by James Davis
“Guess the cowboys are all dead now, huh Harley?”
Harley had raised a shot his way. “Guess so Duck.”
“Buck.”
“Whatever.”
A year or so later Harley heard Duck (or Buck) had been taken down by a wolf pack outside of the Seattle Hub.
Sitting in the parking lot of what had once been the Spanish Fork Fairgrounds, Harley looked out the windshield of his truck at the new expansive building that stood where the rodeo grounds had been. The sign in front of the bowl-shaped building proclaimed “Spanish Fork Wild West Living Museum” and a giant display screen showed images of horses galloping across the range. He opened the door and walked toward the museum, pushing his cowboy hat back on his head.
At the front door, a soft voice urged him to enter and see the West, the way it had been before the Rages. He donned his eyeset, paid his admission and walked inside. The digihost encouraged him to take advantage of the opportunity to mingle with nature the way it was before the Rages and in a soothing, singsong voice assured him that all animals in the exhibit were automations and he was completely safe from attack.
He nodded and walked on; removing the eyeset as he did and tucking it back into his pocket.
The inside of the museum was high-ceilinged and there were artificial trees stretching artificial limbs toward an artificial sky. Automated birds that called the Western United States home flitted from one branch to the other and high in the sky he could see an eagle soar. To look so far away it must be a digital one displayed on the ceiling, Harley figured.
The interior was sectioned off into a dozen or more large exhibit rooms and inside each room was a display of the world the way it used to be, when humanity could interact with nature. The first room he entered was a mountain scene of a large meadow and Harley thought it vaguely familiar, a picture of perhaps Upper Joe’s Valley. There were a dozen deer grazing and half again that many elk. The big bulls bugled as he watched them, so close that he could almost touch them, and he smiled. They sure looked real, those elk.
Another room showed a panoramic from the desert with robot coyote hunting ‘bot jack rabbits and in another room he watched a mama bear and her cubs dig at an old tree stump for ants. But his favorite room, the room he had been looking for, was the room showing life on a ranch and when he stepped inside his heart hurt just a little bit.
There were robot free range chickens scratching at the ground looking for bugs or worms and a couple of old Tomcats lounging in the sun. They purred loudly when he walked in and wove in-between his boots. On the other side of an old cedar post fence, there was a field where cattle grazed, chewing their cud and they stared at him with the big blank eyes he always remembered. In the corral, there were four horses and as he walked toward them, they approached the fence and hung their heads over the side for a scratch.
He reached out a tentative hand and let it caress the side of a big sorrel. Its ear twitched as he scratched it and it snorted, blowing imitation snot onto the sleeve of his shirt. There were robot flies zipping around for the horses to swat at with their mangy tails. They even had the smell of the horses down and he inhaled the earthy mustiness with a sigh.
Trouble had been a bay, not a sorrel, but his horse and the robot horse were about the same size, 15 hands, a good size working horse. As he scratched the robot horse, he had to resist the urge to climb over the fence and throw himself up for a ride.
“I wish you were real old girl.” He scratched the horse a little more, patted it on the side and turned to look back at the rest of the artificial ranch. “I wish any of this was real.” The sorrel tugged playfully at his hat and he stepped away. “But it’s all just make-believe.”
He knew there was a whole segment of society that lived in the digiverse “country” as cowboys. They worked on a digital ranch, rode digital horses, herded digital cows. Hell, maybe they even stepped in digital cow shit, he didn’t know. But he knew it wasn’t real. It may feel real; it may feel exactly the way it always had in reality, but it wasn’t real. The ‘bot horse trying to take the hat off his head was more real than that. He wouldn’t have anything to do with it.
He went out to his truck and drove back down Main Street toward the Wilderness, leaving the memories where they belonged, in the past.
Chapter Eleven
On the Run
When the stork arrived he gathered his weapons and pointed the truck into the canyon, stomping on the accelerator and kicking up a cloud of dust as he sped down the battered highway.
