The Dire Earth: A Novella (The Dire Earth Cycle)

by Jason M. Hough

  “So let’s figure out a way to do that,” Skadz said, “where we’re not caged animals. All right?”

  “Can I get in on this?”

  The three men turned in unison to the new voice. The woman on the far bunk had woken. She’d propped herself on her elbows and winced as she tried to ease back toward the wall. Jake was up and at her side in an instant, a pillow clutched in his hand. He stuffed it behind her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No problem,” Jake replied, returning to his own bunk.

  “What’s your name?” Skadz asked.

  The woman took a moment to let a wave of discomfort pass. “I’m Samantha. Everyone calls me Sam.”

  “And you have the immunity, too?” Skyler asked.

  She looked at each of them in turn before nodding once. Then her face twisted up, concern on her brow. “Wait. Are we it? Just the four of us?”

  _

  The group debated ideas for almost an hour, and when one of the nurses finally returned to fetch them, it was Skadz who spoke for them.

  Skyler listened to the defiant words, watched the nurse’s face pale, and then sat back to wait as Arthur Braithwaite was informed that the patients had revolted.

  _

  “I really don’t have time for this,” Braithwaite said as he strode into the room.

  “Well, make some,” Skadz shot back. “This is important.”

  And so the negotiations began, and they lasted until well past sunset. Skyler let Skadz do most of the talking—the man had a gift for it, no denying that—and interjected only when he thought it would cut the palpable tension.

  Jake said nothing at all. He seemed content to do whatever Skadz and Skyler wanted, or at least he planned to let them come to a deal and then he would decide if he wanted it or not. Sam voiced strong opinions, always taking Skadz’s side. But she lasted only ten minutes before the medications took over and sent her into an uneasy sleep.

  In the end Braithwaite agreed. They all agreed, and thanks to some clever wordplay by Skadz, Braithwaite seemed to feel like he’d just brokered peace in the Middle East. The man brought in an assistant to draw up a formal agreement. A sickly-looking, stringy-haired man named Kip. He tapped on a slate as Braithwaite recounted the agreement.

  “You’ll keep your aircraft,” Braithwaite said, “the …?”

  “Melville,” Skyler said, before Skadz could interject. The Jamaican shot Skyler a somewhat furious glare at that, then somehow turned it into a grin like a schoolboy who’d just been pranked.

  Braithwaite went on. “You’ll keep the Melville in a hangar at the airport, not here in Nightcliff as I’d hoped, on the condition that any excursions outside the known limits of the protective aura be cleared with the tower here. Our needs will take priority, with payment agreed upon ahead of time. Though, I have to warn you gentlemen it’s unclear at this point what will serve as currency in Darwin.”

  “I’m sure we can figure something out,” Skadz said.

  “Anything else you manage to bring back is of course yours to barter or use; we’ll make no claim to any of it. However, we reserve the right to inspect your cargo anytime we deem it necessary to do so. This will be true of anyone else leaving the city.”

  Skadz perked up. “I thought it was just the four of us?”

  “You’re the only immunes that we know of,” Braithwaite said, “but I was informed just before coming in here that the hazmat suits seem adequate protection against the disease. One does not need to remain near the Elevator, one simply needs to avoid contact with air that has not been scrubbed by it.”

  “Interesting,” Skyler muttered, the ramifications settling like tumblers on a lock. Immunes wouldn’t be the only ones who could leave the city, but they could just stay outside longer than anyone else, and with more freedom of movement and use of senses. The news brought a mixture of relief and anxiety.

  Samantha stirred. A sound just short of a fearful cry escaped her lips. The sound made them all jump, including her. Her imposing size, obvious even under the hospital blankets, combined with the set of her jaw and the cool look in her eyes, made Skyler morbidly curious as to what she’d been through that would bring her nightmares. The world beyond Darwin could break anyone if it could break her.

  “What’d I miss?” Samantha asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “We’re just talking details,” Skadz replied. He motioned for Braithwaite to continue. “You were saying, about the hazard suits?”

