Shattered Roads

by ALICE HENDERSON

  Rowan dodged to the side, slamming his elbow down on the back of the man’s head. “I don’t want to fight you!” he hissed through his teeth. “Just let us leave.”

  The woman watched her companion collapse to the floor, rage sweeping over her face. “I’ll kill you!” she screamed, charging forward. She plowed Rowan in the chest, sending him backward. H124 wheeled on her, swinging her around. Then she brought her fist into the woman’s throat. The latter gasped, falling to her knees, clutching at her neck.

  Rowan grabbed H124’s hand. “C’mon!”

  They burst from the alley into the street, then slowed, once more trying to blend in. A throng of people shambled around the center of the road, and Rowan kept to the edges, not so far where they’d stand out, yet not close enough to get dragged down.

  They moved toward the edge of the dome. She could see the atmospheric shield stretching straight into the sky.

  “Hey!” a man shouted to their left. “Hey, you!”

  She glanced in his direction, spotting a tall man with gray skin pulled taut over his bony, shrewd features. “I know you! You came in earlier! With a group of Badlanders!” The people around him stopped moving. They saw their prize. Ravenous, they darted forward, desperate hands grasping.

  “Run!” Rowan yelled to H124.

  And she did.

  Chapter 22

  Hands snatched at her hair, and she heard her shirt rip. Someone grabbed the waistline of her pants and jerked her back. She went down hard on her back, kicking out violently. As a woman held onto her pants, H124 twisted around and punched her in the face as hard as she could. The woman screamed out a spray of blood as H124 leaped to her feet and ran toward the CO2 vent. She saw a tangle of people ahead and Rowan’s boot sticking out. He was down. She sped up, driving her shoulder into the gathering of skeletons. Two of them went sprawling, allowing Rowan to slug two more of them and get back on his feet. The vent wasn’t far off now, but they had more pursuers, bare feet slapping on the asphalt.

  “You get in front!” Rowan yelled. “I’ll hold them off while you activate the TWR on the lock.”

  She dashed ahead of him, slipping past a phalanx of desperate people running to their left. She shrugged off frantic hands as they snaked out to grab her. People tripped over one another in their desperation and were trampled.

  Two hundred feet.

  An alley opened up to their right, and a stream of dirty faces poured out. The horde would cut them off and reach the vent first. Hundreds of jeering faces blocked their way.

  Then a gentle hand clasped her arm, and a voice said in her ear, “Come with us.” She saw that an elderly man and woman had fallen in beside her, struggling to keep up. They were gaunt and wrinkled, but their eyes were kind. “You won’t make it to the vent. We can help you.”

  The throng ahead blocked their view of the vent. They couldn’t fight all of them, weak and thin as the people were.

  “We’ll get enough food for four days!” someone in the crowd shrieked.

  The old man tugged H124 off to the left as she flung off yet another, who grabbed her opposite arm. Suddenly Rowan was next to her.

  “Please,” the woman said to them. “Come this way! You can escape through the tunnels.” She opened a hatch in the ground. “Hurry!”

  Rowan pushed H124 toward it. “Do it!”

  She ran for the hatch, finding a ladder leading down. She grabbed the sides and slid down, Rowan trailing behind. The old couple descended just as the crushing mass grabbed the hatch door, trying to follow. The old man was the last in, slamming down the hatch before they could enter. He drew a bolt across, leaving them in darkness.

  H124 switched on her headlamp, revealing round tunnels leading off in three directions. The old woman climbed to the bottom and gripped her arm. “We saw your broadcast on our display and had to come find you. I think you’ll want to see this.” She smiled weakly, her long white hair hanging in greasy strands around a pale, sunken face. Her sad blue eyes stared out, wide and watery. “I’m Tessa.”

