Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  She had answered every question at least three times before one of the men led Paula back and sat with them while the other went to help poke through the mess of the vans. The cop who stayed with them was dark haired with a long dark beard, a black cap, and a hard face full of angles and scars.

  Paula got up and stepped a little bit away, making a show of watching the bots and the people.

  The cop didn’t seem very interested in Coryn or even in the proceedings surrounding the vans. He looked sad, and maybe also a little nervous. He kept looking behind them as if he expected someone else to show up. After a while, he cleared his throat and said, “You shouldn’t associate with Listeners.”

  “Why not? If you’re police, aren’t you on their side anyway? Aren’t Listeners and police the same? Both of you want to follow the grand plan and support both the cities and the rewilding, right?”

  “We’ve found other Listeners dead in the last few days. Maybe this is all of them. If you were riding with them like you told us, you could have been killed, too.”

  She hadn’t even thought about that. She would have, eventually. Surely she would have. “So why is it safer to be police than a Listener?”

  He looked like the question unsettled him, but after a moment he said, “We have more protections, for one. Someone’s always tracking us, and people know that.”

  He was making sure she knew it. “What else?”

  He laughed, a huff of breath without humor. “Listeners hide what they’re doing. They don’t work directly for the city. I do. That’s who pays me. Listeners are paid for by the NGOs and the rich, mostly, and the money trail isn’t clear. You can’t trust them the way you can us.”

  What came to mind was that the Listeners had saved her life and the police had been nowhere near her, but she managed to stop the words before they came out of her mouth.

  “You look nice enough,” he said. “I think you’re honest. You’ll be safer in the city. A lot safer. You should just go back.”

  She didn’t bother responding directly to that. “Do you know who did this?”

  “I don’t,” he said. “Something’s happening out here, and I wonder if you know what it is.”

  She shook her head. “I just left the city a few days ago. I’m trying to find my sister. I don’t know anyone out here except her and the people I met on the road like Liselle and Lucien.” She glanced toward the overturned vans. “I guess I don’t really know them anymore, either.”

  Aspen sat panting in her lap, and she wondered if he was thirsty. She dug in her pack for a small cup and filled it from her canteen. “Do you believe me and Paula?”

  “Maybe. But you should believe me. It’s dangerous Outside, and it’s getting more dangerous. You’re a target out here, don’t mistake that . . . two women.” He looked at her slyly, like he expected her to say something. When she didn’t, he plucked at the grass with his fingers. “Get yourself killed.”

  She couldn’t tell if he’d spotted Paula as a robot. Probably. Aspen sniffed at the water. “Look,” she said. “I’m meeting my sister. She’s expecting me. Can we go?”

  He gave her a long look. “I’m not supposed to let you go until someone tells me I can.”

  “You’re not going to need us for anything. If you do, you can always reach me at RiversEnd Ranch in the Palouse. That’s where we’re going.”

  He offered her a patronizing smile that made her wince, but once more she held her tongue. She didn’t want to find out how powerful a policeman was out here. She needed Lou. Without Lou, she couldn’t make sense of the Outside. At least not so far. “Please let us go on. I don’t like being around all this death.”

  His features softened a little. “I’ll go ask, if you promise not to run while I’m checking.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If you run, I’ll chase you.”

  “I won’t run.”

  She watched him head down the little rise to the vans and the swarm of people. A gust of cold wind plucked at her purloined coat, and she shivered some more.

  She walked over to Paula, lightheaded and cold. Aspen stuck close to her feet. “I want to leave,” she mumbled.

  “I know. We will.”

  “I need Lou.”

  “You need to eat and rest.”

  She glanced up at the sky. “We can still go at least five more miles. We should start out.”

  Paula’s voice softened. “I know, sweetheart. I want to go, too. But we can’t go until the nice men let us go.”

  “Stubborn robot.”

  “Smart robot, if you ask me,” Paula replied.

  The three officers kept talking to each other, and from time to time they looked at her.

  “I’m scared,” Coryn said. She hadn’t realized until she said it, but she’d been growing more scared every day since she left the city. Now the fear was a solid thing deep inside of her. Maybe if she got food and time alone with Paula and Aspen, she could be strong again. Getting to Lou could make her strong again. Maybe the fear itself could even make her strong, but in that moment she felt weak and small, and a little dizzy.

  Lou could explain.

  The sad policeman walked back up and over to them. He held his hand out. “Coryn, if you need anything, please reach out to me.” There was a small card with his contact data in his hand. “My name is Sam Dinsmore.”

  She looked directly into his pale blue eyes. “Thank you.” She would remember his name. She could think of him as Sad Sam whom she met on the worst day of the trip, and on the second-worst day of her life.

  She and Paula picked up their packs. She clutched Aspen’s leash in her right hand. After they’d walked for about ten minutes and couldn’t see anything except the police cars out in the middle of the road, Paula asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m dizzy.”

  “Should we stop?”

  “Not yet.” She made it for another hour, one foot in front of the other. That was all she could focus on, that and Aspen, whom she picked up and put down and picked up again. When she held him, she ran her fingers through his fine white fur and whispered lies to him. “It will be okay,” she said. “We’ll be okay.”

