Future Reborn Box Set

by Daniel Pierce

  We sat there until the locals came out, hesitant but then bold once they saw the dead crocs. One man came close, his ragged face hopeful as he licked his lips while switching his gaze from me, to Mira, to Bel, and then back to the crocs.

  “Cut them up and take them to your people,” I told him. There was no sense in further waste. He bowed low, backing away and waving to unseen people who emerged from hiding places to descend on the beasts. In minutes, a horde of quiet robed figures easily broke down the giant creatures, carrying away limbs, a whole tail, and other parts with practiced ease. They would eat well, even if they hadn’t earned the kill. I held no grudge, despite Bel’s sticky blood being warm on my palms.

  “Do you bury the dead to honor them?” I asked Mira.

  “Yes.” One word, heavy with torn emotion.

  “How?”

  “Deep,” she answered, never taking her eyes from Bel’s face. It was slack and still, and growing pale in that curious way humans do when the soul is gone.

  “I’ll dig. I know the spot.” I stood, retrieving my blades and a shovel, walking a short distanced to a giant split rock that had a river of sand running through the middle. I tore at the ground, opening a hole that grew deeper than my head, as each angry stroke of the shovel cut into the pale ground not seen by the sun in a long time. The day was fading now, light angled to throw hard shadows over me and the grave. Mira hadn’t moved, but I saw her drink from the skin, wiping her mouth with a bloody hand. She would survive, even if she didn’t feel like it.

  “Want me to take her?” I asked, holding my hands out wide, palms up.

  “I want her face up, to the stars. She always loved the night sky.”

  “Then she will see the stars forever,” I said, lifting the small woman’s body with my arms. I held her like glass, strolling to let Mira keep pace as she stumbled on grieving legs.

  I lowered Bel into the ground, and the shadows covered her first, then the dirt. We put flat rocks over her at intervals, pressing her into the ground to sleep away the rest of time, her bones back where they started.

  “She was always scared of dragons when we were little girls,” Mira said. The first stars were rising—Venus brightest among them. Some things were the same, but very few.

  Dragons were real in this world, and they took lives. Bel had been right to fear them all along. “What else is here, Mira?”

  She looked at the dark shapes still working on the diminished crocs. Their robes fluttered in the last breeze of the day as they made the monsters disappear. “The Empty has enough ways to kill you that I could never learn them all. Serpents, beasts, flying predators. Insects the size of wolves, storms, lightning, and heat.” She let her eyes drift over the grave, shaking her head in disgust. “Teeth. Claws. Everything has so much more than we do. It’s only a matter of time, but we had no choice. We had to be out here, in this shithole of a place, because the city and post are run by criminals who turn women into slaves for their own profit.”

  “I thought you chose this life?” I asked. The beginnings of a new anger rose within me, heating my skin despite the setting sun.

  “It was no choice at all. We came out here to avoid Wetterick and his fighters, along with their endless violence. If he hadn’t gotten us, it would have been the Lady and her house. I won’t live as a slave, but dying free is just as painful.” She fought a sob, leaning into me in a small motion. “Worse.”

  “Who is the Lady?” I asked, as I put an arm around her, and some of the hardness melted away, leaving a pliable woman who needed someone to hold her just then.

  “Lady Silk. She’s the lesser of two evils if you believe her. She takes women from all over and turns them into whores. Well-fed whores with fine dress, but still objects of pleasure. They’re loaned to caravans for pleasure, serving stinking men who cross the distance between the post and city in an endless loop, drunk on money and wine.”

  “She tried to recruit you and Bel?”

  “More like steal. We were too fast, too dangerous. We ran hard and straight into the Empty six years ago, building our life out here by scavenging. When we came back to resupply, we were too wild for the Lady and her customers. They like docile women, and when they don’t obey, they beat the spirit out of them.” She laughed, a bitter sound I knew well from talking to people who lived under warlords. Their stories were different, but the shame and anger were always the same. “Never the face, though. They always protect the face to keep them pretty, both boys and girls.”

