“Hugh, you wait here and guard these bodies. Do not let any animals get close to them,” Cveta said.
Hugh nodded. He walked over and picked up the dead coyote and then carried it to the moose’s body. He reverently laid it on the cow.
Cveta continued, “I will hustle down to that rancher who made the report. He had some poitevin donkeys and I will bring them up here. We can then drag these bodies to that ranch to burn them in his paddock. It is not ideal in any way, but the best I can think of doing.”
“Let me go and you stay here,” Hugh offered. “I am younger than you are.”
“Hugh, are you afraid to stay with the dead?” Cveta teased. “You know I am a faster runner than you are, and I know these forests better than you do. You stay here and keep the scavengers away. It will take your youth and vigor to keep prevent the scavengers from getting at the bodies. All I have to do is hustle to that ranch. It is fortunate we found this in the daylight. If this gets out of control… Well, while I am gone do not daydream too much about Larissa. I will return as soon as I can.”
“Fare you well!” Hugh replied.
Cveta turned and ran away at a quick trot.
Hugh worked diligently to scrape the grasses and other plants away from the dead animals. His strong back and youth did help him in that endeavor. After a while, he had cleared as much of the area as he could. He now had a zone around the carcasses where no animal could sneak in. The permalloy wall was on one side, while the cleared area was on the others.
‘That is not enough space to start a safe fire, but it will prevent some of the scavengers from getting to the bodies,’ he said to himself.
Sitting down, he watched again for any animal which might be trying to come up to the bodies. He did not see any, so he pulled out a pad and writing implement.
“Dear Grandma Mae,
I know I usually speak to you though the multiceivers, but since they are not working I decided to write in an old fashioned manner. I am not sure when you will get these notes, but I wanted you to know I am thinking about you and hope you are well. It is very strange to not be able to see you and speak with you, and I am out of practice writing a note by hand. It is a good thing you and my parents taught me to never rely only on our current technology, but to be ready with old-style things as well. Thank you for that wisdom. I am on assignment out at the frontier of the habitat.”
Hugh paused in his writing. He briefly considered telling his grandmother about the moose, but rejected that as she was elderly and remembered the times before the Outbreak, as well as the terrible times when the quarantine was first imposed. He looked around to make sure no scavenger had snuck up. Noting the area was secure, he continued writing.
“I am not sure when I will get back to Orsk, but I may meet a traveler or someone else heading that way who can carry this note to you. If not, I will share my writings with you when I return. I know there are troubling rumors circulating, but be aware the other troopers and I are working diligently to address all these issues. Constable Brock and Governor Konstantin are good leaders and this crisis too shall pass. I am confident of that. Listen to Dad and Mom, they are still there to care for you, even though I know you will miss me bringing you outside so you can soak in the sky tube’s warmth. Now I know you Grandma Mae, and so here is my answer to the issue I know you would ask if we were directly conversing. No, I have not yet married. I know that you want me to do that soon, and I do have a women in mind. I have decided that I will pursue her and see if she responds to my advances. After all, you and Grandfather were some of the first generation of the Journey-Born, and you survived the Outbreak and raised your own children. You have told me so often I must continue the generations to make the Vanguard strong. You have said our fate depends on the future generations. I will never forget your teaching and your love. I know you miss Grandfather, as do I, but I know he loved your dearly. I can only aspire to be the kind of man he was and my Dad is.
For now I must sign off here. Your loving grandson, Hugh.”
Hugh folded the note and placed it in the inner pocket of his clothing and patted it for luck. He scanned the area, and there were no signs or scavengers or other animals. He then became aware of the distinct lack of any of the typical forest noises. He heard no birds, or insects. It was too quite, and had been for some time. To Hugh’s bright mind, he knew something was wrong. The forest never was without sound.
He quietly drew out his revolver.
He watched the forest, and especially the game trail that went in both directions along the permalloy wall of the habitat. The air was still, but the smell of the dead moose and the dead coyote were lingering. Hugh stepped back away from the two bodies just a pace or so. He knew he needed room to maneuver, even though he was not sure exactly what the threat was.
He scanned the trees, and the undergrowth, and the game trail, yet he still saw nothing. Yet, somehow, in someway, he felt that he was being watched.
He glanced back and saw a shadow of a flicker of something move across the bottom of one of the trees. Instantly his revolver was aimed at the spot. But there was no target.
He listened. He watched. He sniffed. He took deep breaths and smelled for anything unusual.
It was too quiet and too still.
Suddenly, Hugh spun around. This time he saw a flash of bright orange just on the edge of the forest. A swaying branch was there were the orange flash had been. Again he aimed down the notched sight of his revolver. Again there was no target, even though the branch with its needles continued to sway.
Hugh carefully scanned the trees again, this time opening his eyes as wide as possible and looking for anything in his peripheral vision as well as directly ahead of him. He could see nothing, but he sensed something. He knew he was being watched. He could feel it.