  The next morning, she woke to sunshine that warmed her eyelids and to Aspen’s warm, raspy tongue on her cheek. One arm was thrust out of her sleeping bag, and she’d pushed her pillow away so she lay with her head right on the ground. Her fingers felt cold, and she tucked them back in for a moment, warming them against her stomach. She looked up at Paula, who had spent the night standing guard and holding onto the end of Aspen’s leash. “Paula?”

  “Yes.”

  “We still have a few days left, don’t we?”

  “Probably. We might get to the edge of Palouse Country, but that’s not the same as finding Lou. Of course, it might help if you tell her you’re coming.”

  “But what if something happens and I don’t get there? Lou wasn’t telling the truth—not if Blessing was right about what her life is really like.”

  Paula handed Coryn’s canteen to her. “I think we should tell her.”

  “I’ll tell her tonight.” She could only think about one thing, going forward and finding Lou. “Do we have anything other than his food bowl to give Aspen water in?”

  Paula handed her a plastic cup Coryn had never seen before. It must have come from the vans. Coryn filled it half full of water and Aspen sniffed it and looked away.

  Surely he was thirsty.

  “Put some water on your fingers,” Paula suggested.

  Coryn did. Aspen licked them dry and then drained the cup.

  Coryn sat up and looked around as she drank her own water. She’d slept in a shallow ravine between two hills, only a little out of sight. But between having a dog and a robot to watch over her, even a little cover was a lot.

  Open country surrounded them: green hilly pastures, a small gray-blue river crowded with two lines of trees, and, here and there, the remnants of broken fences or abandoned houses. “Let’s wait
until we’re closer.”

  “Your sister lied to you.”

  Coryn felt tears sting the edges of her eyes. “Not very much.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. She lied about almost everything.”

  “You always did like me better than Lou.”

  “It was my job to protect you, not Lou. When your father bought me, Lou said she didn’t want me, but you did.”

  “I remember.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I got lucky.” She smiled at Paula, as if she were human enough to care.

  Paula smiled back, warm. Just right. She, too, was looking out over the landscape, scanning it. “Call her soon. We don’t want to wander around out here for weeks and miss her.”

  Coryn looked up at Paula, and made sure Paula was looking back at her. “What if . . . I’m afraid she won’t want to see us.” She pushed the last of the blanket off, folded it into her open pack, stood all the way up, and stretched.

  “Really?” Paula frowned. “I suppose that could be true.”

  “It might. Now that we’ve gotten this far I’m going to find her. Nothing will stop me. Nothing. Not tornadoes, not regular windstorms, not wannabe warlords, not ecobots, not snow if it comes. Nothing. Let’s go.”

  “Breakfast?”

  The thought of food made her stomach roil, particularly since she’d just talked through the litany of dangers. “I’ll stop soon.”

  “Suit yourself,” Paula said. “But if you fall down from exhaustion before you decide it’s soon, don’t blame me.”

  Coryn took another long swig of water and started off. She was tired after so many days of walking. Her feet had swollen so much her shoes barely closed. The scab on her leg itched. She’d lost track of how many marathons were left, but every step took her closer to Lou.

  She could hardly wait to hug her sister. If Lou would let her. She banished the thought.

  For half an hour, she counted steps. At just over three thousand, they came near another river and three deer bounded across the road and away, and she lost count, laughed, and stopped bothering. The deer pleased her. Surely if there were wild deer here, the restoration was going at least all right.

  After another hour, Paula said, “I think there’s a little lake over there.” She pointed toward a copse of aspen a few hundred feet off the road.

  A spring bubbled up inside of a circle of trees and rocks. Coryn admired the convenient placement of the rocks. “This is so pretty it must have been designed by someone.”

  “I agree. But there aren’t any houses nearby. There were a few resorts and guest ranches out here that got taken down, though. This might have belonged to one of them.”

  The day wasn’t quite warm yet, but Coryn stripped off her clothes anyway and stepped into the water, using her bare hands to scrub at her skin. The bottom of the pool felt mossy between her toes and cold from her knees down, and somewhere near the middle, it fell away to nothing—she had to flail her arms and kick to stay afloat since there was nowhere to put her feet.

  She splashed the top of the water, trying to convince Aspen to come in. He could use a bath.

  A fish bumped her, and she yelped.

  “Coryn,” Paula hissed in her warning voice.

  “Yes?”

  “There are people coming.”

  Coryn swam over to the edge of the pool and pushed herself up from the rocks, dripping, her skin breaking out in goose bumps and her blood running fast and hot. “I don’t see them.”

  Paula pointed.

  Coryn squinted, one hand reaching down for her underwear and jeans. Calm, calm, she told herself. Maybe it’s someone more like Blessing and Day.

  “There, see, on the edge of the meadow.”

  Whoever it was headed straight for them, and also toward the road. They were coming down from the hills on a path. They were too far away for her to tell much about them. But Paula could see far better than she could.

