Last Farmer: Last Farmer Series - Book 1

by Robertson, D. N.

  Relief washed over me until I realized that whatever had taken down the UAV hadn’t been the bot. I could see movement under the tail of the drone and the ears of the bot sticking out from the side. Something else had shot down the White Suns’ spy plane.

  Silver glinted down on the sand, reflecting off the hull of a government drone. We’d jumped out of the pan and in to the fire. The short wave radio crackled.

  “Call off the RAB-bot,” commanded a voice through the HAM radio speaker. I looked up and sure enough, Pipkin had freed himself and was floating between us and the silver UAV. Cedar snorted in a most unladylike fashion and I was pretty sure I heard her say ‘like hell’ under her breathe. I looked in the review and could see River, sitting between the two kids; her eyes were huge with fright and brimming with unshed tears. I tried to get my mind to kick in and find a solution, but I was frozen with indecision. I wasn’t afraid, which I found odd, but I couldn’t come up with anything that had us getting away. “Call off the weapon,” the voice repeated.

  It could have been my confused thoughts, but the voice sounded more resigned than threatening, so I did what it said and called Pip to come back to the car. Grudgingly, he followed my instructions and took his usual place on the dash.

  “Now what?” asked Jake, as the UAV hovered next to us.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “Why don’t you try talking to whoever it is?” suggested Blossom. I glanced at Cedar and she gave a brief nod. I lifted the microphone and depressed the button.

  “What do you want?” I was glad that my voice sounded steady.

  “Do you have the coordinates?” said the voice, deigning a response unworthy, or so I assumed. Jake flipped around and started rooting through the cache container; I guess he knew what they were talking about, even if I didn’t.

  “Stall,” he hissed at me giving me a quick glance to see if I’d understood. I nodded.

  “Uh, coordinates? What coordinates?” I asked slowly, not having to fake my ignorance. There was a rather pregnant pause on the other side of the radio.

  “The GPS coordinates” explained Cedar, a little baffled by my absent-mindedness. Of course, I’d forgotten all about them, since we didn’t have the equipment to utilize them. The radio only crackled.

  “Do you mean the GPS numbers?” I offered, checking on Jake. He’d found the anti-UAV bomb and was getting ready to set it off. The voice on the radio finally answered.

  “Yah, those coordina…” The voice never finished the sentence as Jake pressed the button. The UAV dropped from the sky, landing on top of the smoking remnants of the Triad drone. Jake let out a whoop and it wasn’t until Pipkin rolled off the dash, that we realized we’d made a strategic error. Cedar’s reflexes were impressive, as she caught the bot before he bounced off the parking brake, but the lights that animated his face were dark and I feared we’d scrambled his circuits.

  “Oh, man,” said Jake, belatedly realizing that e-bomb would affect the RAB-bot, as well. “Pip, are you okay?” There was no response to his question and I heard a little sob from the back seat. Blossom buried her face in her hands.

  “You killed him! How could you?” she said between tears. Jake looked like he might cry himself, but only gave a shrug in response.

  “Dax, we don’t have time for this, we have to get out of here, before anymore drones show up,” stated Cedar calmly. I knew she was right and I dragged my eyes away from the inanimate bot in her hands. I hoped the battery had enough juice to get us started and out of here, as the controls for the sail would be scrambled as well. Betsy started up without any fuss and sand sprayed out behind us as we headed towards the band of ocean in the distance.

  “Well, that was stupid.” The voice on the radio startled us, we’d thought that with the drone down, contact would have been severed, but no. “Those things aren’t easy to come by you know.” I was starting to get pissed off. Whoever it was had threatened us and now they wouldn’t go away and leave us in peace. Would they be able to track us through the radio waves? I was tempted to turn the radio off.

  “Who are you?” I demanded angrily through the microphone. “What do you want?”