  I could feel my blood cooking as she went on, ripples of anger making my hands twitch with emotion that took me by surprise. I’d never been good around assholes who took advantage of the weak, and I was starting to see a pattern. I’d woken up in the future, but it shared a lot of the worst qualities with the distant past.

  “How do Wetterick and Silk run the post? Do they split control?” I asked. We were going to the post, and I needed to know the power structure. I had some ideas about how it might shift.

  “Wetterick is the muscle. He’s a soft asshole, but he has fighters who do his dirty work for him. The Lady owns something a lot more important, and no matter what, he can’t get rid of her or take control. He’s been trying for years, but he can’t, so they have a kind of agreement, if you can call it that,” she said. Her words were pure disgust.

  “What does she own? Is it booze? Drugs? What fuels the post?” I asked. I had a lot to learn in a brief time if we were going there.

  “Something a lot more valuable than wine or smoke. Secrets.” A bitter smile twisted her perfect lips. She was even beautiful in the middle of terrible grief and anger.

  “That makes sense.” I knew men would say damn near anything in bed. It was an old trick to use women as spies, but what information could be worth that much in this time? It seemed like clean water was more valuable than anything else, but there was a lot left to see. I’d only been in one corner of a great fried desert, so my conclusions were flawed at best. “What kind of secrets?”

  “Mostly about trade and the city. It’s too big for one person to control, and there are a lot of smaller posts around it in a circle. Scavengers bring news of finds, and tribes on the move, even war, but everything comes back to keeping the caravans safe. If the goods get through without much loss, people like Wetterick get richer. When he gains power, the city gets stronger, and people like me get pushed a little farther out from the rewards. He can charge for things like water, safety, and even the right to use roads that are older than anyone can remember. Lady Silk knows things before Wetterick, and people trust her, even if she is a snake in fine threads,” she said. “The creature thinks she’s a spider in her web, and that all threads run to her.” Mira’s lips turned down in an angry curve, and I felt mine do the same.

  “Do you want to go to the post tonight?” I asked. The moon was already high enough that it would be easy to travel. Deserts were better at night, but I didn’t trust the Empty. Not after burying Bel.

  “In the morning. Can we stay with her tonight?” Mira asked, staring at her sister’s grave. The rock soared above us on either side, funneling a breeze past. It was cooler now, and the desert had gone silent except for an odd howl in the distance.

  “We can, and we will. I’ll make camp. You stay here, watch over her,” I said as Mira’s shoulders rounded with relief. It was best to let her grieve in her own way. You could never shape anyone else’s pain, not if you wanted them to be free of it later on.

  Together, we sat watching as the stars wheeled overhead. In my head, I wrote a list of things this world needed. Things I could do to help.

  And to harm.

  Mira fell asleep against me, her body soft and warm. I could feel her breath on my neck, steady and restful. In the morning, I would change my mission. Survival was fine, but it was a losing bet. We would go to the post, and I’d look for an opportunity to assert force from outside the system like we’d done in the small villages during my years in the Marines. One crack in their wall
s, one chance would be all I’d need to punch through and find a way to keep this woman safe, along with other people I’d never met.

  Like me, the post was about to go through some changes, and I knew right where to start.

  7

  An hour past dawn, we walked together through a silent desert, Mira lost in her thoughts as we put distance between ourselves and Bel’s grave.

  “How far to the post?” I asked, handing her a skin after a long drink. The sun was already punishing; climbing high and white into the unbroken blue sky.

  She looked ahead, hesitation on her face. “It’s close, but...we should see traders by now. I don’t know where everyone is.”

  The road, if you could call it that, was empty. It was a glorified cart path, two ruts cut into rough desert, dotted with broken pottery and other travel discards, curving slightly west into the distance. A smudge on the horizon told me we were close to the post—it couldn’t be more than eight klicks away at most, but even straining my eyes, I saw little activity.