  “Yes. Given our success with the outfits, there will be others able to find and recover that which the city needs to function. And, soon, taking the battle beyond our protective field.”

  Here it comes, Skyler thought.

  “You want us,” Skadz said, “to lead that effort?”

  The police captain sucked in his lower lip and shook his head. “No. Well, maybe. Until the few doctors and scientists we have left finish analyzing the samples you provided today, I think it’s best you avoid excessive risk.”

  “Good,” Skadz said.

  Skyler glanced between them. “We’ll help if needed, of course.”

  “Of course,” Braithwaite replied. “This leads me to one other condition of our deal, however.”

  “Which is what?” Skadz asked.

  The chief constable inhaled deeply. “Until we know if there are more like you, at least one of you should stay behind during any excursion outside. We can’t risk losing all four of you at once.”

  “I can’t see how we can function as a team without the four of us,” Skadz replied.

  “I’m sorry,” the man replied, “but this is nonnegotiable.”

  “It’s fine,” Samantha said. “I’ll stay. I’m not going anywhere with this, am I?” She patted her bandaged leg.

  “And when it’s healed? What if there’s still only us four?” Skadz asked.

  Sam could only shrug.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Skyler offered.

  “Like what?” Skadz asked.

  Skyler thought about it, finally gave a shrug that matched Sam’s.

  For the first time since Braithwaite entered, Jake spoke up. “Easy,” the sniper said. “Priority one: Find more like us.”

  _

  The airport buzzed with activity. A few dozen aircraft had landed during the chaos of the first days of the disease, adding to an already crowded tarmac. It was an old airport, built long before the ultracap-fueled VTOL revolution. Instead of the modern array of heat-shielded launchpads, it had a three-kilometer-long runway plus all the usual ancillary taxi paths. Grafted on to this maze of concrete were dozens of hangar buildings and retrofitted launchpads. A new terminal to replace the original had been planned but construction had only ever proceeded as far as demolishing the original. Skyler gathered the shift in focus to Nightcliff, along with dozens of private launchpads atop buildings all across the metropolis, had alleviated much of the need for the new structure. Politics had probably gotten in the way.

  In the aftermath of the disease the situation in and around the airport was chaotic, to say the least. Skyler once again let Skadz take the lead, this time in navigating the politics of the place. Residents, both old and new, claimed ownership of the various structures along the runway. Things evolved by the hour, with old recreational pilots showing up to claim their hangar and aircraft from squatters, then leaving a short time later with a payment that changed their perspective, or perhaps not leaving at all, having either rousted whoever had tried to claim their property or finding themselves at the wrong end of a gun for their efforts.

  This all changed, somewhat, when the immunes arrived. News spread like floodwater, partly because of the rumored capabilities of the three men, and partly because they’d arrived with a sizable military and police escort. The legitimacy of such organizations might be in doubt, but the capability of their weapons no one questioned.

  Skadz had a mandate from Nightcliff to pick a hangar, whichever he liked, and Skyler did not envy the task. Th
ere was not a place along the entire runway someone hadn’t claimed as their own. Whichever one Skadz chose would ultimately require an ousting.

  “That one,” Skyler suggested, pointing toward a modest hangar. The building had a sign above the massive door that read CROC TOURS!

  “Why?” Skadz asked.

  “Near the middle, so we don’t feel like outsiders here. Plenty of room inside for the Mel. And look at the roof.”

  “What about it?”

  “Toward the back. That big flat section, like a sundeck or patio or something. We could grow some food up there.”

  Skyler kept one last observation to himself. Of all the hangars they’d passed, this one seemed to have only a single occupant: an old sour-faced woman. She stood in front of the hangar door dressed in a dirty shift, arms folded across her chest and a dark scowl on her face. Scowl or not, she stood alone. And through the gap in the door behind her, there was no aircraft.

  “The owner doesn’t look happy,” Skadz observed.

  “Yeah, but she’s alone and I see no plane inside. Let’s talk to her.”