He had learned a great deal on his trip to the Hub and some of it concerned him more than others. The mask of benevolence the Federation wore was just a mask and that was of no great surprise to Harley. He would have been more surprised to discover it was genuine. That they were using the Wrynd as a weapon against those living in the Wilderness was a concern because Marshal Tempest’s assurance that the Federation had no interest in the Navajo Nation was a complete fiction. The Federation had an interest in control over everything, even poor Native Americans scratching out a meager existence in a wasteland. The one person in the world Harley Nearwater cared for lived on the Navajo Nation. Sooner or later the Wrynd horde would be turned that way and sooner or later Harley would have to do something about that.
The Federation was more concerned about the Rages than they portrayed. That they at least considered the possibility that Mother Earth was not only in turmoil, but aware and more than a little pissed off at humanity showed a level of wisdom Harley had not expected.
But the biggest surprise was to know that someone in the Federation was aware of the Gray Walker, whoever or whatever he might be. They were aware and they were more than a little nervous. With almost no argument they had handed over a weapon of their magnificent Marshal’s Service to a man of admittedly questionable character. That act spoke volumes, but Harley wasn’t sure he understood the language. One thing he did understand was that chaos was far closer than he had imagined. The marvelous world the Federation had created, the New Age of Discovery, was a shining hollow and meaningless bauble that would be of no help to anyone when the real storm arrived.
“The end is coming,” Harley whispered the dying words of a murdered legionnaire.
He stopped the truck where the slide had destroyed the road. Someone had taken Victor's body away but left the bodies of the zombies and the animals along the roadway. They wasn't much left of them. There was no sign of Quinlan’s wife either, but then he spotted a rough mound of rocks stacked together on the side of the road and realized the young man and his children had taken the time to bury her. Crazy bastard.
Scavengers had been at work on the bodies of the other Wrynd and Harley had no desire to get out of the truck. He rested his chin on the steering wheel and looked up at the slide and wished he had asked Marshal Tempest to lift the no-fly zone for him so he could Link for air transport. But he knew she wouldn’t have done that. Giving him a scye was one thing, giving him the freedom of air travel in the Wilderness was something she would never give. If she even had the authority to bestow such a gift.
He didn’t look forward to hiking back over the slide and knew that if Quinlan and his children had made it over they would have taken his truck on the other side. He would have a 45-mile hike through the Wilderness to Price. A hike that would take him past the camp of the Wrynd king whose wife he had killed. That was just bad luck, pure and simple.
The slide was a jagged, rocky climb and he didn’t see any way he could drive up and over it. But then again, Deputy Marshal Shelley’s truck was a lot higher profile than the antique he had left on the other side and since the deputy wouldn’t be using it anymore, what exactly did he have to lose in giving it a try?
He keyed Victor’s music playlist and was not surprised to hear that it consisted of a lot of angry screaming. It seemed oddly appropriate, so he turned it up as he stomped on the accelerator and the truck rushed up the first rocky slope of the slide. After a while, the screaming music w
as drowned out by Harley’s own screams.
Three times he almost rolled the truck, but Harley was amazed at the truck’s handling as it crept and crawled over rocks and chasms. Once it became wedged between two massive boulders that he thought might have an opening wide enough to get the truck through. The tires smoked as he reversed. After a few minutes of consideration, he went to work on the sharp edge of one of the boulders with his blaster and chipped away enough of the rock to let the truck pass through. The biggest scare came when he had to cross a jagged trench that had been cut down the slide by rushing storm water. It was roughly 12 feet across and there was no going around it or through it. Harley backed the truck up, got a good run and tried to go over it. The truck’s frame screamed as it hit the other side and Harley was bounced violently in the cab as he pushed on the brakes and skidded to a stop. He was grinning wildly and other than an almost uncontrollable need to urinate; he made it through better than he had imagined he might. If the truck had a warranty, he was reasonably sure it was void. After an hour and a half he bumped down the last little knob and the tires touched the pavement of SR-6 once again. He had walked the slide in less time.