A small snap of a branch alerted Hugh as he came under attack. He instinctively crouched when he heard the sound. His eyes lifted as he knees bent into a squat. His finger squeezed the trigger before his conscious mind identified what was leaping at him from the upper parts of a large blue spruce tree.
Blam. Blam. Blam.
The beast was soaring right down on top of Hugh, but he scrambled out of its way, keeping the revolver pointed at it. His shots had struck it squarely in its chest, yet the momentum of its leap it had driven its body toward him. He dodged to get out from under it and watched as it crashed down to land at the side wall.
“A cougar?” Hugh said in disbelief.
The beast growled and hissed as it turned. Its eyes were like burnished balls of orange. It raised one paw, and then fell down. Foaming drool and blood seeped from its mouth. It coughed several times and then expired. The glow in its eyes faded out.
“It too was a Roe!” Hugh said. “One of the most majestic creatures here in the forest, and it was infected.”
Hugh pushed the cougar’s body with his foot, and it was truly dead. He quickly reloaded the three round he had fired. He then picked up the cougar, its roughly eighty kilograms was not too hard for Hugh to carry and place atop the coyote and moose.
“Hugh?” A small child’s voice came to him. He looked around. Standing just behind some short bushes was a child. He was down the game trail the same way the moose and coyote had come. He had large grayish-blue eyes set into a dark face. His thick, wavy, brown hair, was neck-length. The boy was dressed in red.
“Boy! Come here! There are dangerous animals about,” Hugh called as he rushed down the game trail. “I will protect you. What is your name?”
“I am Lennie. I am sorry about your friend. I tried to stop the sullied animals, but they do not listen to me. They are yucky.”
“Lennie, how did you know my name?” Hugh asked as he approached. “Do you live around here? From the ranch?” Hugh was watching between the boy and the forest and the trails. He was alert to the possibility of another Roe beast.
“You must help Larissa,” Lennie said. “That is now the only way.”
“Larissa
?” Hugh asked as he stepped near to where the boy stood.
“The bad animals are coming, but the sullied yucky ones are already in here,” Lennie said. “I am sorry.” The boy stepped into the forest just as Hugh reached that point on the trail.
“Lennie?” Hugh asked as he turned were the boy had been.
The child was nowhere in sight.
“Lennie?” Hugh called. “I will protect you and help you get home. The forest is dangerous right now.”
There was no answer. Hugh looked and looked but he could not see where the child could have moved away. The evergreens were dense and thick. The trail was open for a long distance, yet the boy was not there either.
“Lennie? What did you say about my friend? Or Larissa? Lennie?” Hugh called out. His voice was the only sound in the forest. Hugh looked around again and again, but he stood there alone and puzzled.
‘He must have fled back to that ranch, he probably knows the forest better than I do, but Cveta may be in danger, and this mass of dead animals will attract more scavengers,’ Hugh thought to himself. ‘If two prime predators are already infected, this will not be stopped easily. I must report this.’
Hugh seriously considered lighting the bodies on fire, and he had a small amount of accelerant in a pouch on his belt, but the forest was still too near and he doubted that the accelerant would be sufficient for the moose carcass alone. However, when he looked back at the bodies, he saw several large ravens, and a turkey buzzard pecking at the carcasses.
“No!” He ran toward the birds and waved his hands. They flew off, but he could see pieces of flesh dangling from their beaks. “The Outbreak is here, the quarantine has utterly failed. Those birds will be all over the highlands forest in no time.”
Pulling out the pouch of accelerant, Hugh dumped all it over the pile of bodies. He set it aflame. “I hope this does not cause a forest fire, but it might help slow down the spread of the infection.”
Hugh checked his holster, and finding it secure, he sprinted off in the direction Cveta had taken. He watched for the boy named Lennie, who was wearing red, but did not see him anywhere. As he trotted along he came to a dead animal ahead of him. He drew out his revolver again and slowed to a walk. This animal was a woodchuck and it had been savagely killed and eviscerated. Scanning the area he saw no other animals, and it was still far too quiet for the normal forest. Much as he tried, he could see no young boy, no predators, nothing but the bleak and now foreboding forest.
He picked up the pace and ran along the trail. He had to watch his footing as some roots did poke up in various places, and the path was twisting and not well suited for a fast run. There was no panic in his movements, just a steady and quick speed to both find the child and report to Cveta what had happened. She was his immediate superior after all. He again wished the multiceivers were functioning, and did ponder the immensity of the danger which had come into The Wilds.
His mind rehearsed the route they had used in coming, so when he came around a bend in the trail he expected to see the ranch and the people who lived there. He expected to see Cveta, and hoped to find the child. What he saw was completely shocking.
