“MREs?” she asked.
“Meals Ready to Eat,” he explained. “They taste pretty bad, I won’t lie. But they get the job done.” He handed her all the rations he had.
“You’ve got to keep some for yourself!” she insisted, handing them back.
He pushed her hand away gently. “I can get more. And so can you. Do you have a PRD?”
“I do. I was told it couldn’t be traced.”
She pulled it out, and Rowan took it, flipping it over and removing the back. He whipped out a small tool and removed the circuitry board. “Damn. You’re not kidding. Never seen one like this. It doesn’t even have a slot for a tracking chip.” He put it back together and turned it on. Pulling up the map function, he waved his hand through the floating display, scrolling to an area about thirty-six miles away. “Go here. It’s an old weather shelter, built a long time ago when the megastorms first hit. You’ll find a place to sleep, a water purification system, and lots of MREs to replenish your supply.” He typed in something else. “Put in this code when you get there.”
She watched him enter it, feeling hopeless and lost, then dug around in her tool bag and pulled out the fried flash burster. “Any chance this will work again?”
He took it from her and turned it over, then used his tool to open the casing. The circuitry and electricity generator were fused as one. “Sorry. This thing is done for.”
She decided to take a chance. “Have you heard of the Rovers?”
He snapped his gaze up to her. “Not since I was a kid. They were the ones who allegedly built the network of weather shelters, but I don’t think they’re around anymore. No one has seen them, anyway. We’ve all wondered, though. I grew up, moving from shelter to shelter, thinking about the people who built them. But all we have are stories, all made up, I think.” He looked back at her. “Why do you ask?”
“I need to find them.” She told him about the asteroid and its fragments, and how Willoughby had told her that they might know how to stop it.
Rowan parted his lips as he listened. “How much time do we have?”
She bit her lip. “Two months before the first fragment hits, followed by two more. A year before the main one collides.”
His eyes widened. “Small window.”
“I know.” She stared out at the rain, thinking of the devastation heading their way.
“Maybe a long time ago we could have stopped it. But now?” He stared out into the storm. “We’re all just rats hiding in a hole. Your friend is right. If anyone would know what to do, it’s the Rovers. They held onto things. Onto knowledge. You’ll get a sense of them when you get to the weather shelter. They left books.”
The word was new. “Books?”
“They’re old and strange, but cool. Printed on weird stuff. And they’re full of information. Some people take them from one shelter and leave them in the next. So the inventory changes.”
“What kind of information?”
“Old stuff. Like what the world was like back in the day. Strange animals. Maps of places that have been gone a long time. You wouldn’t believe the things that used to be out there.” He stared out at the driving rain, the wind blowing it sideways down the street. “It’s all gone now.”
She followed his gaze, shivering in her wet shirt. “What’s out there now?”
He met her eyes in the growing dark. “Heat. Death. Storms.” He pulled a jacket out of his satchel and handed it to her. “You’ll need this. It’s waterproof.”
She accepted it reluctantly. “Won’t you need it?”
“I’ll be fine.” He rummaged through his satchel and pulled out a clear pouch. “This’ll keep the rain out of your PRD.” He handed it to her.
“Where are you going?” Fear gripped her stomach. Was she just supposed to walk to this place alone, with no idea how to survive out here?
“I have to go north, to my people.”
She felt awkward. “And I really can’t come?”
He met her eyes. “They’re, uh . . . not very nice. You don’t want to meet them. And whatever you do, if you meet anyone out there in the wastelands, don’t tell them that you were a worker in the city. Don’t let them know you can access TWRs, or that you can do work-arounds to open locks. Don’t ever reveal that information.”
She tilted her head. “Why?”
“Because people will kidnap you for that information. That, and your ability. And if you don’t cooperate, torture’s the least of your problems.”
A new wave of fear stole over her, the most sickening feeling she’d had yet. “I don’t think I can do this.”
He closed his hands around hers. “You can. I’ve seen you in action, remember?” He nodded toward the city. “It’s a hell of a lot more dangerous for you in there than out here. Now there’s more distance between you and the bad guys.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Don’t worry. You probably won’t run into anyone.” He looked out at the wind-tossed rain. “It’s the weather that’s the killer.”
He lifted his satchel and swung it back over his head. “Good luck, H.” He walked to the edge of the recessed doorway. Then he turned back. “You should think of a name for yourself. Your current designation will be a dead giveaway.”
She met his eyes. “Is this the last time we’ll see each other?” She barely knew him, but the thought was a painful knot twisting inside her.
He took her hand again, something hanging heavily in the air between them. She wanted to move closer, to bask in his scent one more time.
“My people have a way to communicate,” he told her. “Devised over years of trial and error. Like Morse code.”
“Morse code?” She’d never heard of it.
“Ancient way of sending messages by tapping out a rhythm of long and short tones.” He pulled out his PRD and brought up a hovering screen. “We had to alter it from the original, in case our enemies still knew about it. The idea’s the same, but the letters are different, and we’ve added some other elements to make messages harder to crack.”