  The elderly man reached the bottom of the ladder and held out his hand. “And I’m Rory.” H124 shook it, feeling a hand so thin that it seemed as if a page from one of her books was all that blanketed his bones. His eyes were a milky brown, and his ivory hair stood in stark contrast to his brown face. Both of them were so gaunt she didn’t see how they were alive.

  The couple turned to Rowan. He introduced himself.

  “We have something you should see,” Tessa told them. “You must see.” She tottered away in the dark.

  Rory gestured for them to follow.

  Rowan leaned over and whispered in H124’s ear. “I hope they’re not luring us to a cannibal cookout. We do have a lot of meat on our bones.”

  H124 widened her eyes.

  “I’m kidding. Kind of. They seem nice.”

  “Seem nice?”

  “Yeah. Just in case they really are planning to eat us.”

  They followed the old couple in the pitch, and she watched as they held hands. She wondered how long they’d known each other, and what it would be like to know another human for so long that you could grow old together.

  They passed through a series of old hatchways, taking ladders down deeper and deeper. Finally they came to a door that looked just like the ones to the weather shelters. A glowing keypad was mounted on the wall beside it. “Rory and I found this place years ago,” she told them. “We hide down here during the purges.”

  “The purges?” H124 asked.

  Rory looked up at her, his mouth set in a grim slash. “Every few months the media troops sweep through the streets and take hundreds of people.”

  H124 frowned. “Where do they take them?”

  “We’re not sure. But we never see them again,” Rory told her.

  Rowan met her gaze. “But after a purge, there’s always a surplus of food cubes.”

  H124 didn’t get his meaning right away. “As compensation for taking their friends?”

  Rowan shook his head. “No. Remember when I said on the roof of the PPC tower that there wasn’t enough food grown in the gardens to feed everyone? Rumor has it there’s not even enough to feed the citizens who are plugged in and maintaining the city’s infrastructure. The media elite gets food from the plants, and everyone else gets . . . other food cubes.”

  Her eyes went wide. “So you’re saying . . .”

  “Afraid so.”

  She couldn’t believe it. “So the new food cubes are made from . . .” She swallowed. “And that’s why they don’t wipe out everyone in the streets? Because they need them for . . .”

  Rowan nodded. “That’s the rumor.”

  Rory gestured toward the door and its glowing keypad. “Tessa and I have survived dozens of purges thanks to the tunnels. And now this bunker. No one else knows it’s down here.”

  He entered a code, and the door hissed open. He turned and waved them in.

  As they stepped inside, Rowan gave a long, low whistle. The area beyond was huge. H124 took it in. It certainly wasn’t a weather shelter. They walked into a cavern of floating displays and servers like the ones in the PPC towers, but much older. It didn’t have the sleek appearance of new tech. Shelves lined with books stood in the center of the room.

  “Come look at this,” Rory told them, leading them into the next room. This one was even bigger than the first, with a ceiling at least fifty feet high. On the floor lay a huge silver bag attached to a complex machine with readouts and transmitters. She had no idea what it was.

  “What is this place?” Rowan asked.

  “We weren’t sure at first, either,” Tessa told him. “But look at this.” She led them back to the anteroom and sat down in front of one of the hovering displays. She waved her hand through it, bringing up a video of the silver thing, now fully inflated and floating up into the sky.
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  Rory stepped forward to lean over Tessa. Then he turned to them. “We figured out that this thing took off into the sky and sent back information. Not sure why, though.”

  “What kind of information?” Rowan asked.

  Tessa pulled up a series of text and numbers. “This kind.” It read:

  TEST: 1456.3

  APOLLO ENGINEERED PARTICLES: detected

  PERCENTAGE REMAINING: 92%

  H124 remembered Raven’s video about the Apollo project. “Wait—I know about this.”

  Rowan looked astounded. “You do? How?”

