Remember Tomorrow

by James Axler

  “Ryan, back here,” J.B. called after a short while, sticking his head through the doorway of an office unit where Ryan was breaking open a filing cabinet. The comp terminal stood useless on the desk, long since fused and failed. “I’ve got a comp that works and is tied in to what Mildred calls the mainframe.”

  Ryan left his task and followed his comrade along the corridor to the office in which he had been scavenging. Finding remnants of what had been before was always a problem: much of the information in all the redoubts had been stored on computer, but these were erratic now, prone to either break down, be broken, or be inaccessible to people a century or more on who don’t have a password. There was some paper information, but then it is a matter of hoping that it could be found or that it hadn’t been destroyed by looters or by the original inhabitants before they bought the farm.

  To find a comp terminal working anywhere other than a low-level, sealed chamber was rare; one that was still connected to the redoubt’s mainframe comp was even more rare.

  Maybe they were about to get lucky for once.

  The two men hunched over the desk, the terminal casting a glow over their faces, shadows and light accentuating the crags of Ryan’s weathered face and the lines of worry and battle that etched the Armorer’s visage. Their mouths were set in grim concentration. There was nothing to be happy about until they actually found some useful information.

  “Got it,” J.B. declared in triumph as he managed to call up an outline map of the area surrounding the redoubt. A couple more keys punched and the map pulled back to reveal the larger area.

  From the outline, they could see that they were in the middle of what had been Arkansas before the nukecaust. There was a large town within a day’s walking distance to the northwest of the redoubt.

  “Worth checking it out?” J.B. queried.

  “Old villes like that are never totally deserted. Usually some kind of life attaches itself. We just have to be triple red until we find out what kind it is.” Ryan paused, his brow furrowed in concentration. Eventually, he added, “Arkansas—that name’s familiar. We ever come this way with Trader?”

  J.B. blew threw his pursed lips as he racked his memory. “Think we might have at one time. Weird land up there, part dust and part sand. Gets real dry and then they have monsoons that sweep everything away. Yeah,” he said suddenly, snapping his fingers, “there was that time when one of the wags got driven off the road in a mudslide after one of the rains. We had to chain War Wag One to it and pull the bastard back onto the blacktop. Trader cursed all the while about the fuel it was taking, then cursed about losing the wag when we said he should just leave it if he felt like that.”

  Ryan smiled wryly. “Came out with some shit about a rock and a hard place.”

  “Yeah, and you told him that he wouldn’t be having this trouble if there had been some rocks and a hard place ’stead of all that mud.”

  Both men laughed at the memory. J.B. shook his head. “I thought the old buzzard was gonna blow you away where you stood, he looked that mad. ’Stead, he just started laughing.”

  “Crazy man and a wise man,” Ryan said softly, remembering the wily old man who had taught them so many of the things that were still keeping them alive. Then something clicked in his brain. “Got it!” he exclaimed. “Listen, I think I remember something. If this is where I think, then there’s a ville near here on one of the surviving blacktops. It was about one day away from where that fireblasted wag hit the mud. Mebbe about two days from the remains of the old ville—About here,” he added, pointing to an area on the screen that was to the west of the predark conurbation.

  “That’s good. It’s somewhere to aim for.” J.B. nodded. “Only one thing, though…”

  “What’s that?” Ryan asked. J.B. grinned. “I hope it ain’t mud season. I just had another shower this morning.”

  The two men left the office and returned to the rest of the companions. They were in the dorm, preparing for the trip outside. Ryan and J.B. outlined their position and destination, giving everyone—including themselves—a half hour in which to be ready to leave. By their wrist chrons, they could see that it was light outside and without knowing how hot the sun got during its peak, Ryan wanted them to make some distance and scout out any shade or shelter should it be necessary.

