Rogue Star_Frozen Earth_Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller

by Jasper T. Scott

  “And how much will that cost?” I snapped.

  “Hey, it’s not my hotel. Take it up with the manager.”

  “Come on,” Harry said. “One night. There’s bathrooms and hot showers.”

  “Where? On the roof?”

  “In the spa.”

  “Can you pay?” I challenged.

  He nodded. “For one room and one night I can.”

  “You mean one tent.”

  “Right, that’s what I meant.”

  I sighed. “All right. Let’s go book a spot.” I went back to my truck and lifted the lining on the floor under my seat to withdraw a stack of twenties.

  “They have room for us?” Kate asked, sounding relieved.

  “On the roof,” I explained.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, we’ll be camping in the cold, but at least we’ll be safe. Wait here.”

  Not bothering to explain further, I shut the door and walked up to the front entrance of the hotel. Harry was already waiting there. I nodded to the soldiers.

  “Watch our vehicles please. We have kids inside.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  As we walked through the doors, a welcome gust of warm air greeted us. My eyes closed to half-lidded slits. Maybe we could just sleep in here. I glanced around. It was like a whole other world inside the lobby—a world where aliens had never invaded, and people weren’t out camping on the streets between the blackened skeletons of vandalized cars.

  The muted strains of Blues music trickled to my ears. And even though it was past two in the morning, people were lounging on plush chairs and couches, drinking cocktails. Marble floors and columns sparkled in the light of ornate crystal chandeliers hanging from ceilings with dark wooden moldings and what looked like stained glass murals. Water trickled from a fountain in the center of the lobby. Flowers grew on top, and a pair of live ducks were sleeping on the edge of the fountain. My gaze strayed back to the people in the lobby. Some of them were asleep, too, others nodding off with their cocktails in hand and dazed looks on their faces. They were all well-dressed.

  “What the hell?” I whispered, shaking my head. “Who are these people?”

  “Government officials and rich jackasses is my guess,” Harry muttered back. “Or maybe just weary, desperate travelers like us.”

  We reached the front desk and expressed our desire to rent a piece of the Peabody’s roof.

  “It is very expensive, and we’re almost out of room,” a snooty hotel clerk replied while slowly shaking his head.

  “We can pay,” I insisted, and slapped my stack of twenties down on the desk. Harry did the same with a smaller stack of his own.

  The clerk’s eyes widened. “Very well. You have your own tents and sleeping bags, I suppose? Rentals cost extra.”

  “We do,” I confirmed.

  “How many tents?”

  I thought about that. There was no way we’d all fit into one. “Three tents.”

  “Any vehicles?”

  “Two.”

  “Will you be requiring our valet service for them?”

  “Where’s the parking lot?”

  “One block down, but it’s somewhat risky to park there yourself, I’m afraid. Our valets are all armed soldiers and well equipped to deal with any threats that might arise.”

  I grimaced. “Fine. We’ll valet park them, then.”

  “Okay...” the clerk’s eyes dipped to his computer screen. “That will be—forty-two sixty, and yes—that’s all dollars and no cents.”

  I couldn’t believe it. My cheeks bulged with indignation. “I thought it was a thousand per night per tent!”

  “Who told you that?” the clerk replied, blinking slowly at us.

  “That’s fine. We can pay,” Harry said. To me he added, “We’ll split it—one third two thirds. Fair enough?”

  I gave in with a reluctant nod and began counting out two thirds of 4260, which I roughly calculated to be 2900. Harry paid the rest, and then the clerk called over his valet parkers—two privates with the national guard. A bellhop followed us outside with a golden baggage cart. The cold hit me like a slap to the face. My eyes flew wide open and I shook my head to wake up. The heat and the Blues music in the lobby had turned me into a sleep-walker.

  Anxious to get everything done in a hurry so we could get some sleep, I hopped into the back of my truck and began unloading our bags. In the process, I tripped and fell over something at the back. I knocked my chin on whatever it was, and cursed under my breath.