2 Message from the Gardens of delight
“Did you tell Hugh?” Rika asked. Her narrow green eyes were like two pools of stagnant water. She pushed back her long, luxurious, wavy, gold colored hair. She was tall for a child, but thin and willowy. Her skin was light-colored and pale even in the shadows where she stood with Lennie. “He was just where I told you, correct?” Her prominent cheekbones and a small mouth projected an unusual ambiance from her presence.
“Yes, but he will need to see his friend first,” Lennie replied. “That makes me sad. The sullied animals are so yucky. I told Hugh I was sorry, but I am not sure he listened.”
“It will be hard for them all,” Rika said and nodded her head. The words carried far more weight than her young years would have suggested, for she was not too many years older than Lennie. “You did tell him about Larissa, right? That was the essential message.”
“Of course I did that,” Lennie replied with a frown. “How could I forget that? I am not a baby.”
Rika pursed her thin lips a bit. She then blew out a long breath of air. “I am sure you did really well, Lennie. Really well. I will just go and see how the others are doing on their messages.”
“Rika, when will this be over?” Lennie asked, more in anticipation than in complaint.
“Lennie, you can still try to tell the good animals to run away,” Rika replied. “That will help some of them, for a while more.”
“Okay, but we all know how this will end. I just do not know when it will end, but I know how.”
“Yes, Lennie we do,” Rika said and a single tear beaded at the corner of her eye. “Yes, we do, we certainly do.”
3 are there any chance encounters?
The command bridge of the Colony Ship Vanguard was lit by a few display screens which glowed a steady color. The majority of the gauges, dials, displays, screens, monitors, indicators, and other control apparatus spread around the horseshoe-shaped room were without any power.
Paul walked out from the barracks area which was off the command bridge. He took a seat at the counter which was located around the arch. He rolled the chair up to the counter and put his head down onto his hands. His elbows rested on the countertop. He stared at the surface for a long while but did not grow more tired. He wished for sleep, but it would not come. And so her sat there in the command chairs on a nearly dead bridge.
He glanced back toward the barracks, but Larissa, Brinley, and his age-mate Gretchen were still sleeping. He was thankful they could sleep, even when he could not. Too many troubling dreams and images came into his mind. He turned swiveled around and looked at the clear permalloy which comprised the one wall of the bridge. Beyond it was dark. The three dimensional scale model of the Vanguard had not been seen there since the power shut down. He recalled how vividly it had showed the ship, but that tool was gone now as well.
Paul glanced at the door from which he had originally entered the bridge. It seemed like very long ago, but had just been yesterday, or so he estimated. The ruined bodies of the androids were stacked to the side of the automacubes and blocked that entry door. Without intact heads, the androids would never operate again, and if anything did come through the door, their ruined bodies would provide some barrier, albeit small. The inert automacubes were parked near to that. Brinley had rigged up a chair, chain, and several cups which would rattle loudly if the automacubes moved. They hung there quietly. On the opposite side of the command bridge was the other door which Paul knew consisted of an inner door and an outer door. Both of those were shut.
“Tiffany?” Paul asked as he lifted a multiceiver up and activated its communication link.
The small screen on the multiceiver flickered to life and an artificial intelligence system’s voice came on. “Yes, Paul, I can hear you. You are missing sleep again.”
“Really Tiffany?” Paul asked. “I did not notice that.”
“Paul, I am sorry if I offended you by stating the obvious. How may I assist you?” Tiffany inquired.
“Have you located the position of your Atomic Level Processor?”
“I have not. The nonphysicality is still in chaos. I have been able to reinforce the links I fashioned to the modified multiceivers, but have not been able to backtrack to where the ALP is located. There are obstructions and pitfalls, to use metaphors, which inhibit my abilities. The majority of the multiceiver system is kaput and the lattice is in ruins.”
“Any chance of knowing what is beyond the doors and outside of the bridge here?”
“Being unable to enter the nonphysicality, I am limited to the views and scans I can make from your multiceivers. Had I not modified these prior to my acculturation by Phoenix Dominie, I would not be able to even do that much.”
“So we still do not know what is outside of here? We still are not sure what happened to the rest of t
he Vanguard. I mean after than insane AI blew part of it up and the Jellies destroyed a different part,” Paul lamented.
“That is correct. I conjecture that some level of stability is in place on the needle ship. Otherwise this bridge would not be intact,” Tiffany replied.
“Intact, but broken. Some help that is,” Paul groaned as he looked at all the equipment around which was not functioning.
The door to the bridge slid silently open. Paul was startled. He jumped up. Standing between the inner door and the second door was a child dressed in red.
“Jennie?” Paul asked in genuine surprise and astonishment. He could get no other words out.
The child was standing there and in her arms was a white cat with large black splotchy spots. The cat’s ears were black, but its face was white. Its long tail was black. It looked shabby and old, but was nestled in the girl’s arms.
The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle Page 170
