by Casey Herzog
“You just can’t ever get eight hours of sleep, can you? I’d be happy with seven, heck, six! What is it, boy?”
The healer scratched his head nervously. He had a question on his mind. The curiosity in the child was amazing. While the rest slept, he had made his way into the office to resolve a doubt.
“I was thinking about your story about the invasion and the war that followed,” he said, pausing, “Did you ever fight the Outsiders up close? Did you ever kill one of them?”
Callum felt awkward all of a sudden. He hadn’t expected to answer these types of questions. He had indeed helped bring down a scout ship and put two of the creatures down with a fierce pleasure he hadn’t been expecting to feel, but it wasn’t something Dante needed to know.
“I did, and yes. It was war, my child. It was them or us.”
“I see.” He stayed silent for a long time, and Callum decided he needed to clear things up.
“Don’t think differently of me because of it. We are never less or more human for killing something. However, you must always remember that all life is precious. Especially now. You must never be quick to take it away if you can avoid it. You never know when a brave little homeless child with a knife could turn out to be one of the most wonderful people you’ve ever met…” He tousled Dante’s hair as the child smiled warmly and sent him to sleep.
“Thanks, sir,” the lad said as his eyes shone. “I will take your words seriously when the moment comes. I don’t think I’m ready to kill anyone, anyway.”
The teacher paled slightly at the crude honesty of the boy’s words, but nodded.
As the kid left the room, Callum felt strange. He looked at the map again.
Most of his friends had headed towards the remains of cities near where he had found Dante. The fact that he had never returned meant he had never been able to confirm if the gang was truly destroyed. He hadn’t seen the leader’s corpse either, so there was that as well.
His companions had already taken a while, what if…?
He shook his head. Surely they’re okay. Aren’t they?
Callum made a decision then. If they weren’t back within twenty-four hours, he was going out to look for them.
And if they were dead, he was going to have to end what he’d started a year ago.
CHAPTER TWO
Going Out There
Callum ended a lesson and sighed as he dismissed his class.
The kids ran out of the room and got to their games, always play-acting some battle they had heard of or read about somewhere.
It had been twelve hours and nothing. No sign of the others. Callum began to feel nervous. If he had been alone and without any responsibilities, he wouldn’t have thought twice about grabbing one of the few guns left behind in the armory and a pack with food and water before setting out, but things were different now. He had people to take care of, and none of them were over the age of eighteen. Most of them weren’t even twelve, much less old enough to protect or even feed themselves without help.
“Mr. Thorpe?” a tall lad asked from the doorway of the classroom. He was the oldest of the teenagers, an eighteen-year-old whose father had left with the rest and ordered him to stay and help protect the compound. Callum knew what was coming next, the inevitable question he did not know how to answer. “When are they returning? What do we do if they don’t come back?” Despite his age and maturity, at that very moment, the boy looked just that — a boy.
“Alex, I would love to tell you something hopeful, but I really can’t say where they are right now.” He pulled the map open again and called the young man over. “Can you keep a secret? I’ve been following their progress and might have some idea. However, I don’t want anybody to be alarmed.” The boy nodded at him with a worried look. “They were going to scout this place here,” he said, pointing. “It took them very close to this area — Ayia — that I’d already warned your father about. I found Dante there a year ago, the streets lonely and dangerous even in daytime. They had been bleached when I arrived, a gang now making it their home as they searched for the healer. They shot me, but I managed to escape and took Dante from them. What I want to say is…if that gang is still there, our people could be in danger. It could be why they’ve taken this long. I really don’t feel comfortable sitting here and waiting for them to come back.”
“Me neither, I wanted to tell you I’m leaving. I’m going to look for them.” Alex’s eyes were full of determination. Callum took a deep breath. He couldn’t stop him, but he could at least try to convince him to stay.
“Alex, you’re not going.”
“What? Why?!” The boy looked furious. Callum made a calming motion with the palms of his hands.
“Because I am. I’m going out there, and I’m going to find them. If they’re hurt and I find who did it, I’m going to kill them all. I’m a soldier, Alex. You’re not. You are going to be the best mechanic this side of the Monroe Crater. Stay alive and make sure of that. Be ready to take care of the children with Maria. You could be the oldest and most responsible members the community will have left if the worst happens.”
Maria was the cook, a seventeen-year-old whose aunt, Paola, was the chef for the community. The girl often cooked in her place,, though nobody could quite make a roasted turkey like Paola.
Alex nodded, stretching his hand out and shaking Callum’s.
“Let’s hope they are on the way back, but good luck, my friend. Maybe the vehicles probably broke down or something. They’re okay, I’m sure.” As Alex turned to leave, Callum looked down at the maps in thought.
It couldn’t be that simple. Broken-down vehicles? No way. It was never that simple. Not anymore…
Callum grimaced as he finished his dinner. Clocks didn’t lie — twenty-four hours had passed since he’d made the promise to himself.