  “Hey, chill out, we’re just trying to help,” there was a slight pause and we could hear muffled voices, like someone had covered up the mike on the other end. “Look keep heading in the same direction. You don’t have access to the GPS system, do you?” I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to admit that or not. “Of course you don’t, you have nothing to access the satellites and even if you did, you can’t generate enough power to run them. Sorry, I forgot about that. Just drive straight and make sure the decoder is working. When you get close, the numbers should start filling in. You’re almost there, don’t give up now. I know it’s the last thing you want to hear, but you’re going to have to trust us.”

  I tried to wipe the inexplicable grin off my face, knowing that we could be heading in to a trap, but everything had pointed us this far and I was hoping that we were getting close to safety. I could feel the excitement coming from the others.

  “Did you copy?” asked the voice, interrupting our happy thoughts.

  “Yes, ah…we copied.” There was another pause and more whispering rustling over the speaker.

  “We?” asked the voice finally, “how many is ‘we’?”

  “There are five of us,” I answered hesitantly. They obviously hadn’t been expecting all of us and I wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “Five?” they said and then there was more whispering. “Who exactly is with you?”

  “Well, there’s me, Cedar, Jake, Blossom and River,” I replied, like it would provide some sort of clarity.

  “You’re not Jake?” This was said with an accusatory tone.

  “Uh, no, I’m Dax.”

  “But Jake, Jake Danforth is with you?”

  “Yes,” I hesitated before continuing, “is there a problem?”

  “No, none at all, we’ll see you soon. Over and out.”

  “Wait!” I yelled, but the line crackled and the beeps returned to the frequency.

  We were silent for a minute of two, trying to process all that had happened in the last half hour.

  “What do you think they want with Jake?” asked Cedar quietly. It was impossible for the kids not to hear her and I could tell they were thinking the same thing.

  “I have no idea, but I guess we’re going to find out.” I could feel the comforting weight of my Ruger pressed into the hollow of my spine. I wasn’t going to just let them take Jake somewhere, without knowing what they were planning. I looked over at Pipkin, now an empty plastic shell and wondered if our limited weaponry would be enough to protect us.

  Chapter 29 – Out of Our Depth

  I’m not sure how long it took us to reach the edge of the ocean. We’d all been lost in our own thoughts, possibly strangled silent by our fears as well, but at last we came to a glittering mass of water, the likes of which none of the kids had ever seen. I had to admit that the sight was impressive. The beach showed rings of salt, measuring the slow evaporation of the water.

  “What’s the white stuff?” asked Jake, his scientific curiosity rearing its head.

  “Salt,” replied Cedar, touching a line with her finger and putting it to her tongue. “Yup, definitely salt.” Jake reached down and mimicked her actions.

  “So the rings show phases of evaporation?” We all nodded, either in agreement or realization. “So, it looks like the evaporation is slowing?” I looked over the beach and could see the lines thinning and realized what he said was true.

  “Maybe the rain is helping,” I replied.

  “Rain? What rain?” interjected Cedar, poking me in the ribs and giving an accusatory glare.

  “It rained last night,” I explained. She gave me another poke. “Not a lot, just a spatter, but it woke me up. You were all sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “You didn’t want to wake us? You mean to tell me that you let us sleep
through something completely amazing?” Her glare had intensified and I took a step back to avoid another poke. She was wickedly accurate and I could already feel a bruise forming.

  “It was too late!” I defended, “By the time I realized what was going on it had stopped. I didn’t see any reason to wake you for nothing.” She seemed satisfied with my answer and any further conversation was cut off by a shout from Blossom.

  “The numbers are loading!” We all strained to look at the dials as the first numbered appeared on the display. “Why aren’t the rest filling in?” Blossom gave the key code box a shake.

  “We aren’t directly in line with the signal,” replied Jake, snatching the box from her hand and slowly moving it in different directions. He leaned through the two front seats, squishing River in the process and another number fell in to place. “Go forward!” he commanded, leaning even closer to the front dash. I thought I heard a muffled protest from River, but it was hard to make out.