  Such was their efficiency and experience in getting ready to move out that long before the half hour had elapsed, the companions were making their way to the upper level and the sec door that exited onto the outside world. As J.B. had said, the walls, floor and ceiling of the tunnel leading to the highest level had taken the brunt of whatever earth movements had occurred during and immediately after the nukecaust. Cracks ran along the concrete that constituted the tunnel and, despite the concrete’s thickness, some were large and deep enough for moisture to have seeped through over the decades. Spoors of mold and fungus peppered the areas around these cracks, small pools of stagnant water gathered on the floor.

  “Can’t have been too bad, as the walls are still pretty sound,” J.B. commented. “Figure the door should work okay. The mechanism on all the others has, so it’s only gonna be a warp that jams the bastard.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Krysty added, almost to herself. Some of the upper level sec doors had been shut when J.B. had recced the day before, but had responded when he had punched in the sec codes scratched on the metal plates above the keypads. One of the plates had “Help me” scratched on it, and another “Next stop hel.” The sec man had either been interrupted or he couldn’t spell. Not that it mattered. J.B. wasn’t much of a reader and it was too long ago for him to care. All he was worried about was whether or not the doors would respond. Fortunately, whatever damage the earth movement had caused, the electrics on the doors were still working. So the only thing that could prevent the exit door rising was if the earth movements had buckled the frame, jamming the door.

  All this went through Krysty’s head and the anticipation of potential danger made her hair start to move gently, the flowing curls tightening almost imperceptibly.

  Almost, but not quite. Ryan caught sight of her. “Everything okay?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Yeah, everything’s fine, lover. It’s me getting nervous, not any immediate danger.”

  Ryan didn’t answer; it wasn’t like Krysty to get nervous, but if she was sure there was no intimation of danger—No, he wouldn’t take chances.

  “Okay, J.B. When you hit the lever, I want everyone back in a defensive position. Can’t be too safe, right?”

  The others followed his command without question. Too many times they had walked straight into danger. They knew the wisdom of the one-eyed man’s words. The tunnel was supported by a series of buttresses that formed a semicircular arch from floor to floor, arcing over the ceiling. Some of these housed sec doors, others stood alone. The companions drew back so that they took cover by these arches, blasters ready if there was a need to fire. J.B. stood alone by the final sec-door panel. Ryan stayed nearest and gave the bespectacled Armorer the nod when J.B. cast him a questioning glance.

  J.B. blew on his fingers, tapped in the code, pressed the lever and brought his Uzi up to waist height.

  The outside atmosphere had obviously had some effect on the outer door, as it rose far more slowly than the interior doors. There was a grinding in the mechanism and the shriek of metal scraping against protesting concrete as it began to move. The earth movements had caused the frame to warp a little. The redoubt had been looted. At some point, someone had to have got in through the outer door. The question was, had the earth shifted any more since then?

  The light of midmorning was intensely bright as it began to show itself under the shuddering, slowly moving sec door. Compared to the bland fluorescent light that lit the redoubt corridor, it was incandescent. More than one of the companions cursed as the brightness made them squint, unable to see any dangers that lay beyond.

  By the time that the sec door had fully opened, they had adjusted to the
light and could see that the entrance to the redoubt lay in the side of a shallow valley, with a dirt track running up around the edge and over into the land beyond. The earth in front of them was dry, sandy soil, littered with small rocks and pebbles. Whatever else, they could see that it wasn’t rainy season and it looked like it had been a long time since it had been.

  The area looked deserted. Ryan signaled them to wait, listening intently for any movement beyond, stretching the tension to a point where he hoped that any waiting enemy would lose their nerve and force an attack, showing their hand.

  There was nothing. Ryan looked back at Jak and at Krysty. The red-haired woman shook her head, her hair now flowing free. If there was any danger out there, she would sense it. Jak also shook his head, his white, stringy hair framing his impassive face, red eyes glittering in the new light. Although he had no mutie capabilities, he was a natural hunter whose abilities had been honed to an almost preternatural degree. If someone was out there waiting, he could sniff them out.