“It’s time to go,” he said to nobody in particular. The kids would probably feel lost without his lesson tomorrow, but it was for the best. Some of them had parents out there, and the orphans still needed to have adults around to feel safe. He knew that things would get worse before they got better, but they would get better eventually. They always had.
He left without saying goodbye, grabbing an assault rifle, a battered old pistol, a sharp combat knife, and enough food and ammo to last him three days in addition to the regular surfacing gear. The pleasant corridors and beautiful sunset soon ended as he left the community’s artificial habitat and reached the locked blast door exit of their home. Inputting this week’s code, he stepped outside where the underground tunnels began. The Outsiders had ensured that humanity paid a steep price for recovering their world, one that left Callum feeling bitter whenever he remembered it.
Once they had seen their forces on the road to an inevitable defeat, they released a massive barrage of projectiles into the atmosphere. Many were explosive warheads, the rest were airborne agents that caused horrific effects on the human body. Thus, the first sub-humans had been born: creatures that were not technically sick (for there was no cure for them), but actually a whole new species altogether. The alien disease transformed them into ugly things, feral creatures that existed only to hunt down humans and devour them as prey. The warheads had also emitted radiation and created a surface almost too dangerous to consider living on, though certain places like Ayia had been too far from it all.
Callum had been walking for a while, his mind stuck in those terrible events from the past, when he turned and lifted his rifle at the presence that had been following him.
“Sir, please don’t shoot! It’s me!” the familiar voice cried, and Callum groaned. Why you? Why now?
“Dante, you shouldn’t have come this far. How did you even get through the blast d— …You saw me input the code, didn’t you?” He felt annoyed and impressed at the same time.
“I did. You can’t leave on your own. I won’t let you; you could get sick up there and then what? You’d die, just like the others probably have.” Again, the brutal honesty that was
so uncomfortable about the boy. It was as if he had no sort of filter at all, as if he had grown up with a different race that knew nothing of being polite or tactful.
“They’re okay. Don’t say those things; people have feelings. Some children are waiting for their parents to come back. How would you feel if…” He paused. Dante had already lost his parents a long time ago. “Look, if you’re coming with me then fine. You might learn a thing or two.”
The child’s serious expression turned into a small smile and Callum knew Dante was enjoying being considered for such an adventure out onto the surface. It would be dangerous, but his gifts would help a lot. He had taught and protected the child long enough, but now the kid might actually be of use out there on the surface.
“Stay close and keep an eye out for anything that moves. I don’t want any surprises.”
The pair finally reached a ladder, their eyes following it to the top where a heavy panel covered the path up to the surface, its face marked with warnings and red-and-yellow stripes. Callum climbed first. He put his hand into his bag and took out two gas masks: one to use, the other as a replacement. However, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d ended up lending it to someone who’d tagged along.
“I can’t believe we’re going out there again, sir. I haven’t surfaced since…” the boy trailed off. The man patted him on the head and began to climb. He didn’t have any words of comfort now. As he reached the top of the ladder, he looked down to where the child followed. Part of him wanted to tell Dante to go back home, but the other told him the boy needed this. He needed to return to the dangers above the underground so he could remember what the world was like now. Most of the kids were growing naïve within the community, and it wasn’t exactly what Callum wanted.
He took a deep breath and pulled the cover aside, the dim, depressive reality of what their world had become suddenly overwhelming the man and the boy as they climbed out onto the surface of their homeworld.
“Like I said, stay close. I don’t want to hurt anybody, but we can’t take risks. Move out.”
CHAPTER THREE
Owners of a Dead World
Dante Castello felt healthy and fit, despite the surrounding conditions and the way his heart was pumping anxiously in his chest. He couldn’t really feel differently. Literally. For some reason he had never discovered, he had been gifted since his birth. His body carried within it the ability to heal and repair unlike anything every living person he knew had ever seen. From skin to internal tissue, metal to plastic, Dante’s hands could bring pretty much anything back from its damaged state to its original condition. He did not even need to actually touch someone or something to heal or repair it. His sole presence was enough to carry a weaker version of his gift through the air and cause a similar effect.
One day I’m going to be in danger again because of my ability, I’m sure, he thought. On that fateful day, Callum had been there to rescue him, but surely the day would arrive when he would not be so lucky.
He looked around. The world was in a terrible state compared to what he had read about and seen in the information Callum and other adults had shown them in class. Thick, dark clouds remained in the sky all day and all night long, and the liquid that poured from them every so often was something much less pleasant than simple water. In fact, exposure to the storms that so often affected the lands could mean death for an unprotected human. They had emerged on a road that ran through a deserted land, a collection of small makeshift homes and abandoned trailers decorating the sides of the path. The ground beyond was barren and lifeless, crops and other plants long dead from the effects of the Outsiders’ final attack. In some places, the wildlife had evolved, flora and fauna alike adapting into terrible new forms that shouldn’t have existed.