  The woman resisted at first. Told them to leave, that she wasn’t leaving, that she wouldn’t sell or be bullied. Skadz proved adept once again in dealing with people. Charm seemed to radiate off the man, and inside five minutes they were sitting inside with the old lady, sipping iced tea, as the escort of soldiers waited outside.

  “My husband and I ran this business for twenty-two years,” she explained, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “He was out there when …?” Skyler trailed off, silenced by the look in her eyes.

  She held his gaze for a moment and then something broke inside her. She began to sob. Skadz moved to sit next to her and put his arm around her. A minute passed before she could speak. “Hal took four students out that day. Made him coffee that morning, and he didn’t say thanks. We’d fought the night before. About money, same as always. I never … I never thought the last time I’d ever see him we’d be angry at each other. It’s not supposed to end like that.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Skadz said. The tenderness in his voice was genuine.

  “You’re a pilot?” the woman said to him, suddenly.

  “Nah, I’m just me. He’s the pilot.” Skadz gestured toward Skyler.

  The old woman looked at him, then back to Skadz. “And it’s true what they said? You’re immune to the disease?”

  Skadz nodded.

  She gathered herself then. “You want my hangar. The hangar my husband and I ran our lives out of for so many years.”

  Skyler held up his hands defensively. It was Skadz who spoke. “We did, but there’s no way—”

  “It’s yours,” she said instantly. “On one condition. Bring him back. Bring Hal home so I can bury him.”

  The rest was details. She needed a place to stay, and though Skadz offered to let her live on in the hangar, her desire to do so had vanished. Safe passage to her sister’s house in the Narrows was her request, and Skadz got one of the soldiers to agree to take her there.

  Skyler didn’t know it then, but the return of remains from beyond the aura would be a constant request in the years to come. One that often led to trouble, and disappointment, and heartbreak. And, eventually, such a request would lead to a mission that changed the world, again.

  _

  “First things first,” Skadz said. “We need a safe house. Somewhere outside, stocked and secure. A place we can go if the shit goes down.”

  Skyler shook his head. They’d been at it for hours, all through the afternoon and past a meager dinner. Heavy rain drummed against the thin sheet metal of the hangar roof, almost drowning the distant sounds of gunfire in Darwin’s anarchic slums. Almost, but not quite. Part of him wanted to be out there, helping. That part felt shackled, though. Hidden away beneath the shock of everything that had happened, and the distance of hope for what would come. The city was stratifying into the sort of place one would never willingly choose to live, much less thrive. It had become a prison for the last vestiges of humanity. At the airport’s lone functioning tavern someone had speculated it would take a few thousand years for humanity to return to its former glory, and that assumed the disease was cured tomorrow. Every day spent trapped here was a day closer to extinction.

  The Melville rested in the center of the large hangar, her engines exposed, halfway through the laborious cleaning process. She’d be ready to fly in two days, Skyler thought. Whether or not he, Skadz, and Jake would have agreed on a first mission by then remained to be seen, but the chances seemed dim. Everything seemed dim. He felt a bit jealous of Samantha, still lying in that hospital bed. The token stay-behind, waiting for new skin to grow along her leg. Four weeks, the doctors estimated. He hoped they weren’t poking and prodding her too much.

  “Hmm,” Jake managed to say at the safe-house idea. In the man’s parlance this constituted a stiff rebuke. Skyler liked Jake a lot.

  “From my perspective,” Skyler said, leaning back in the folding chair in which he sat, “everything beyond the aura is our safe house. Why settle on one? If things get ugly here, we fly to an island. Somewhere isolated. And wait.”

  “What if that island has no supplies we can use?”

  “Not an issue,” Skyler said. “Stock the Melville with a week’s worth of food for three, and all we need is a place to charge her caps. We can do that just about anywhere.”

  “Long as the grid remains up,” Jake interjected.

  “Yeah,” Skadz agreed eagerly. “What he said.”

  “There’s mini-thors everywhere. They’ll run for decades unattended. Power won’t be a problem for us for some time.”

  Skadz folded his arms across his chest. “I’d still feel better if we had a place to go. Maybe something walking distance from the aura, in case we don’t have an aircraft to use someday.”