  Ryan gestured for his people to move out, still keeping their defensive formation. The one-eyed warrior himself was in the lead, with Jak, Krysty and Mildred fanning out to scan the area surrounding the narrow valley. Doc came out before J.B., who kept to the rear and guarded their backs.

  They would have felt faintly absurd, if not for the fact that they had seen people buy the farm for less caution over the years. Absurd because the area was deserted, with no signs of life beyond a few lizards and scrub plants that struggled to survive in the harsh environment.

  Ryan gestured to J.B. that it was clear and the Armorer tapped in the sec code, the door grinding ponderously shut behind them. He followed the others until they were gathered on the highest ridge of the valley. It was only about eight feet above the valley floor, but it still afforded them a decent vantage of the land surrounding.

  “Dark night, it’s bleak,” J.B. said with admirable understatement as he joined them, casting his eyes over the terrain. The valley walls had to have been higher at some time, but the nuclear winter and the harsh climate changes over the past century had beaten them down to the dry husks of hillocks that they now were. The topsoil and any grasslands had long since blown away, only the hardiest of scrub remaining, shallowly rooted in the powdery dirt. The land had been flattened by the intemperate climate, leaving nothing but a flat, despairing landscape that tried and failed to support life.

  “Sure as heck won’t be many folks trying to eke a living round here,” Mildred commented. “And not much shelter from the elements for us, either.”

  “I figure that ville me and J.B. were talking about must be north-northwest from here, so if we head in that direction…” Ryan looked to J.B., but the Armorer was ahead of him. Taking the highest point of the land and using the sun and the mini-sextant he always carried with him, J.B. was sighting their position and plotting their direction. “It might be a couple of days hike from here,” Ryan stated, “so we need to keep a sharp eye for water and shelter.” He looked up—clear skies with nothing to shield the sun as it beat down. “I don’t like skies this clear when there’s land this dry. It gives me a bad feeling.”

  “My dear Ryan, it would give me the perfect opportunity to top up my tan. I feel all this living underground is giving me somewhat of an unhealthy pallor,” Doc remarked with a crooked grin, the irony of his words emphasized by him removing his hat to mop his already sweating brow.

  Direction defined, they set off on the long march. Strung out in a line with J.B. now on point, they kept their heads down, avoiding the glare of the sun as it grew brighter in the sky, and remained silent. What was there to say? They were hiking through a desolate landscape with nothing to remark upon and wasted words would just use energy, making them thirsty when they needed to conserve water.

  Apart from scrub and the occasional lizard, there was little sign of life. In the distance they occasionally glimpsed a solitary bird of prey or the intimation that there were flocks of smaller birds—a misty cloud moving in the blue that could be a wisp of cumulus or a flock on the wing. Nothing closer. Any mammals that scratched some kind of a living from the land were safely burrowed away, the occasional hole in the ground being all that betrayed their presence.

  The companions trudged on, measuring the tedium of time only by the achingly slow movement of the sun across the sky. At least it wasn’t quite as hot as they feared. They had been through worse. In fact, there were even a few breezes that gently crossed the empty land, relieving the beat of the heat.

  Breezes that slowly, almost unnoticeably, grew stronger.

  It was Mildred who first noticed it. Quite by chance, she looked to her left to relieve the boredom of looking at the ground in front of her.

  “Oh shit…Ryan,” she said softly.

  Lost in some reverie of his own, Ryan snapped back to attention when he heard her voice. He looked back at her and followed the direction in which she was pointing. All the companions followed the direction of her finger.

  “By the Three Kennedys,” Doc breathed. “It was Montana, 1878, when I was last privy to such a sight.”

  “Yeah? And this might be the last time you see it unless we can find some cover,” J.B. murmured.

  What had caught their attention was awesome and beautiful, but almost certainly deadly. In the distance, gaining ground rapidly on them, a zephyr was whipping the earth into a turmoil. Clouds of dust and dirt were flying at strange trajectories as the currents of air flung them from their path. Now they understood why the breezes had become more insistent. The outlying currents had stirred the air for some miles around, and were increasing with every second. In fact, at the speed the zephyr was moving, it would reach them very shortly.

