by Loki Renard
“If you have had your fill of reading, then perhaps you’d like to come out with me today. An order has been put in for ten wild ducks for the celebrations of the upgrades.”
“Upgrades?”
“The city has been adjusting the technology it runs on for some time. All cities do it, but the engineers like to pat themselves on the back when they manage not to kill us all.” He smirked down at her and squeezed her shoulder. “And now we get to provide them with the finest wild meats.”
Sarah did not need to be asked twice. She bounced up from the chair and went to get her armor. She still did not like it, it made her heavy and stiff and annoyed, but it was the price of freedom and one she’d gladly pay. She even stood willingly by the front door and let him slip her tracking collar over her neck.
“You’re being so good,” he praised, simultaneously patting her bottom and kissing her cheek. His praise was genuine and warmed her from the inside. She leaned against him a little and was rewarded with a hug.
They left the city quickly. She avoided the indignity of the crate, but that meant putting up with the nine-minute journey on the whizzing sky platform, which still made her stomach lurch and her palms sweat. William made the trip standing, she sat at his feet, trying not to obviously cower. She would never truly become accustomed to the city, she thought to herself as she wrapped her arms around his left thigh for support and comfort.
She forgot her fear the moment the platform landed and they made their way to the exit. William’s documents were stamped and they were waved through, out into the verdant green that grew thickly around the base of the concrete dome. There was very little between the city and the wilds, not so much as a seam of dead space. Creeping tendrils and mosses and little crawling creatures all made incursions up the walls, attempting an invasion that was as insistent as it was futile.
With a little cry of glee, Sarah ran into the bosom of the wild, leaping into the air and dashing from place to place, tearing through the undergrowth and swinging from branches. It was like being returned to the womb. Being in the wilds gave her a sense of belonging and connection that nothing in the city did. William was kind enough and confident enough not to be concerned by her exuberance; she knew he was somewhere behind her, out of sight but with a clear bead on her location.
He let her run herself out and eventually came upon her panting her glee in a sunny beam that filtered through an opening in the canopy, flooding the surrounding glade with beautiful life-giving radiation. Sarah stretched out in it, having removed her armor to feel the heat on her skin better. He frowned when he saw that.
“What did I tell you about wearing your armor?”
“You would put lead boots on a fish and tell it to swim,” she complained.
William’s hands moved to his hips. He didn’t say another word as she reluctantly donned her armor. True, it was less likely a wild cat would put its fangs through her belly while she was wearing it, but it was going to make her sweat and it was going to slow her down and she had every intention of convincing him to let her take it off soon.
“Let’s start the hunt,” he said. “I think you’ve run yourself out for now.”
“If we’re hunting birds, that means nothing but sitting and waiting until they land on the waters. You don’t need me for that.”
“I don’t need you,” he said. “I want you. Now come.”
She didn’t know whether to be pleased that he wished her nearby or annoyed that he was so controlling. She settled on pleased as she followed him toward the lake, which contained many brightly colored schools of fish that played in vast numbers along the rocky walls. It was not a natural formation, it was a crater from a great explosion that had taken place a very, very long time ago. So long that fish native to the lake had sprung up with feathered facial whiskers and bright orange and yellow hues. Sarah lay down alongside the bank and watched them swirl around one another, hunting little insects and larvae that spun gold and green in the warm water.
William was more alert, his weapon across his knees as he sat and waited with keen patience. Though he lacked the genes that tuned her in to nature more than other humans, William was an impressive predator. When he settled into his hunting mode he became still as death, his dark eyes focused on the spot where his prey would soon be. He barely moved at all, every muscle relaxed and yet completely ready to move with slow precision.
An unfortunate bird landed on the lake, sending ripples through the water and making the fish scatter momentarily. Sarah watched quietly as William raised the gun in one smooth motion and discharged it with accuracy so great that the bird did not know its end was upon it until it was over. It fell to the side, listing in the water instantly dead.
“You want to get that for me, please?”
“Not wearing a hundred pounds of armor, I don’t.”
“Take it off then, brat,” he said, swatting her ass.
She grinned, stripping off not just her armor, but her clothing as well. Slipping into the water naked as a nymph, she leisurely paddled out to the bird and brought it in, handling it with due reverence. Once on shore, she wrapped it in leaves and placed it carefully inside William’s sack. He watched her with a fond sort of amusement. She knew he found her prey rituals strange; after all, what did it matter what happened to the animal once it was dead? Sarah had never been able to escape the feeling that the creature was still about in some form, returned to the wild from whence it had come. Kindness to one’s prey was kindness to oneself.
Still dripping, she sat next to William and put a wet hand on his knee. He raised a brow at her, but did not compel her to remove it. The rest of the hunt was peaceful, largely because no further fowl made landings. The afternoon’s labors turned into lazing by the lake with nothing to do but make idle conversation and enjoy the bounty of the wilds.