  “Is everything okay back there, sir? Do you need some help?” the bellhop asked, peering in.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, feeling around in the dark for whatever I’d tripped over. My hands grazed cold metal, but it wasn’t the wheel well or the side of the truck. It was cylindrically shaped. I stared hard into the darkness, frozen and uncomprehending. Then an invisible, icy hand closed over mine. I yelped and recoiled from it, stumbling backward and falling against our spare fuel supply.

  Chapter 50

  My mind flashed back to the thump we’d heard earlier, and I realized that it hadn’t been a fuel container breaking loose. They were all still strapped in place.

  “Sir? Are you okay?” the bellhop asked.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see him standing on my back bumper and leaning in to reach me, as if to help me up. The private acting as my valet was peering in, too, but there was nothing to see except for the empty space that OneZero had vacated almost two hours ago.

  And yet, somehow, that space wasn’t empty. OneZero was back, and he was as invisible as any ghost.

  “I’m fine,” I said, belatedly snapping out of it. “I just slipped that’s all. I’m going to pass you the first bag. Hold on.”

  “Of course,” the bellhop replied.

  I passed our bags out one after another, this time being careful to mind OneZero’s invisible limbs. I couldn’t believe that he’d escaped. Maybe I was hallucinating? I felt around for one of his invisible limbs, and my hand once again closed around a cylindrical metal object. A smile sprang to my lips. Corporal West was going to be disappointed when he delivered an empty truck to his division commander.

  But why had OneZero come running after us? What had we done to deserve such loyalty from an enemy soldier? Was it because I’d tackled Harry to stop him from shooting OneZero again? Or was he riding along with us because of some hidden agenda that just happened to coincide with ours?

  What did he want? Somehow, I needed to find out. Tomorrow I’d take the time to sit down with OneZero in private and start working on a dictionary to translate his binary codes into something I could understand.

  Once the bellhop had all of our luggage and the Hartfords’ loaded on his cart, we watched from the sidewalk as the valet drivers took our vehicles to whatever parking lot the desk clerk had mentioned. I watched the tail lights receding into the distance, wondering if OneZero would stay in the back of the truck and wait for us to return. I hoped so.

  “Let’s go, Logan,” Kate said, tugging on my arm. I turned to see our kids walking ahead of us with Harry’s family, just now passing through the doors of the lobby.

  * * *

  By the time we finished pitching our tents on the trampled, snow-covered roof, I realized that I couldn’t even remember how we’d gotten up to the roof, let alone how we’d pitched the tents. My mind had shut off already.

  We crawled into our tents, my kids taking one, Kate and I the other, and the Hartfords a third. I fell asleep in seconds, but what felt like just a few minutes later, I woke up with a gasp, and lay staring up at the blue fabric of our tent. Kate’s breathing was still slow with sleep, but mine was suddenly shallow and rushed. My heart pounded with adrenaline. I’d been running on it for so long that my adrenal glands didn’t know when to shut off. Somehow, I felt exhausted and wide awake at the same time.

  Carefully removing Kate’s arm from my chest, I crawled out of my sleeping bag to the flap of the tent, and unzipped it. Snow
fell inside the tent. It had been piled against the flap. I had to crawl through the snow to get out. The two or three trampled inches I remembered from before were now covered with an additional twelve. Snow squeezed into my fur-lined leather gloves, melting against my skin and trickling past my wrists. I stood up and walked over to the edge of the roof, my boots crunching through the snow. A faint glow swelled over the horizon, out beyond the Mississippi river.

  I watched as the sun came up, turning the rosy blush of dawn to a golden fire. Now, in the light of day, I saw that the city had taken some serious damage. One of the high-rises close to the Peabody was collapsing and leaning against another that was still under construction. The majority of the city’s towers were still standing, but several had their windows blasted out.

  In the distance, across the river, I spied a group of massive towers reaching for the sky around squat buildings with flat, snow-covered roofs. I realized that those weren’t towers. They were rockets.