He held up his PRD. The floating display showed a communication window with a button for a short tone, and one for a long tone. A section of the screen showed each letter of the alphabet followed by its equivalent of short and long tones. A was a short tone followed by two long tones. Numbers one through ten also had codes.
“You type in who you want to send the message to, then enter the code for each letter as it appears on the screen. The codes change multiple times a day, but the program saves the date and time you sent the message, so you can always decipher it if you knew what the code was at any given time.” He gazed at her. His eyes were so intense, she fought the urge to look away. “If you need me,” he told her, “contact me this way.”
She pulled out her PRD. They touched devices, and the program automatically uploaded to hers. When she double-checked it was there, she lowered her device, looking back at him. She’d never felt so drawn to someone, but she didn’t know what to do. He’d led a completely different kind of life—free, adventurous, full of risk. She’d only known that which she’d been born into: raised in the machine of the city, fulfilling her duties.
She hadn’t known anything else was possible. She’d always felt unsettled and alone, like she was missing something. And now, despite the fact that she had no home to go to, and was soon to be left alone in this chaotic wilderness, something felt like it was falling into place. She felt connected to Rowan, a feeling she’d never had with another human.
He gripped her hand one more time and forced a smile. But there was a deep sadness in his eyes. He let go, moved back, and stepped out into the storm. She watched him walk down the street. He stopped at a corner and turned back to look at her. Something stirred within her, a strange kind of longing. She wanted to run to him. He stood there for a long moment, gazing ba
ck as if memorizing her features. Then he raised a hand and gave a sad wave. She did the same. She watched as he reached the end of the street, gave her one last glance, and rounded the corner of a building.
And then he was gone.
She stood alone, shivering in the doorway, the howling wind cutting through her clothes. She’d never been so cold before. The city was always too hot, too humid. She watched the rain pelt the cracked pavement. She pulled on the jacket Rowan had given her, huddling in its dry warmth.
As she stared out at the gray, she noticed something green poking up between the cracks of the crumbling black road. She pulled the jacket tightly around her and crept outside. She reached out, touching the wet, green strands. They were flexible. It was a plant, she realized, not the flat-leafed ones she’d watched the food workers grind up into food cubes. This was something different. She looked down the stretch of the road, seeing more tufts breaking through the asphalt.
The loneliness sank in. The ancient road stretched into the abyss, the crumbling buildings immense and empty, their brick guts spilling from their decaying bodies. She shivered in her jacket. Hurrying back to the doorway, she checked her PRD. Noting the direction of the weather shelter, she turned off the device, tucking it into the weatherproof pouch he’d given her. Then she walked out into the storm, not knowing what lay ahead, or if she’d even live to see the next day.
Chapter 10
She walked alone, listening to the howling wind and the rain lashing at the shattered windows around her. She thought back to that feeling of sitting in the tiny room where she’d first encountered Rowan. When he’d left, disappearing into the night, she hadn’t realized the full gravity of her situation. Now she did. She was alone in the middle of a torrential storm, with only a spot on a map to guide her.
She rechecked the PRD. The arrow still blinked in the direction she needed to go. She’d walked a few miles now, her surroundings never changing. The ruins of crumbling buildings loomed in the distant glow from the city dome. Strange sounds hung in the air, the drumming of the rain, the whistling of the wind through empty windows. Nothing sounded or looked familiar. She’d always been acquainted with her own company and a vague sense of loneliness that plagued her some nights when she lay in her narrow bed. But this was true solitude.
Somewhere out there, above those swirling clouds, doom sped toward Earth.
She took another look at the blinking arrow, then powered down the PRD and replaced it in the weatherproof bag. She estimated another five hours of darkness. The lights from the city reached this far, but as she stared into the distance, she saw only an endless black cluster. At least she had her headlamp. She could recharge it in five hours with UV. Her PRD too.
She didn’t think the Repurposers would come out this far to get her, but she felt exposed this close to the city, so she didn’t use the headlamp just yet. She wanted to get out of this creepy, desolate area, these decomposing ruins of a people who had come before.
She walked where the arrow pointed her, winding down streets between immense skyscrapers.
She stared up in awe of them. Most had only one or two standing walls. Crumbled brick lay in piles at their bases. Some, comprised of steel and glass, stood like skeletal monuments to a long dead people. Crunching under her feet, dirty, shattered pieces of glass littered the ground. She saw more tufts of the green plant in cracks along the road. She passed a teetering steel structure reaching up into the sky. Wind shrilled around its exposed girders.
Wild gusts shoved at her back, while the rain soaked her legs beneath her coat. Her chest stayed warm and dry, though. She was grateful to Rowan for the jacket. She nestled into it more, bringing the hood closer around her face while the rain drummed on it. She caught a hint of his scent in that hood, the same spicy smell she’d caught back in the city.
A sudden draft hit her so hard she flew forward, knees landing on the run-down pavement. She struggled to her feet again, hurrying down the road. Rounding a corner, she escaped the brunt of the wind. She waited for a few minutes for the squall to abate. Rowan had said this was a break in the storm. When the loud whooshing died down a little, she continued on. Monstrous metal poles lined the roads. Many had toppled, but some still stood, with shattered glass at their crowns.