“Well,” William eventually said. “I suppose we’re going back with just the one bird.”
“That’s not going to go very far.”
“No, but it will fetch a pretty price.” He winked at her. She still did not entirely understand how the animals he caught translated into riches, and she did not much care either. He was happy, which meant that things were good.
They made their way back toward the city, but as they mounted a ridge that separated the city from the lake, William stopped in his tracks.
“Something’s wrong.”
Something was very wrong. The dome of the city was glowing bright red. Sarah had never seen it that way before; it looked like an angry volcano about to spew forth lava. The city proper, sometimes visible even from a distance through the dome, was obscured completely by the vapor, which was turning dark before their eyes.
“God,” William said, his voice dry and tight with horror. “My god.”
Sarah knew something terrible was happening, but there was nothing either of them could do. There was a sound like a giant egg being cracked and then plumes of red-black smoke began to pour from the dome, filling the sky and blocking out light from the sun.
“Sarah…” William’s words were cut off by a reverberation that shook the ground beneath their feet. “Get down!”
Sarah dropped into a crouch. She was glad she had, for in the next instant there was an explosion that shook the ground so violently that it was impossible to keep her feet. She went sprawling and William landed atop her, covering her body with his own.
His weight was not inconsiderable, but it was a comfort with the chaos that was raining down all around them. Bits of charred glass and twisted metal were flying through the air like hot shrapnel. It took a long time for the shaking to stop and when it did, the silence was so complete and eerie that her every hair stood on end.
“Are you alright?” William breathed the question against her neck.
“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”
“Yeah.” He stood up and shielded his eyes. “The city is gone.”
It truly was gone. Only a crater remained where the city had once be
en, blackened and hollowed out.
“What happened?”
“A fatal malfunction,” William said grimly. “A total overload of the power grid.”
“We should see if we can help anyone.”
“There’s no one left,” he said. “In the case of a fatal malfunction the entire city is evacuated through the subterranean shuttles. A whole city can be cleared in less than three minutes.”
“And if people don’t get out?”
“People get out,” William repeated himself with grim confidence. “Nobody stays behind in a fatal malfunction. The heat generated in a total overload is enough to vaporize anyone near it.” He rubbed his hand over his face, shaking his head with shocked dismay. “Every city is briefed about the possibility, but nobody actually expects it to happen.”
“It’s all gone,” Sarah said. “The house…”
“My work,” William frowned. “It wasn’t saved to the city’s servers. It is lost. All lost.”
Sarah once would have danced for joy at seeing the city destroyed, but William’s sadness made her morose. He was shocked and he was shaken, though he was clearly trying to remain strong, the notion that his labors had been lost was hitting him hard.
“What now?” The question had to be asked. “Will we follow where they evacuated?”
“It is too late to follow,” William said. “The heat will have sealed those tunnels, and the other cities are thousands of miles away.”
It took a few moments for the reality of the situation to sink in for Sarah. It was really gone. All of it. The terrifying flying platforms, the cruel bureaucrats, the stinking kennels, all incinerated into their composite parts.
Next to her, William held the bird he’d caught. It was all he had left, besides the clothes on his back and the weapons in his holster. In the blink of an eye, he’d gone from a member of a powerful collective to a man alone in the wilderness, a wildling without any genetic protections. Somehow she sensed that he wasn’t really registering the totality of his loss.
“We need to move away from this area as quickly as possible,” he said. “There’s a possibility of fires and airborne contamination. Let’s go.”
He was more interested in surviving the disaster than being emotional about it. She admired his strength, which had never shone more strongly than in that moment. It was easy for a man to be strong when fate was smiling on him, but adversity showed the true nature of all creatures. Without a second look back at the crater that had once been his home, William strode out into the unknown. Sarah followed quickly on his heels.
They fast marched away from the crater, making very good time as adrenaline surged through both their bodies. In all her time in the city Sarah had never imagined such a terrible force was boiling below it. She had never given any thought to the power that kept the place in pristine condition, all the widgets and the gadgets and the marvels that had defied nature. The memory of the meltdown was fresh in her memory, playing itself over and over again with red surging glow and rancid scent carried on the breeze.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, they made camp. Sarah gathered branches to weave into a shelter while William made a fire. They worked in silence, each feeling the heaviness of the day deep in their souls.
“I am sorry,” she said as she pushed the shelter into the branches of the trees, creating a canopy that would protect them from the elements. William’s armor would protect him for a time, but the ambient radiation was a threat nonetheless. She could see waves of the stuff rolling across the valley, settling more thickly in the lower lying areas.
Crouched next to the glinting fire, William did not acknowledge what she’d said. He was struggling with a loss greater than she could imagine. Being removed from the wilds had been traumatic, but she had always known the wilds were still there awaiting her return. She could not conceive what it would have been like if the wilds had exploded in one terrible second. Moving closer to him, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and put her head close to his. For long moments, he did nothing. Then his hand rested on hers and she knew he understood what she was trying to do.