  For a second, I thought those were the Screechers’ landers, and that they had moved their border north into Memphis, but then I realized that those were our rockets. I was looking at Starcast’s launch facility. We’d crossed the bridge into Memphis for nothing. Now we’d have to cross it back the other way. I counted nine rockets in all. Vast fields of green tents surrounded the facility. Army camps.

  How were we going to get through all of them to speak with Akron Massey? Despair clutched my heart just as a frigid wind blew, cutting through my jacket and drawing a shiver out of me. I tucked my hands into my armpits for warmth and turned to regard the tents behind me. Everyone who’d checked into the rooftop was still fast asleep. Lucky them.

  Kate’s head popped out of our tent. “What are you doing up so early?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Come back to bed,” she insisted. “You had a long day. You need your rest.”

  I gave in with a sigh and took a step toward her. Just as I did that, a distant roar came rumbling to my ears. I turned and saw Starcast’s launch facility engulfed in fire and billowing clouds of smoke.

  I gaped at that. Tents unzipped behind me, barely audible through the on-going roar. Alex and Rachel came trudging through the snow to stand beside me and watch the spectacle. Kate’s hand slipped into mine, and we traded worried glances.

  “Is that...” she trailed off.

  Three rockets lifted off amidst roiling clouds of smoke and fire, taking all of our hopes with them. The Mars Colony Mission was launching ahead of schedule. We’d traveled all this way for nothing.

  Chapter 51

  “Now what are we going to do?” Harry asked, as he squinted up at the dwindling streaks of light. His gaze came back down to Earth to glare at me. “I told you we should have stayed in the shelter.”

  “So let’s just go back,” Deborah said.

  Harry scowled at her and shook his head. “And I suppose we’ll just ask the Screechers politely if we can cross their border? They’ll probably shoot us on sight. No, Logan’s plan is bust, and now we’re no better off than anyone else—except we don’t even have a place to stay anymore.”

  “We have a house in New Jersey,” Kate said. “You could come stay with us.”

  “Yeah? And how are we going to stay warm? What are we going to do when the snow is piled up to your roof? Dig tunnels? There’s no sugar-coating this. Your husband screwed us all.”

  “He did the best that he could! And no one held a gun to your head. You could have stayed. We all knew that this was a long shot, but we went willingly.”

  I placed a hand on Kate’s arm. “No, he’s right,” I said. “This is my fault. I convinced them, and you. You didn’t want to leave either.”

  “We’re all adults, responsible for our own actions,” Kate objected. “Don’t put this all on yourself.”

  “Does this mean we’re not going to go live with the fishes?” Rachel asked, tugging on her mother’s sleeve.

  Kate flashed a smile at our daughter. “Don’t worry. We’re going to find someplace even better!”

  I grimaced and turned to leave. There were lots more people on the roof now, standing outside their tents and murmuring amongst themselves as they watched the rockets climb steadily into the sky. I wove around them on my way to the exit.

  “Where are you going?” Kate called after me.

  “I need to go get something out of the truck,” I said.

  “Get what?”

  “My laptop!” I shouted back. That was true, even though it wasn’t the real reason I was leaving the roof. I hadn’t told anyone about finding OneZero last night, but now it was more important than ever to find a way to communicate with him. Maybe he would have some idea that could save us, or maybe he could find a way to get us back to Richard’s shelter.

  I figured if I could charge my laptop in the lobby and catch a WiFi signal from the hotel, then I’d be able to search for images online. I’d download as many as I could, and then show them to OneZero. We could match words with their binary counterparts to develop a dictionary of sorts. It might be slow going, but it would work—assuming that the hotel’s Internet was still working.

  * * *

  The walk to the parking garage was nerve-wracking with all the drifters on the streets. They all looked mean and dangerous—even the scattered families that I saw. But unlike last night where I’d felt their eyes glaring as we drove by, today they barely gave me a second glance. I suspected that it had something to do with the fact that now I was walking around like them rather than riding high in my truck.