She kept checking behind her, half expecting to see the Repurposers, half hoping she’d see Rowan coming to take her safely to his people.
But there were only shadows.
She kept moving, walking until her feet dragged. She opened her water bottle and let the rain fill it. She sealed it and drank through the filter. It tasted cleaner than the water in the city. Purer, somehow, without a chemical tang. She saved the food, not wanting to eat until she felt too weak to go on. She didn’t know how long it would take to reach the weather shelter, and she didn’t want to waste her rations.
Thinking she couldn’t take another step without falling asleep on her feet, she slowed to a stop.
The pavement ended beneath her, and a dark expanse stretched out ahead. The tiny green plant she’d seen rising out of the cracks was everywhere before her. She’d never seen anything like it. No more cement, but a verdant carpet, stretching as far as the eye could see. The glow from the city was now very faint. Soon she’d have to switch on her light or start tripping and running into everything.
But for now the dim orange glow illuminated the wet, spiky strands of the plant. She bent down, running her fingers through its softness.
As she crouched there, her eyes grew more accustomed to the dark. She made out something huge standing fifty feet away. She stifled a cry, thinking it was a man. She froze, and simply stared at it. More details came steadily into focus. It stood tall, with massive limbs stretching in all directions. Its top billowed out. The wind tossed it violently, its limbs quavering as little objects flew off it. It wasn’t moving, not the bottom part anyway. She stood up and crept closer. At last she pulled out her headlamp and switched it on, looking up. Green filled her field of view. She’d never seen such a vivid color. The billowy top was actually thousands of flat leaves. Its base was hard and thick. She reached out, touching its rough skin. It creaked, and the wind sighed in its leaves. She’d seen leaves before in the food processing plants of New Atlantic, but never knew where they came from. This whole thing was a plant, she realized, only colossal. Beneath it, the rain couldn’t reach her. The plant sheltered her, and she didn’t feel the pang of the cold as much. Her eyes burned from want of sleep.
She breathed in the great stalk, welcoming its fragrant scent into her lungs. She pressed her face against its cool exterior and closed her eyes.
She’d come miles from the city. She could spare her lids a few moments’ rest.
She let her body sag to the ground, sitting on the wet, spongy plant cover. Switching off her headlamp, she turned her back, leaning against the shelter of the magnificent giant. She huddled more snugly in the jacket. She would let her eyes stay closed for a minute. Just a minute.
* * * *
H124 jerked awake to the sound of a cry. She leaped to her feet, looking in all directions. She’d fallen asleep for too long. Light streamed through the thick layer of clouds. The rain fell less violently, and the wind had died down. She shivered, her clothes positively soaked.
The cry came again. She pressed against the giant plant and scanned all around. It sounded strange. Not human.
A flicker of movement in the tree above her caught her attention. There was something there. H124 took off, racing across the expanse of vegetation. She glanced back over her shoulder, spotting a black form moving among the limbs. She ran harder, leaving the plant far behind. She sprinted up a small hill and found herself before a bigger group of gigantic plants. Their leaves shaded her from the bright clouds and the rain. She slowed, listening. She couldn’t hear the cry now. Little paths wound between the giants, with strange, rusted barrels toppled over on their sides. Some sti
ll stood next to decaying benches. A short distance away, the gathering of giant plants ended, and more decrepit buildings blocked her view of anything beyond.
She turned. From the top of the little knoll, she could see all around her, far into the distance. A drizzle fell, blanketing everything. And for the first time in her life, she saw the sea. She’d heard it was near the city, heard tales of a colossal body of water that had no end. And there it was, its blue-gray stretching to the horizon.
Winds tore across it, forming great white waves. She stood, awestruck. She spotted things poking out of its surface. Way out, she saw a huge green arm holding a cup of fire. Closer in, buildings rose up from the waves, some blocky and square, others with spires. One in particular flashed in the light. Ornate arches decorated its sides, one stacked on top of the other, tapering to a point. She’d never seen such an elaborate structure. All the buildings in New Atlantic were stark, utilitarian. Even the PPC Tower, the tallest and best lit structure, was all straight lines and functionality. No adornment. But this building was something else.
The sea met the shore some distance closer, and even nearer stood New Atlantic, its atmospheric shield gleaming. From her vantage point the city looked a ghastly deformity against the backdrop of that wind-tossed sea.
A violent crack brought her eyes up. The clouds roiled, a swirling mass of gray and black. Lightning flashed, illuminating the underbelly of clouds in brilliant streaks, but this time she couldn’t see the actual bolts. The rain grew heavier, drumming down on her hood. Reluctantly, she turned her eyes away from the ocean and the submerged buildings. A strange, ancient world now drowned and dead.
She walked on, watching the rain drip off the edge of her hood. Beneath the jacket, her skin felt clammy and cold, and she wondered if she’d ever be warm again. She thought of her tiny room back in the city, of sweltering nights in her narrow bed, where it was often too hot to breathe. Workers didn’t have the luxury of air-conditioning like the plugged-in citizens did. She always welcomed the cool, dry air of their pods.
Shattered Roads Page 7