  “We approach slowly,” I said. We had shit for cover and nowhere to go in the event of an attack, but luckily, the road was clear. Despite my reservations about traveling in the open, it was better than the desert sands, where I couldn’t predict what might come boiling up out of the dunes with teeth bared. I weighed the odds, drew my blades, and waved Mira forward. “You look ahead. I’ll watch our backs.”

  It was another klick before I saw a definite sign of life, or what had once been alive. Bones, wet with bits of meat and gleaming in the sun. A fresh kill, and an animal I recognized. Human. The skeleton had been torn apart, femurs cracked and cleaned like chicken bones in an alleyway. The skull was in two parts, brains missing and the jaw hanging wildly in a gruesome imitation of laughter. A broken sword lay in the dust nearby, along with the remains of a boot. There was little else except bone shards and what might have been a belt.

  “What did that?” I asked. I’d seen men blown apart by artillery, but nothing this personal. This was the remains of prey, and the scene left my stomach churning.

  “Could be any manner of beast, but this close to the post? Wetterick has patrols, and the desert creatures have mostly learned to fear us. They’ll attack caravans but not on the road. Too risky,” she said.

  “They learn?” I asked.

  “They learn or they’re hunted down and hung from the gate as a warning to the other creatures. Wetterick is a pig, but he’s not stupid. He knows how to send a message to the monsters, and they’re smart enough to get the point.” She kicked at a rib with her boot, and the bone fluttered with color. “Oh...that’s not good.”

  I knelt to peer at the broken ribcage, or what was left of it. Green and gold fabric hung on the bones, smeared with rusty gore from one or two days in the punishing sun. “A uniform?”

  “Wetterick’s men. That’s their colors. Lady Silk and her house wear red,” she said, looking sick, and I didn’t blame her. Flies hummed merrily as we passed through the strewn remains, returning to their dwindling feast as soon as we moved away. Mira’s eyes were round with horror, but she held her knives with a steady hand. Together, we moved on, and I let my eyes roam across the expanse of sand and rocks, looking for anything that twitched.

  “Vultures?” I asked, seeing the familiar lazy forms of three birds, high up and well ahead. A quick estimate told me they were less than a klick outside the post itself, which was now rising into a discernible series of shapes. There were buildings, a tower, a wall—all things I knew to be civilization, or something close to it.

  “They’re waiting for something,” Mira said. Her lips curled in disgust, and I agreed with her sentiment. Vultures were necessary, but that didn’t mean I had to like them. I’d seen a vulture start eating well before its prey was dead. Something is very disturbing about the helpless look in an animal’s eyes when it knows what is happening and can do nothing to stop it.

  We walked on, and the prey became apparent. He was slumped over, a leg bent at an angle that was never meant to be, his hands moving weakly toward a waterskin just out of reach. His uniform was green and gold.

  “Wetterick’s man?” I asked, wondering why he’d been left alone this close to the post. If it were a patrol gone wrong, surely someone would have seen him. At this range, they could hear him. I peered into the post and saw the distinct outline of men on the wall. They were watching us, bows raised. The shine of sunlight off a lens told me they had a scope of some kind. My senses went into overdrive, and I put a hand out to stop Mira from going any farther. The man faced away from us, sandy hair moving in the breeze.

  “Slowly,” I said, my voice low. In the distance, I could see a caravan leaving from the other side of the post, then a second set of wagons appeared. Business as usual, just not on this road. Not where we stood, less than ten meters from a soldier who was in trouble.

  I drew a blade and called out, “Turn to me if you can.”

  He twitched but said nothing. He was pinned under a fragment of rock, reddish and ancient. Swirls of fossilized shells gleamed white in the stone, bright in the sunshine. A spray of blood-stained several layers of the stone. Slowly, the man lifted his hand and pointed to the left, indicating a pair of rocks the size of haystacks. He brought his finger to his lips, then put the hand back as if he’d never moved.