  All the same, I kept my head down until I reached the entrance of the garage. There I came face to face with four more soldiers, just like the ones guarding the entrance of the hotel. I showed them my keys and valet stub, and they let me through.

  The garage was massive, just like the hotel, and I realized too late that I shouldn’t have refused the desk clerk’s offer to have one of the valets show me to my vehicle. But if I had accepted that offer, I wouldn’t have the privacy I needed to talk with OneZero.

  Wondering where to look for my truck, I thought about the fact that we’d arrived last night to find the hotel (and roof) already full. Based on that, I decided to check the top floor of the garage.

  I got lucky and found both Harry’s SUV and my F350 double-parked near the ramp.

  Poking my head into the back of the truck, I whispered, “OneZero!”

  But I couldn’t see anything. Maybe he’d left. Or maybe he was still hiding.

  “Hey, are you there?” I tried again.

  The air shimmered and a dimly gleaming silhouette appeared, translucent as if it were made of water or glass.

  I marveled at the technology it must have taken to accomplish that.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “There’s no one else around. The coast is clear.” I doubted he’d understand any of that, but maybe he’d catch something from my tone of voice.

  OneZero’s body went from transparent to opaque. “Coast is clear,” he said in a crisp, female tone.

  I blinked in shock and slowly shook my head. “You can talk?”

  “Talk,” he said. Once again that voice clashed with my concept that this robot was a he, and I realized that I’d simply defaulted to my own gender out of some ages-old patriarchal bias.

  “You’re a she?” I asked. Did robots even have a gender?

  “She.”

  I frowned. Was that confirmation, or was OneZero just copying what I said? For all I knew it simply preferred the sound of a woman’s voice.

  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure there was no one around to listen in, but the garage was empty, and I couldn’t hear anything except for the distant whistling of a frigid wind.

  Pulling myself up inside the truck, I arranged the tarp behind me to cover the entrance from prying eyes. Taking a seat on the fuel containers, I nodded to the robot. “OneZero.”

  It cocked its head at me.

  “We need to work out a way to understand each ot
her. I’m going to go now, but I’ll be back soon with something that we can use to communicate.”

  “Communicate,” OneZero said.

  “Exactly. I’ll be back, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

  OneZero just looked at me, and I smiled reassuringly as I left.

  Walking around the back, I opened the rear door on the driver’s side and lifted the back seat to reveal a lockable under-seat storage box. I unlocked it with one of the keys on my keyring and slid it open to reveal my laptop bag and Alex’s. I thought about the remainder of our cash stashed under the lining below the front seat and wondered if I should move it to here. I discarded the idea a few seconds later. If those soldiers had found this compartment and forced me to open it, so could a gang of robbers on the highway.

  On my way back to the hotel I was considerably more nervous now that I had something of value slung over my shoulder. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice or care about the laptop, and the hotel entrance was only a block away from the garage.

  Back in the warmth of the lobby I breathed a sigh of relief and went to the front desk to ask about the WiFi and an outlet I could use.

  There was a new desk clerk there this morning, and she was much friendlier than the man who’d greeted us last night.

  “Of course. The password is—” the woman appeared to hesitate. Doubt flickered across her face as her gaze dipped to my toes and back up to my battered face. There were plenty of scabs peeking through my shaggy beard from all the shrapnel and glass Kate had picked out of my face three nights ago. That, and my long, unwashed hair had to give this woman pause. Maybe that was why the people on the street hadn’t bothered me—I looked worse than them.

  “You’re staying at this hotel?”

  I nodded slowly. “Yes. On the roof. We came in last night.”

  “I see. And what’s your name?”

  “Willis. Logan Willis.” I tapped my foot impatiently while I waited for the clerk to look me up.

  “Of course. I apologize. You’d be amazed at how many people try to sneak in here.”

  “I can imagine.” If it weren’t for the soldiers standing outside, everyone would probably be in here. Of course, give them a few more days out in the cold without food, water, or plumbing, and they’d probably storm the entrance anyway. We had to move on before that happened.