The old truck he had left hidden behind the gutted store was gone. Harley was not surprised. He had seen no sign of Wrynd and that did not surprise him either. They were in pursuit of Quinlan and if he was lucky they wouldn’t catch up with him until Harley had safely slipped away.
He stopped for dinner, not bothering to order anything from a stork, but eating food he had brought with him from the Hub and sipping on a beer from the cooler in the small refrigerator between the front seats. Nightfall was fast approaching and he decided to stay put until morning and try to make a run past the zombie camp at first light. He parked the battered truck in a tree line not far from where he had parked his other truck and sat watching night creep down the mountain.
He smoked cigarettes and held the scye in his right hand. Its cool metal reflected softly in the sliver of moonlight and after he finished his smoke he slipped on his eyeset and linked with the orb and tossed it out the window. The scye glowed brilliant green and hovered six feet off the ground. Harley grunted with satisfaction as he tried to understand how to use this newest appendage he had been gifted by Marshal Tempest.
She had been right about one thing; learning to use it with an eyeset had to be more complicated than using it with a linktag. The difficulty was in that Harley had imagined it would be akin to being in two places at once and it wasn’t anything like that at all. It was learning to exercise muscles that until he linked with the scye he never had. He didn’t just see through the scye; he experienced everything the scye experienced. Victor had been right; it was like having an extra arm or leg. Now he just had to learn how to master it. He spent most of the night linked to the scye and as morning approached he had it weaving through the trees. He wasn’t a master with it and didn’t know if he ever would be, but he had a new weapon at his disposal and he planned to use it.
He slept for a short time and when he rose he was refreshed enough to face what might be a very long day. He ate the last of his food and drank some water and then slipped the eyeset back on and sent the scye to scout the Wrynd camp eight miles down the canyon, wondering if it might not be wisest just to kill them all.
The camp was deserted.
Harley let the scye skim through the deserted, garbage filled parking lot. Where there had been a great bonfire there was now only ashes and bone and the elk heads dangling from the rest area sign now drew nothing by flies. He sent the scye through a broken window into the welcome center. Piles of garbage and walls painted with blood were all that there was inside. The Wrynd had broken camp.
Harley brought the scye back, flung his eyeset on the passenger’s seat and headed out. He didn’t know where they had gone but couldn’t afford to pass on a lucky break.
The rest of the way down the canyon was without incident, and when he arrived in Castle Valley, he left the highway and stopped in the parking lot of what had once been the Castleview Hospital. The hospital had been closed for more than 20 years and showed it. The windows were shuttered or shattered.
There were no cars in the parking lot, but several trees had pushed through the asphalt. It was of little interest to Harley; he just needed a place to sit while he made a scouting trip of the city. He rolled down the window and sent out the scye. It didn’t take long for him to find the Wrynd. They were setting up camp in the Castle Valley Inn. He let the scye float 200 feet above the hotel and watched. It was a bigger tribe than he had at first imagined and Orrin had them organized. They were making a sweep of the city and were dragging people kicking and screaming back to the hotel. He didn’t think it was to make a meal of them. He thought it much more likely they were on a recruiting campaign.
There were Wrynd hunting parties dotted throughout the city moaning their ridiculous moan and scaring the population out of their homes. They were purposely moving slow, staying just behind the terrified residents, unless they tried to escape by vehicle. Then they moved very quickly and with little in the way of mercy. They were herding everyone they could find toward the Castle Valley Inn and Harley didn’t need to send his scye inside to know that somewhere in the hotel someone waited with ink to turn those selected. As he let the scye climb higher into the afternoon sun, he could see that the zombies had blocked State Route 6 on both ends and State Route 10. Unless you dared to make a run past the Wrynd, you were effectively trapped within the city.
