, their edges bright. I tried out a few cuts with them, splitting the air in a way I’d never done before. The velocity of each blade made the air whistle, and I was careful to keep my swings under control. Inwardly, I hoped I would need them. They were created to cut, and my new muscles were built to use. I suspected this new life was going to demand a lot of both from me.

  “I know you will. The question is when,” Mira replied. Without speaking, we approached the oasis, and I felt the uncertainty and dread of the past days falling away. I had never seen this place, but I still knew it. I understood danger, and the desert had been a hard lesson for me in my earlier life.

  That didn’t mean I wasn’t at home in the dunes. In a way, I was. I knew that everything from the land to the people could kill me, and everything was a negotiation. I felt the new motion of my knee, long wounded, and the smooth pull of a body that was better than anything I’d ever known. Mira and Bel lived in a world of disorder, but I didn’t have to. As we approached the water, I made my decision.

  I would be my own order. I would begin with the ground under my feet. “Are there usually people here?” I asked. There was activity, but nothing like I would expect at a clean water source. The silence was heavy; the shores abandoned. As the ripples died in the water, there was no motion at all.

  “I don’t know,” Bel said, her voice cautious. She felt it too, whatever had me geeked and pulling my eyes in a constant sweep across the gritty shore. Mira grunted, hands twitching near her knives.

  The sand erupted near Bel, pitching skyward in a spray of chaff and clattering noise as something came out for dinner. I saw scales and teeth and coal-black eyes, but the creature was moving so fast, I couldn’t get a fix on exactly what it was, only that it was a predator, low and fast.

  Bel was silent as she whirled, her reaction faster than anyone I’d served with. She struck down with her blade, severing the three talons that reached for her at t
he end of a long, grasping hand. Rewarded with a roar of pain, Bel kept turning through her cut, stabbing upward into the side of the howling beast. Mira’s own blade took the thing in a thick shoulder, the muscle parting like silk as she slashed vertically to reveal white tissue and bulging yellow fat.

  The golden crocodile ran with dry sand, clotting into red mud as the two wounds became three, then four. The sisters continued to work down the twenty-foot length of the beast, until the fifth cut made it quiver, freeze, then go slack in death.

  My left knife drove through the cavernous skull into the sand below, grinding in a shock up my arm. A membrane flickered over the monster’s eyes before it died, and for good measure, I drew my right knife with slow deliberation, sliding it sideways into the drum-like ear on the side of its golden head. Although I wasn’t breathing hard, I wasn’t unscathed either.

  “Jack,” Mira said, her eyes wide with concern. “Your leg.”

  I looked down. “What about—oh. You have a point.”

  My leg was in the mouth of the beast; three teeth were punching through my skin and into the muscle. Hissing, I drew the jaw away with my right hand, watching for any signs of life—I’d take the entire head off if I had to. My leg came alive with hot pain as the nerves did their job, sending a message to my brain. You were bit, dumbass.

  Blood dripped from my leg onto the sand, but I was more interested in the croc. It was bigger than anything from my time, pristine and polished from a life in the desert. It looked more mechanical than alive, but I knew it was real because the blood seeping from its cuts was the same color as mine, only just a lot more of it to go around.

  “Nice strike,” Bel said with a grin. My blade was covered in a thin coat of blood and broken scales all the way to the hilt. I didn’t remember moving, but a quick look at the sand told me I’d gone ten steps in three seconds. Not bad for a broken-down Marine.

  “What do we do with it?” I asked. In the Empty, I figured everything had a purpose—even this bag of meat with fangs. I’d never eaten croc, but why not if it wasn’t poisonous? The hide alone could make a sail, and I idly considered how to go about skinning the big bastard before it could rot.

  I looked down at my leg, which still had holes from the beast’s teeth in it. The pain had settled by now, which surprised me. Was this the result of my nanobots? Were they healing me?

  “Same thing it tried to do to Bel,” Mira said. She drew a smaller knife, spun it in her hands, and made a long slash along the bulging shoulder. “Enough meat here to feed a village, but we’ll just take the best parts.” She paused for a moment, although I barely noticed. My eyes were still on my leg. “Are you okay?”

  “Huh?” I asked, blinking. “Oh, yeah. My leg is fine, I think.”

  “Not many can take a blow like that and say such things,” she told me.

  “My body heals pretty quickly,” I said, although I still wasn’t entirely sure about any of this. “Anyway, probably tastes like chicken. The meat, I mean.”

  She eyed my leg but then nodded and continued cutting away at a steak the size of a manhole cover. My stomach rumbled. The smell of blood should have repulsed me, but I all could think about was barbecue. I guess my nap didn’t civilize me completely. “What are those horns?” I pointed to a small pair of knobs over each eye. They looked decorative, but if they had been bigger, the creature could use them to slash at enemies like a reaper.

  “Female. They get broody in the early wet season, and it’s even less safe to be around them. They don’t play well with others then,” Mira said grimly, cutting away another scarlet strip of lean meat.

  “They’re never good with anyone, especially when they have young. Too late in the year for that,” Bel said. She was working on removing the talons from each foot. The hooked ivory was five inches long and black as a night sky, ending in a serrated curve. They resembled teeth in every way except their position.

  “Do they live in the sand or close to the water?” I asked. I’d never seen a desert crocodile, but then, this wasn’t my world.