  “The ocean is in the way, how much further do you want me to go?” I rolled the car slowly forward, baptising the front tires with salt water. Another number completed, there were only three spaces left.

  “More!” yelled Jake. His knuckles were knocking the windshield and his head was level with mine. I flinched as his voice bounced off my ear drum.

  “Jesus, Jake, we’re sitting right here,” this came from Cedar who was rubbing her ear, and elbowing him solidly.

  “Jake, none of us know how to swim, be reasonable, and the car’s going to get mired down in the water.” I was trying to be calm, but the thought of driving further into the water seemed insane. My fears were confirmed as I felt something rumble under the car and the front bumper dipped down wildly. I was about to throw the car into reverse, when the nose righted itself. It bobbed up and down with the small waves, like it was floating. We all exchanged looks and I finally rolled down the window and leaned my head out to check the tires. I blinked and looked again. The tires had turned on a right angle, the hubcap submerged beneath the water and the rubber laying flat, supporting the weight of the car. It looked like they’d inflated to a couple of times their usual size as well. The front end of the car was actually floating. Jake was so excited by my description that he went to open the door, but Blossom grabbed the handle.

  “Don’t be and idiot, you might let water in!” she squeaked. Jake took his hand from the door handle and satisfied himself by lowering his window and looking out.

  “You have to pull up so the back tires can change, too,” he pleaded. I looked at Cedar and she gave me a nod. I pulled slowly forward and my stomach lurched as the back of the car plunged down into the deepening water. There was another rumble and the back rose slowly, almost level with front. We bobbed around a little and I could feel the waves pushing us back towards the shore. Instinctively I pressed down on the accelerator and we surged forward. I had no idea how the car was propelling itself forward, but as I relaxed the pressure of my foot on the pedal, we slowed and I felt like I had control of the vehicle. Another number fell in to place.

  The final two numbers generated as we sailed forward and then the strangest thing happened. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but everything clarified. The mist on the horizon seemed to vanish and in the distance I could make out a land form, rising high out of the ocean. I’d looked in the same direction at least a dozen times that day and not seen anything, but there it was; an island maybe eight to ten kilometres away.

  River bounced up and down on the back seat and I could feel the car pitch a little and a queasy roll started in my stomach. I checked the review mirror and both Blossom and Jake seemed to have a nasty green tinge that didn’t bode well and Cedar was paler than I’d ever seen her. She rolled the window down rapidly and stuck her head out, gasping in fresh air.

  I knew if one of us threw up, it would cause a cascading reaction, so I pressed down a little harder on the gas.

  “River, maybe a little less bouncing, for now, okay?” I suggested gently and she settled in, but her eyes sparkled and she clapped her hands, unable to completely still herself. Both her seat mates remained silent, but their skin returned to almost normal and the island looming closer and closer distracted them from their nausea.

  We were about two kilometres away when the car hit an invisible barrier. It bounced us back a little like we had a soft elastic attached to the rear bumper and I pressed a little harder on the gas. We shot backwards and I looked at Cedar, and she shrugged. We drove to the left, but the a number on the decoder disappeared when we got fifty metres out. They came back went we turned around, but started disappearing when we went to far too the right. We bobbed aimlessly for a few minutes, not sure what to do. It was then that Grandmother’s words came back to me. “Have faith”.

  I reversed a little more and then threw Betsy into drive and pressed down the gas pedal until it was on the floor. The air around us wavered like heat waves and I could feel an electrical pulse run through my body and suddenly we were through, surging forward like we’d been catapulted.

  “Wow! That must have been a force field! Cool!” said Jake enthusiastically.

  “Do ya’ think?” drawled Blossom, trying to rub the goose bumps from her arms. Jake turned his head towards her sharply and I thought they were going to start fighting when we heard a familiar little beep from the dash. Pipkin’s lights flickered and his face panel flashed a message that read ‘reset in progress’ before his systems started firing up again.