  On the breeze, I heard a noise. Somewhere between a grunt and a cough, followed by a wet sound that could only be feeding.

  “A beast,” Mira whispered.

  My second blade came out even as I began to circle wide. We couldn’t get into the post without tending to the man, and that meant finding out what was on the other side of the stones. I began to approach, waving Mira forward. We knelt next to the soldier, and his eyes were an ocean of pain. It wasn’t just a broken leg. He had a gut wound, open to the air and running him dry of blood and everything else a person needs to survive. He was already dead, and his tight smile told me he knew it.

  “Still,” I whispered, but he shook his head, and even that made him go pale with agony. Around thirty, he looked tough and capable, even if on the verge of passing out. In his hand, he held a folded sheet of paper, smeared with blood but legible. When he passed it to me, I understood why the road was abandoned, and caravans were leaving in the other direction.

  Mira took the paper as a bone snapped behind the rocks, followed by a squeal of delight. Marrow was hard to get to, and the animal sounded pleased.

  “Hardhead?” Mira asked. “New to me.”

  She looked at the wanted poster, a crude line drawing of something between a man and a rhino scrawled in bold black lines. Dead or Alive. 1000 Imperials, Payable by House Wetterick. In the drawing, Hardhead grasped a club in one hand and a skull in the other. I thought it was subtle, given the noises coming from around the stones.

  Looking back, I know when my ‘bots are talking to me because tumblers click somewhere in my head, revealing a truth that I need to continue my life here in this time. Holding the poster of Hardhead was one such moment. The sun was on my face, and I looked at beautiful Mira, her lips parted in thought as she waited to see what I would do. The nameless soldier took his last breath, eyes going soft as his patrol ended, and the pieces began to fall into place.

  In order to get inside the post, I would need some juice. Hardhead would provide that, along with coins and a claim to be heard in a world that desperately needed someone to bring order to a starving time. I was never a crusader, but I detest evil and the casual nature of mindless violence. It’s the opposite of what soldiers do, and in that grunting shitbag named Hardhead, I had a chance to take a massive leap forward.

  If I could use my new body the right way.

  Standing, I swung both knives in looping arcs, letting my muscles take their measure all over again. I bent my knees, feeling every fiber in my legs as they flexed and coiled and released, and it took everything I had not to say some cowboy shit to Mira, kissing her like I was headed off to the O.K. Corral.

  In
stead, I smiled at her. “If I fall, run.”

  “I can fight,” she said with eyes flashing.

  “I know you can. That’s why you need to be ready on the right if it breaks to run. I’m going in hot, no need to give the bastard a warning,” I told her.

  Pride intact, she smiled with the acceptance of someone under heavy fire but with nowhere to go. “Go. I will be ready.” She nodded to the rocks, unsure if there was anything else that needed to be said, but there wasn’t, so I crouched slightly and began stalking around the enormous boulders with my blades at the ready.

  Being a Marine, I’d never thought of myself as a swordsman, but the heft of each length of steel felt good in my hands, and I let the tips move in a circle before bringing them to a completely still posture. I wouldn’t waste energy with flash or form. All I cared about was a quick kill, and whatever made that happen was a success. I’d worry about style points later, in front of Wetterick and anything else that didn’t eat humans for fun.

  Creeping around the enormous rock, I saw a boot moving rhythmically, kicking a small furrow in the sand.

  Then the boot stopped rocking, jerked forward, and fell back with the foot still inside, detached and leaking blood into the ground. A deep, bass growl greeted me, and I lifted my nose to smell the wind. I’m no bloodhound, but the stench was so powerful it brought tears to my eyes. Somewhere between stale piss and hot blood, the creature’s aroma nearly melted my face like I’d seen the Arc of the Covenant, despite being told to look away. Saliva flooded my mouth, and a sour taste rose to greet my teeth, but I fought it back and realized that Hardhead already knew I was coming.