  “Close to the water during breeding, but further out for the rest of the year. They burrow to the cooler sand. They don’t feed often,” Bel said, grinning as she popped the last claw free. “These are good for trade. Or killing.” The sand gave way under her right foot, making her slip and spill several of the gory prizes into the sand. “Sand’s not stable here. She’s been digging—”

  The male croc blasted upward, clamping his huge jaws on Bel’s thigh with a wet crunch. She twisted, bringing her knife down with wicked speed, opening a long gash across the croc’s eyes even as she screamed in raw agony. Her leg collapsed at a right angle as the weight of the beast took her down, flailing in the sand like a rag doll.

  I jumped, knives out and flashing before her scream could end. Mira was alongside me, a howl of rage erupting from her as Bel reached out to us with a hand going limp. Her leg parted at the thigh, and the croc shook its head like a dog with a rat. Blood flew through the air in a red mist as I reached the croc, my leap ending on the wide back in between its powerful front legs. It was ten feet longer than the female, thicker and more muscled, and it had horns that whispered as they cut through the air. One of the brow horns smashed into Mira, hurling her upward in a sodden heap. I knew she was knocked back by the blow, and my mind raced through the possibilities of saving Bel from blood loss.

  If I could kill the croc.

  My first blade went home in the throat, sliding out through the ear like a gunshot as the taut membrane snapped. Silky fluid shot over my arm, hot and reeking of carrion. I’d cut into the mouth, a huge space filled with teeth and parts of earlier prey.

  The croc tried to turn, but I straddled the head between those wicked horns, stabbing down with muscles that screamed for vengeance. Mira got back in the fight, leaning on both blades as she punched down into the spine, but her cuts were off center, and the monster kept moving, thrashing with a fury that churned sand and blood into a jellied war zone.

  “Mira, get off! Get your sister!” I bellowed, my throat tight as I strained to force my second knife into the monster’s mouth. I was going up through the mouth to the brain, or I was going to lose an arm trying. She couldn’t hear me over the demonic hissing, but when she saw me waving her off, the message got through. Mira lunged for her sister and dragged her away in a frenzied roll, tearing at her leathers to make a tourniquet before they even stopped moving.

  I refocused on the monster underneath me, putting the knives together for another try at boring into the giant skull.

  I didn’t see the tail come around, but it hit me like a falling tree. Stars flooded my sight as I rolled down the pebbled back of the monster, coming to a stop when I dug a knife into the soft tissue near its hip. The cut set off another round of hysterics, throwing me toward the sand where the air left my chest in a thunderous whoosh.

  “Fucking lizards,” I wheezed. My vision was utter shit, but I could see the croc filling my line of sight. I brought both knives forward in a stab that pierced the leg, then snapped the blades in opposite directions like shears. My blood hummed with newfound power, every one of my muscles burning with purpose. When the blades hit bone, I didn’t take no for an answer because I had plenty of fuel in the tank. I cranked hard on the knives, and the croc screamed.

  The leg came free except for a silver tendon, as shards of bone gave way to the power of my enhanced body. “Fuck. You.” My hiss was unheard by the croc, who was suddenly more concerned with getting away from what should have been an easy kill. “Not so fast,” I growled, standing with some effort. I wobbled, then caught myself in time before the croc could flee.

  Mira worked on Bel with zeal, tying her leg even as blood continued to spurt from each pump of her sister’s mighty heart. Rage cooked off in me again, a pure kind of hate I hadn’t felt in years, and I let it wash over me to drive my legs like pistons in the collapsing sand.

  “Time to pay, fucker.” The croc limped on three legs, losing mo
re blood than I’d ever seen in one place, but still not enough for me. I positioned my blades near the heart, then drove them forward without mercy.

  I’d been strong before the sleep, but this sensation was something entirely new, and my arms jabbed forward without resistance. The heavy blades punched through the hide with a snapping sound, one grating against a rib before sliding past to plunge all the way through the beating heart. Crimson shot out in a wild spray, and I had to duck, but the loops of blood went overhead to land on the sand and roll like glass beads, collecting in a depression where the croc’s feet had churned a rut. The monster shivered once and fell still, the hide flickering with dying messages from a brain that didn’t know it was dead yet.

  “Jack,” Mira said. Her voice was low and urgent. There were tears in her eyes, but the set of her jaw was firm. Even from a short distance, I could see Bel was fading, if not already dead.

  I slid to their side, dropping my blades in the sand and looking Bel over. The leg was gone, tied off well but still a massive injury to survive in these conditions. She was dying before my eyes, and it was blood loss, shock, and fear taking over, her green eyes focusing on something in the distance.

  Bel’s lips moved in silent protest, then I heard her whisper, “Not like this.”

  But it was like that. She died in Mira’s arms, and the world I’d known for a short time took its first victim as Bel’s head lolled to one side, blood pooling on her white teeth. Mira coughed a noise so filled with pain, I reached out to hold her shoulder, if only to keep her from falling into the sand, following her sister to wherever Bel had gone.

  “You have to stay,” I said. I’d seen this before, and there was nothing to be done for the dead. That’s the lie we tell ourselves. That they care how hard we grieve—they don’t. Only the people left behind care about what happens next, and in Mira’s case, that was me. A man from another time who saw a world as full of danger as anything that ever existed, and who had a lot to learn about how to survive. I spat in the sand, pissed at the stupidity of it all. Bel had been quiet, funny, tough. She worked hard and with a purpose, was beautiful and oddly kind in moments of silence. Seeing her there on the ground made me grind my teeth together in the kind of anger that got people killed. I had to fight back a curtain of red that descended over my eyes, clearing the rage away with long breaths that eventually let me regain some kind of control over anger that I knew would come in handy in this brutal new reality I called home.