  “Way to go Pip,” smiled Cedar giving his head a little pat. His systems were still loading up as we reached the island. A huge red cliff rose up from the ocean, making the car seem insignificant.

  “So what now?” asked Blossom, still under the affects of sea sickness and clearly desirous of getting back on to solid land.

  “There must be a beach or landing place somewhere, we’ll just have to find it,” I was feeling wildly optimistic by that point. We’d crossed the Burn Zone, fought off drones and Sand Walkers, seen proof that life was trying to re-establish itself and floated across water to reach what I hoped was Pei.

  I cruised the coast line looking for a place to drive ashore and we found a spit of land stretching out in to the water. I guided the car slowly out of the water and was ready for when the tires flipped themselves upright to navigate the sand. There was a road at one end of the beach, but we still couldn’t see the top of the cliffs. The path was cut into the red sandstone that made up the island, and every once in a while I could see some sort of beams running straight down through the earth, presumably securing the coastline from erosion.

  When we crested the cliffs I stopped the car. My eyes were inundated with blinding colours of greens, yellows, the sparkling blue green of the ocean and the rich red earth. I had to blink several times, before I believed what I was seeing. The road followed away from the beach, inland and nearby I could see a stand of trees, dark green and inviting, the road passing through them. Right across from us was a field with golden stalks of some sort of grass, the heads heavy with seeds and behind it green leafy stalks with some sort of pods attached. We were silent, each of us taking in as much as we could. It was too tempting, we all got out of the car, and wandered to the plants, touching them and leaning over to smell the delicate little flowers that grew in random places. I heard a buzzing close to my ear, as I stooped to investigate a sweet smelling bell shaped flower and I jumped back a little as a yellow and black fuzzy insect landed in the bloom.

  I hardly heard the friendly honking of the vehicles that were coming through the tree stand. Suddenly we were surrounded by people all talking at once, welcoming us. I was dizzy and half blinded by the verdancy. The rush of people was overwhelming after the desiccated Bee Zee.

  A couple stepped out of the crowd and there was something familiar about them. I turned to look at Jake and realized why. He stared at them hard and I could see tears filling his eyes.

  “Dad?” he whispered, afraid to break the spell, “Mom?” They
rushed forward and hugged him, crying unashamedly. I looked around for Blossom and realized she was hiding behind me.

  “Don’t you want to go over there?” I asked. She shook her head vehemently. “Why not? They’re your parents, too.” She raised her eyes to mine and they had a haunted look that hit me right in the gut. She shook her head again, not willing to believe that she might be part of something.

  “What did you say?” demanded the man. I could feel him staring hard at my back willing me to move, so he could lay his eyes on Blossom. She shook her head at my unspoken question, but wouldn’t meet my eye, so I stepped aside. The crowd suddenly fell silent, waiting for events to run their course.

  “This is Blossom. I’m pretty sure that she’s your daughter. Both she and Jake have the same medallion, the ones that fit into the key coder.” Blossom still hadn’t looked up, but when the shadow of the man fell over her, she slowly lifted her head. The man raised his hand hesitantly, not wanting to frighten her or maybe he was worried that her spectre would vanish, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Is it you?” he asked lifting her chin and searching for something familiar. I knew he found it as a smile spread across his features. Without another word he crushed Blossom to him and was soon joined by Jake’s mother. The murmur of the crowd picked up again and before I could take it all in, we were piled back into Betsy and instructed to follow the other vehicles.

  As we cleared the tree stand and made our way down a curving road that passed through fields, we finally arrived at a settlement. There were no concrete buildings here, only old wooden farm houses, barns and silos of well cared for metal. We parked next to a field of tall green grass filled with purple and white flowers. The scent of damp soil filled my nostrils and as I turned around, I could see the roof line of a house, just over the rise and a sense of déjà vu hit me so hard, I almost lost my breath. I couldn’t help but shake my head in disbelief as an exotic woman with midnight hair walked over the small hillock and greeted me.