  “I found this old PRD in one of the weather shelters. On it this guy said that a long time ago they sent these sulfate aerosol particles into the air in hopes of reversing the damage humans did to the climate. But it all backfired. It didn’t act the way they’d hoped. Instead of it reflecting heat, a lot of it became trapped. Then one day it came crashing down and made everything worse. So they sent up a different engineered particle, one designed to stay up longer. And it never came back down.” She looked back to the deflated silver object in the other room. “They must have sent that thing up to see if the particles were still up there.”

  Rowan looked around. “It’s no artifact. This is relatively new tech. This has got to be Rover.”

  She waved her hand through the display, moving between what looked like different projects. One read General Climate Model (GCM), listing a number of different factors beneath it:

  Enter Variables:

  Methane (CH4 ) content: 3000 ppm

  Carbon Dioxide (CO2 ) content: 600 ppm

  Nitrous Oxide (N2O) content: 450 ppm

  Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Increase: 3°F per century

  Prediction: ~7°F temp increase over next 100 years

  She noticed she could enter new numbers for any of the variables. “This looks like a way to predict what’s going to happen to the climate in the future. You put in a possible scenario, and it gives you an end result. So they’ve been studying this . . .”

  Tessa turned to her. “That’s why we thought of you. If they’ve been sending these sensors up, maybe they could also send one of those things up into the air to divert the space rock.”

  H124 didn’t know how it would all work, if it was even possible. She stepped closer to the display, seeing a small line at the bottom. It read: NASA Langley Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment VI Satellite: offline.

  NASA. She knew that word. Pulling out her PRD, she brought up the videos she’d taken back in New Atlantic. “I know this word too,” she told them. “It was some kind of organization that dealt with the asteroid pieces.” Hope welled within her. “If this terminal is somehow linked to it . . .”

  Rory gestured for her to come closer. “I’ve heard of them too. Take a look at this.” He walked over to the shelves of books and pulled down a volume. It was called A History of NASA. In it, the NASA Langley Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment—or SAGE VI project—was mentioned. It was a satellite that orbited the earth, sending back data. It had been designed to study the effects of the artificial sulfate particles, the later engineered particles, as well as something called ozone. It lamented that no one knew who had launched the particles into the atmosphere, and that everyone was suffering because of it. The end of the book addressed the disbanding of NASA.

  The hope fell inside H124. So NASA was no more. Apparently it hadn’t been around since the time books were still being printed.

  Rowan stared over her shoulder. “They’ve been gone a long time.” He walked back to the floating display, reading that it was offline. “I wonder if their tech is still up there, or if it came crashing down too.” He brought up a floating keyboard and typed a few commands. Then he sat down, typing in more. He cursed. “I can’t figure this out! We need a Rover.”

  “But where are they?” Tessa asked. “This place has been abandoned a long time. Rory and I had to clean it up quite a bit when we moved in down here. It was dusty and filled with mildew. Folks hadn’t been here in years.”

  Rory crossed his arms. “Our guess is that this used to be a Rover bunker on the outskirts of Delta City. Then when the metropolis sprawled past it, they abandoned their outpost.”

  “We’ve got to find them,” H124 said. “I found these old PRDs in the weather shelters. This guy recorded a history of what happened to the planet. The Rovers are still out there. He must be one of them.”

  Rowan held out his hand. “Let me see one of these PRDs.” She pulled one out and gave it to him. He frowned. “All this tech’s old. Decades old. How do we know these people are still around? They could have been wiped out.”

  “I can’t believe that. On the video, the Rover—Raven—says that it’s his mom’s old PRD. That could explain the age of the device. He could have made those videos recently.”

  Rowan met her eyes. “Or he could be dead by now.”

  She shook her head. “No. I have to find them. I have to believe there’s a chance.” She gestured around at the bunker. “This proves they held on to science. If they were in touch with that NASA satellite, then they have the ability to reach out into space.”

  The room fell silent. Tessa and Rory looked at each other, then the old woman walked over and took H124’s hands. “You’ve got to try,” she told her.

  “I will. I’ll find them.” She held up the NASA book. “Can I take this? There might be information in here about a lost technology that could help us.”