  There was some wisdom in that. Skyler couldn’t bring himself to outright agree, not after so many hours of arguing, so he said nothing instead.

  “Gentlemen, good evening,” a new voice suddenly said, from somewhere near the Melville.

  Skyler fell over in his already-leaning chair. He scrambled to his feet. Skadz and Jake had fanned out to either side of the newcomer. Jake had a pistol in his hand, and stood with the sort of semi-crouch a trained killer used when cornered.

  “Who the hell are you?” Skadz demanded. “How’d you get in here?”

  “Relax, I am unarmed. My name is Prumble,” the man said. He had a mild New Zealander accent and a booming, jovial tone, like a journeyman playactor who never knew when to turn off the stage presence. “As for entry, that was trivial. The locks on this building are pathetic.”

  “You broke into the wrong place, friend,” Skadz said.

  “On the contrary,” Prumble said, “I didn’t break anything. The lock—and I use that term loosely—on your back door still functions just fine. In fact even the most astute forensic investigator would never know it had been tampered with. I was a locksmith in my past life, you see.”

  Skadz, weaponless, glanced somewhat nervously at Jake and then Skyler. The three of them had been pestered endlessly about their unusual status since arriving. A number of people, from curious to downright crazy, had already come calling at the airport gate for them, only to be turned away.

  “Be that as it may,” Skadz said, “you still came to the wrong place. Piss off.”

  “I’m exactly where I want to be,” Prumble replied. “You’re the immunes, are you not?”

  “So what if we are,” Skyler said. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to offer my services,” Prumble replied. “Everyone is talking about you. And once people realize you’re able to move around outside the city they’ll never leave you alone.”

  “Offering your services as a locksmith?”

  “For a start.” Prumble came to stand between the three of them, his hands splayed out to show their emptiness. He bowed slightly. “I propose a trade.”

  “
What trade?” Skadz asked.

  Prumble swiveled his head from speaker to speaker. “I will perform a full upgrade on the security of this building for you. And in exchange, I require something from beyond the aura.”

  “What exactly do you need?” Skadz asked.

  Skyler leaned forward, interest piqued. Lured in by the stage actor voice or the promise of something important, he didn’t know, but he already liked where this was going. It was one way to settle the argument as to the nature of the group’s first excursion, at least.

  “There is a factory,” Prumble said, “in Perth, wherein a company called Kastensauer manufactures lock mechanisms. Are you boys up for a little adventure?”

  This one’s for you, Jake.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my team: Sara, Mike, Sarah, Jerry, Wayne, Beth, David, Greg, Keith, Joe, Dave, and everyone else who helps bring these stories to life. And, of course, my support staff here at home: Nancy, Nathan, and Ian.

  Thanks are due as well to all the readers who helped make my books successful. I’ll never quite get over the idea that people out there are reading the stories I’ve written, much less enjoying them. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  Also, my gratitude and boundless admiration for all the authors I’ve met in the last year. Thank you for welcoming me into the community.

  With love and tacos,

  Jason

  Read on for an excerpt from Jason M. Hough’s New York Times bestselling debut novel

  The Darwin Elevator

  Available now in mass market paperback and eBook editions from Del Rey Books

  Above the Indian Ocean

  12.JAN.2283

  BLOOD STREAMED DOWN the inside of the tiny vial and pooled at the bottom. A finger, the source of the fluid, knocked against the glass with a dull thud.

  Skyler turned the vessel over again. Fresh from its temperature-controlled sleeve, the vial felt cool against his skin. A small refreshment in the otherwise balmy cockpit.

  The scene replayed again in his mind. The dead subhuman, half its scrawny body still smoldering, the scent of burned hair so strong that Skyler had retched. Then Samantha, always acting, never thinking, stood triumphant over the corpse. In one swift motion her dark combat knife flashed from a sheath on her calf, flashed again as she brought it down on the poor creature’s hand. Two fingers and half of a thumb skittered away. “Before it all burns,” she’d said.