They lay down together, limbs entwined in the glow of the fire. They did not eat, for they were too weary to cook the bird. With hungry bellies and saddened hearts, they took refuge in sleep, trusting the fire to keep predators at bay.
*
The following morning, Sarah de-feathered the bird and took it upon herself to hunt down a couple of jackrabbits in addition. She did so without her armor, figuring she would move faster without it. She was ravenous and she figured William would be just as hungry. Though eager to prepare food, she was also careful to store the feathers and the down from the bird along with the fur from the rabbits. If they were going to survive the wild, both would come in handy in the future.
William was still deep asleep, his features surprisingly peaceful as the sun began to glow through the canopy, casting dappled shadows over his handsome face. She kept watch over him as the food cooked, feeling a newfound tenderness toward him. He had never been vulnerable before. He had never needed her. Perhaps he did not truly need her even now, but she knew that he would appreciate waking to cooked food. There was none of the convenience of a refrigerator in the wilds.
As the scent of cooked meat made its way through the air to William’s nose, he made a grumbling, groaning sound. Then his eyes opened and he looked at her with something like surprise.
“Good morning,” she said. “Breakfast will be ready soon.”
“You’re still here.”
“Of course.” She turned the bunny meat slowly. “Where would I be?”
William sat up, shrugging. “I don’t know. Being free?”
“I can’t leave you alone out here,” she said. “You can’t see the radiation and where we are going, those maps of yours won’t help you. You need me.”
He nodded, scratching the growth of dark beard that was sprouting on his chin and cheeks. “I figured you’d leap at the chance to be rid of me.”
“You did?” Sarah felt a little pang of hurt.
“I ripped you out of this,” he said. “I took you to another world practically and I made you live a life you never wanted. This is the perfect opportunity to be free of all that. You could go now and I’d never find you.”
Sarah turned the rabbit, ensuring it was crispy on all sides. “So that’s what you think of me. You think I’d leave a man to die lost in the wilds?”
“I would not die.”
Sarah made no reply to that. William was a fine hunter and a strong man, but his knowledge of the terrain was limited and his armor made him less agile than he needed to be. Sure, he had his weapon and he could probably hunt food on his own, but he was used to the knowledge that civilization was only a few hours’ walk away. Now that civilization was gone, there would be no restocking supplies, no repairing armor. If he hurt himself, it would be game over.
“I’m talking to you, Sarah.”
She nodded and kept tending the food. It was almost done. Their stomachs were both growling and they were both still tired and very stressed.
“Here,” she said, presenting meat to him on a leaf. “Eat something.”
He looked at her, and for a second she thought his male pride was going to make him refuse it. But the scent of the cooked protein must have overcome his pride, for he thanked her and began eating.
“It’s good,” he said after a few bites. “Every time I cooked food out here it came out dry and tasteless.”
“There are herbs you can rub on the meat to help the flavor. And it doesn’t dry out if you sear it first then cook it slow.”
“Huh.”
Finishing the meal seemed to improve his mood. He leaned back against a tree trunk and breathed deeply.
“I suppose this is life now,” he said, looking around. “Nights by the fire. Slow mornings.”
“We need to move to higher ground,” Sarah said, dousing the fire. “The radiation is less dense up the
re.”
“We have no decontamination abilities out here,” he pointed out. “I’m going to be eating irradiated food, drinking irradiated water. There is no medical treatment available. If I can’t take the radiation, it doesn’t matter.”
“It will matter if we can get to another city.”
“The nearest one is a month away at least, and there are mountains in the way.”
“There are tunnels,” Sarah reminded him. “Underground. Free of radiation. You’ll be exposed less down there. I can bring you food and travel with you.”
William shook his head curtly, rejecting that idea. “A month of stumbling around in a dark tunnel, hoping not to get hit by stray transports.”
“If we could get you on one of those transports, you could be at the next city in days, not weeks.”
“Or…”
“Or what?”
William scratched his beard. “Maybe I can survive in the wild. There was a scientist who thought that slow and repeated exposure to radiation could lead to a certain resistance to it.”
“I don’t know what a scientist is, but that sounds like a bad idea to me.”
“I’ve never had any ill effects from the radiation, even when I’ve spent several days in the wilds. It’s possible I have some natural resistance to it.”
“It’s also possible that your armor and the regular decontamination saved you from sickness,” Sarah said pragmatically. William’s sudden desire to take risks with his health struck her as strange. He had always been so careful, so compulsive about anything to do with safety.
“I’d rather live above ground and hunt and live than scuttle through tunnels in the hope I get to another city.”
She did not understand why he was insisting on what seemed to be a suicidal strategy. “But…”
“No arguments,” he said sharply. “We’ll keep heading north.”
“Why? Is that where you want to be buried?”
“Don’t you give me attitude,” he growled. “The cities have failed. It’s time to survive as best we can in the wilds.”