  Tessa gave a reassuring nod. “Of course.”

  Rowan’s PRD beeped. He pulled it out, bringing up its hovering display. “It’s the device we stashed in the PPC tower. It’s letting me know what the PPC is planning.” The color drained from his face.

  “What is it?” H124 asked.

  “It’s Rocky Basin Camp. The PPC’s moving on it right now. It’s under attack.”

  “Where’s Rocky Basin Camp?”

  “It’s where I sent Byron and the others to meet us.”

  “They’re going to walk right into that?”

  He nodded. “From what I’m reading, it’s a slaughter. We’ve got to reach them.”

  Tessa motioned toward the bunker door. “I know a way you can get out quickly.”

  “Let’s go,” H124 said, joining her.

  The four of them left the bunker, climbing ladders and braving the tunnels once again. H124 was astounded at the couple’s ability to keep up despite their malnourishment.

  Finally they paused at the bottom of a ladder. “This is it,” Tessa told them. “Climb up here, and you’ll be right in front of one of the CO2 vents.”

  Rowan shook her hand, then Rory’s. “Thank you so much.” He started to climb.

  H124 shook their hands too. “What you’ve shown us is amazing. The Rovers are out there, and this makes me think they can definitely help us.”

  “As will you,” said Rory.

  She gave an awkward smile, and climbed.

  When they reached the top, Rowan braced his shoulder against a hatch. “You ready for this? We could emerge into a crowd of hostiles.”

  “I’m ready.”

  He unbolted the hatch and cracked it open, peering out. “There’s a crowd, but I see the vent. The way is almost clear. Let’s go!” He hurried out with her in tow.

  At first they walked slowly, trying to blend in, but the crowd must have been pacing, waiting for them to reappear. “There they are!” cried a man.

  “We’ll get to eat!” shouted someone else.

  A pair of groups closed in from both sides. H124 and Rowan made a break for it.

  Then the phalanx on the left picked up speed, colliding with that on the right. As people fell in front of her she leaped over them, nearly tripping as someone grabbed her ankles. She landed unevenly, but she quickly regained her balance and kept running.

 
Fifty feet to the vent.

  She glanced back to see Rowan slamming a fist into a man’s face.

  Twenty feet.

  She started to slow, already thinking at the TWR to bring down the membrane. She felt it click in her mind, and she sailed through the vent’s opening. Rowan followed, but was nearly stopped by a man grabbing his shoulders. He shrugged him off, and H124 thought Membrane up at the TWR and felt it switch back on.

  The crowd seethed before the egress, piling up, crushing one another against the wall.

  They’d made it.

  She leaned over, catching her breath. Rowan did the same. Then she straightened up and stared out at the dirty, starving mass, sunken eyes fixed on them in pity.

  She gripped her tool bag close to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Rowan took her hand and turned her away. Together they walked into the dark tunnel. They made their way in silence for a few minutes, and she met his eyes in the shadows. “Earlier today I thought this place was called Murder City because the Badlanders had a price on their heads.”

  Rowan shook his own. “When you’re desperate, killing someone for a little bit of food starts to look more and more tempting.” They kept on at an even pace. “But they don’t rely solely on people murdering one another.”

  “What do you mean?” She switched her headlamp on.

  “They send out their own death squads. Most people they kill, but then there are the slavers too.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Slavers?”

  Rowan moved stealthily in the dark, glancing behind to make sure no one had followed them. “The PPC doesn’t just need jacked-in people to maintain the infrastructure. They also need menial laborers.”

  Menials. She remembered them from the dank tunnels under New Atlantic, vacantly pressing a button or pulling a lever, eyes staring into infinity, mouths parted lightly, expressions blank. “They had those where I came from.”

  Rowan donned a grim face as he kept ahead of her. “The PPC modifies their brains.”

  “You mean like what they did to me? So I’d be able to interact with theta wave receivers?”