On the south end of the city, in the Walmart parking lot, the flood waters had mostly receded. There were several automobiles parked there and one of them looked familiar. It was the old pickup he had found at Krantz Classic Automobiles. There was a group of perhaps 20 Wrynd racing toward the old storefront, which Harley had assumed was abandoned but apparently was not.
“Stupid neands,” he muttered. They were trying to keep the old ways alive, even the shopping center. As Harley watched through his scye, Quinlan, Noah and Raizor walked out the doorway of the Walmart and aimed for the truck. They were never going to make it. When they came through the door, the Wrynd patrol let out a scream and rushed toward them and Quinlan scooped up the little girl in his arms and ran and the boy ran after them.
They couldn’t make it to their truck, so the man and his two children rushed back up Main Street. They might make it half a block before the zombies had them. Even if they didn’t, their path was going to take them right past the Castle Valley Inn and the horde of Wrynd waiting there. They were doomed.
Harley was going to watch them meet their fate but as the young father struggled to aim a pulse rifle while juggling his young daughter in his arms, he found that he couldn’t. It was a break in character and Harley Nearwater would have been concerned with that if there were only time.
“Shit!” He sent the scye diving at the zombies closest to Quinlan and the orb sliced into and through the closest tattooed lunatic just before he got a hold of Noah. The scye had left a gaping hole in the man before he crumpled to the ground and Harley’s head hurt from the impact. He cut down three more zombies in a similar fashion, not hitting them quite as hard but hard enough to stop them in their tracks and as he was about to take out a few more something slapped the window of his pickup and he diverted his attention from the scye.
There were four Wrynd outside, pounding on the windows, the hood and the doors. They looked more agitated than he had ever seen a zombie. Orrin must have received quite a supply of ink and he wasn’t being stingy. Harley knew he was far too much of an amateur with the scye to fight zombies on one end of town while he also fought them outside his truck. He sent the scye to hover above the city and threw the eyeset from his face as he stomped on the accelerator and the truck shot out of the parking lot. Quinlan was on his own.
Harley almost lost control of the pickup on 100 North as it went under SR-6 and he managed to correct it before hitting a bridge support. He was approaching 100 miles per hour as the truck flew down
the city street toward the old Walmart and he knew even as he hit the brakes and turned right on North Carbon Avenue that he wouldn’t make it to Quinlan in time. He turned left on Main Street and was again approaching 100 miles an hour as he passed the Castle Valley Inn. There were dozens of Wrynd in the parking lot, but they didn’t see him coming and couldn’t catch him as he passed.
Main Street made a meandering bend to the west a mile past the hotel and he was forced to slow down. There was a hand wedged in the driver’s side rearview mirror and its bloody stump was flicking drops of red on the window. Harley rolled the window down and knocked it free. It bounced down the center of the street. Somebody would be making a trip to a Medprint for a new hand relatively soon. If they lived so long.
He slammed on the brakes and the truck screeched to a halt in the Walmart parking lot. There was no sign of Quinlan and his children or the Wrynd. A pulse weapon fired behind him and the truck’s tires smoked as Harley headed back up Main Street. At the intersection of Main and Airport Road, he hit the brakes again. He caught a glimpse of Quinlan running down the center of the road with Raizor in his arms and Noah leading the way. Quinlan was firing blindly behind him at the zombies giving chase, but they weren’t really trying to catch them anymore. They were herding.
He pointed the truck up Airport Road. The Wrynd looked back as he approached and fanned out, so he was only able to hit one of them. It was a female zombie, a middle-aged, overweight woman who would have looked like a housewife except for the crazed look in her eyes and the blood pouring from her mouth. He thought that she might be eating her own tongue. When Harley hit her, she flipped up onto the hood, slid up the window and lay still. The other Wrynd turned on his truck and he opened fire with his blaster. He had a moment to consider the fact that he could have stayed at the intersection and sent the scye to take care of the zombies, but it was too late for that now and there was no way he could take the time to don his eyeset. He would be dead before he could reach the Link.