  She scrambled into her clothes, and when she looked again the movement had clarified into a group of maybe twenty-five people coming toward them. Tall men, mostly, scruffy looking. There were a few women. “Should we run?” she asked.

  Paula shook her head. “They have robots with them. They’d see us—they’ve surely already seen us. If we run, they would think we are worth catching, and even if I can outrun the robots, you cannot.”

  They’d trapped themselves for a simple bath. She shivered, and her knees felt soft. Liselle and Lucien had died near water. But she wasn’t a Listener. Thankfully, she wasn’t shaking too much to ask, “So you think they see us?”

  “Probably. They’re going to hear us if you don’t keep your voice down.”

  She whispered, “Are the bots as fast as you?”

  “How can I know that?”

  A light wind rustled the aspens and chilled Coryn’s damp skin. She should never have brought Paula. “Then I want you to run.”

  Paula’s head whipped around so she looked directly at Coryn from only a few inches away. “And leave you? I cannot.”

  “If they’re friends, I’ll be safe enough anyway. If they’re not, you’re the one they’ll want the most. So if you run, you keep me safer.”

  “I don’t think so. I can take that many.”

  “Even robots?”

  Paula had gone completely still, looking for all the world like a human woman taking some time to puzzle things out.

  “Run,” Coryn told her. “And take Aspen. Please.”

  For a moment, she thought the look the robot gave her might tear her in two. She remembered the day Lou left, and how they’d dragged it out so it hurt more than it had to. “Go now. Then you’ll be free to rescue me if I need it.”

  Paula stared at her. “For the record, I disagree with you. I’m not supposed to protect your dog. I’m supposed to protect you.”

  “Leaving me will protect me.”

  “Stupid human.”

  Coryn almost laughed, but she looked back at the oncoming group of people. They frightened her. Not just because they were strangers, although out here that might be enough. But they looked severe and serious. She had the distinct impression they had a goal. “Go.”

  Paula went. Without Aspen, without her pack. She hunched down and fled the trees and raced toward the incoming people.

  Damn it. She was trying to draw their attention! “Fucking robots,” she whispered under her breath. She should have made it an explicit, completely clear command instead of saying please.

  She left her pack as well, clutched the little dog, and sauntered out of the trees as if she didn’t see any of them, the people or Paula, and then pretended to suddenly notice that she had company. She stopped right out in the open and watched to see what would happen.

  Paula glanced at her, and even though she was so far away that Coryn couldn’t see the look on her face, she was pretty certain Paula looked pissed. She wouldn’t really be, she was a robot, but she had been taught to feign certain emotions, and right now she would look angry.

  Fine. Coryn was angry.

  She got an accurate count. Twenty-two. There were five she suspected might be robots. Paula had given herself away from a distance with her gait.

  Why hadn’t Paula tried to fool them?

  She only spotted five women. They walked behind the others, heads down. A robot walked behind the women, watching them. The men were so big and so . . . unkempt that Coryn suddenly wished she had run. Or hidden.

  She wanted to run.

  Paula stood her ground in front of the oncoming people, but stopped approaching.

  Coryn’s blood raced, and she licked her lips. Paula had trapped her, but Paula was brilliant. Might as well play it out. She walked right toward the people, coming up beside Paula. When she stopped, she smiled and waved.

  “Hello!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The man in front was tall and pale-skinned, with long black hair and a long black beard and black eyes. His clothes didn’t look right out here—he wore form-printe
d jeans with a designer logo on the front pocket and a mint-green wired coat. Printed. City stuff. AR glasses dangled from a string around his neck.

  What would he do with those out here?

  He walked so confidently and so clearly in the front that Coryn felt sure he was the leader. He smiled, but he didn’t wave back.

  He did keep coming without breaking stride.

  Carefully, fingers shaking, she snapped two pictures and sent them off. Maybe someone was still listening.

  Paula’s ears were good enough she would hear anything Coryn whispered in spite of the distance between them. So she whispered, “Run. Now.”

  The group came closer. The man who walked beside the leader looked similar, except browner—browner skin, lighter hair, and a shorter, better trimmed beard. He also wore modern clothes.

  Coryn whispered again. “Please.” Her voice shook with fear. Fear for Paula, fear for herself, fear of what might happen if Paula didn’t understand why she had to stay free. “Now. Take Aspen. Go.”

  The men were close.

  Paula glanced at her.

  There was no time for the robot to fight her own inner programming inconsistencies. “It’s an order.”

  Paula’s face went neutral, but she crossed the short distance to Coryn, grabbed Aspen, and raced away.

  One of the men took out a stunner and fired at Paula’s back. Either he missed, or it simply didn’t bother Paula. Her robotic body had been created as a bodyguard, long before this personality had been uploaded and set to protect Coryn.

  The leader of the group’s face twisted up in anger, and he barked, “Catch her.”

  Two men and two robots took off after Paula, the robots quickly outracing the men. Paula shot back through the trees, using them for cover, and emerged on the grassy meadow on the far side of them. Coryn stood on tiptoe, watching Paula run. She had a head start, but would it be enough?

  A hand grabbed her around her right arm, just below her elbow. The man’s words were clipped and cold. “Are you alone?”