  The storm surrounding the air currents was violent, ripping up great chunks of earth, hurling rock and stone about at vicious speeds.

  “Cover,” Ryan yelled, already aware that the noise of the approaching storm was growing, drowning him. He cast about for some kind of shelter, something that would cover them until the zephyr passed over. That wouldn’t take long, the speed at which it was moving, but long enough to injure or chill them.

  “There,” Jak yelled, indicating a cave that seemed to disappear down into the ground. It wasn’t set into a hill of any kind, but seemed to be the only indication that there had once been raised land. It was more like a pothole. But it was shelter.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Ryan yelled, running toward it, tracking back to one side to help Doc, who was slower than the others. Mildred, Krysty and Jak gained the entrance, with J.B.—who had been farthest back—catching up to Ryan and Doc, grabbing the old man’s arm and helping Ryan to speed him along. Dirt and stones rained on their backs; wind plucked at their clothes.

  The zephyr was almost on them as they dived for the entrance to the cave.

  Chapter Two

  The sudden darkness was engulfing and all Ryan, J.B. and Doc could feel was the scouring dirt whipping against their backs, rocks and stones thudding into them and the dry, powdered earth forming a choking mist that swirled around them, clogging their mouths, noses and lungs.

  Lights exploded all around behind closed eyes, coughing spasms racked their bodies and the hard rock of the cave floor, covered with the thinnest layer of dirt, was hard against their bodies as they landed flat and awkward, unable to see where they were going.

  “Grab them, get them back in,” Krysty yelled, taking Ryan by one arm and hauling him farther back into the darkness of the caves. J.B. felt two hands on his body, searching for a hold. As he felt himself dragged in one direction he dug his boot heels into the cave floor, pushing with his calves to aid his rescuer by propelling himself as hard as he could. It was more than Mildred expected and she nearly stumbled and fell, the sudden momentum taking her by surprise.

  “Don’t, John, it’ll be okay,” she whispered.

  He marveled that he could hear her above the noise of the storm, then realized that it had lessened. Was that because they had moved
into the caves or because the speed of the zephyr was taking it past them already? He had always thought that zephyrs were supposed to be complex but quite harmless combinations of air currents. Someone should tell that to the motherfucker outside. He knew his thoughts were rambling; he had to have hit his head when he fell. It would be good to stop pushing and just relax. He felt himself go loose.

  Jak took hold of Doc. The old man had fallen well and wasn’t too hurt. He was coughing and retching, strings of bile and dirt splattering the floor around him, but he was conscious and aware of Jak’s hands upon him.

  “Heavens, sir, I can manage myself. I’m not that decrepit that I—” He failed to finish as another spasm racked him, the effort of speaking dragging more dirt from his chest. He wretched once more.

  “Talk later, walk now,” Jak murmured, taking Doc beneath the arms and lifting him into a semi-upright position. “You walk okay? Just nod,” he added, not wanting Doc to succumb to more spasms. When Doc assented, Jak spoke just once more. “Keep head low—not high in here.” Jak’s red eyes were better suited to the darkness than anyone else’s in the group, but even he was having trouble adjusting to the almost total darkness.

  Stumbling, crashing into the jagged rock walls and trying to avoid cracking their skulls on the low roof of the cave, the companions made their way back. As the air cleared of dust and Ryan and J.B. were able to breathe more easily, their senses began to return. They hawked and spit the dirt from their lungs; the strength began to flow back into their limbs. Doc, despite the rigors of puking so frequently, found himself able to breathe a little better and, after what had seemed an age but had only been a couple of minutes, the dust storm caused by the zephyr was far behind them.

  “Fireblast, it’s darker than a coldheart’s soul in here,” Ryan uttered. “I can’t see where the hell we’re headed.”

  “None of us can,” Krysty added. “Not even Jak, I’d reckon.”