He remembered what he had seen in his journeys before meeting Callum: the sub-humans and wildhounds that had long forgotten what link they had with men and so often saw them as a food source to destroy and devour. He had seen the failed experiments the aliens had discarded out on the roads, the humans who had been played with like insects under a sadistic child’s care. The Outsiders, their cruel and advanced intellect leading them forward through the stars, had performed strange and painful tests on their new victims, the damage done to the human’s bodies extending to their offspring through their genes. Deformed and sick children were born, some even possessing alien blood.
It was daytime, yet the darkness hanging above them was thick and almost endless but for a few spots of dim sunlight that managed to push through where the layers of smog and ash were thinner. The EMPs had well and truly killed nearly everything, and the technology required to clean their atmosphere was either destroyed or still being created. Only the technology required to ‘bleach’ was available, among a few other things.
Bleaching was an activity that took place during random and unexpected moments: a Coalition-led cleansing that involved the ‘crop-dusting’ (as Callum called it) of huge areas with powerful chemical agents. This procedure aimed to kill as much of the life on the surface as it could with each pass of the aircraft, thus ridding the world of mutants, wildhounds and any poor soul caught above the ground when it rained down. The end justifies the means, Dante had heard somebody say once. He himself had barely survived a bleaching and watched others die from it, so he was not of the same opinion.
The world was a sick place now, where humanity had done a level of damage the aliens never managed. Warlords and psychopaths brought more death and despair to the lands than the Outsiders themselves.
“I wish I could bring the old world back,” he whispered, though clearly louder than he’d intended. His teacher turned to look at him.
“That’s tough, Dante. We won’t until people change their way of seeing things, until we get rid of men like the ones we encountered on that day a year ago. They’re one of the reasons our beautiful planet is falling apart.”
They arrived at a shack, and Callum stepped inside.
“You do know how to ride a bike, right?” he asked from within the house.
“Yep,” Dante replied with a smile. Despite everything that was going on, it would be a pleasant experience to be able to ride a bicycle once more out here in the wastelands. His smile disappeared as he wondered about humanity’s status now. They had won the war — mostly, at least — but what had remained as their prize? A dead planet, a dying race. Maybe the aliens’ weapons hadn’t claimed their lives, but perhaps the illnesses that followed would. That or maybe the growing lack of water. Much of it was too poisoned to even dare to use anymore, a mix of chemicals and filth.
“Here you are,” Callum said as he came riding out of the shack with a bike and pulling another small one behind him. “We need to move quickly, I know the direction they were heading, but from there it’s going to be a matter of tracking their location if the track still exists. Otherwise, we’re going to need to do a lot of guesswork.”
Dante shrugged. Just being out here was enough of an honor. He didn’t feel the need to hurry back home. He felt almost guilty at entertaining that thought and what it meant — delaying their encounter with the missing group, who might be in danger — but he couldn’t help it.
He saw young wildhound cubs watching them from burned ruins, their feral eyes staring from the safety of the darkness of their home. Within two years, Dante knew, those pups would be adults who would tear them apart with no hesitation at all. It wasn’t a happy reality and Dante wished there were a cure for the sicknesses that had turned so many poor dogs into nasty, vicious creatures.
“Does it hurt you to see them like that?” Callum asked, curling his lip as he watched the boy’s reaction.
“Yes,” Dante said with a nod.
Callum’s face became stern.
“Then you’re not strong enough. Learn to control your emotions. They’re no longer what you think they are, and they would eat you as soon as there are enough of them and your guard is down.” The man’s scolding words made Dante nod. Callum
is right, he thought.
The wind picked up, its dusty chill pulling at their clothes and the dirt particles within tapping softly on the visors of their masks. Thankfully, they had both been issued protective gear; without it their skin wouldn’t be looking pretty. Even the most basic pleasures of sunbathing had been destroyed by what happened to the sky. Thank you, Outsiders, Dante thought with fury. He suddenly wished he were slightly older, old enough to get revenge on the race that had put them into this mess to begin with.
He felt he would never be ready, though. He needed a lot of training and classes to be ready to even stand in formation or fire a rifle from the hip — tasks that looked much easier on paper than they actually were.
The healer’s thoughts came to a crashing halt as he saw something shift within a nearby home. Its heavy breath echoed from inside the structure, and Callum put a hand on Dante’s bike to bring it to a halt.
“Quiet now, we don’t need to fight,” he whispered, pulling the boy off the bicycle as he dismounted and circled around the shack as quietly as he could. The being inside the house knocked something off a surface and the sound of glass breaking echoed from within. Dante jumped and Callum licked his lips nervously. He had a choice if the monster emerged from the home — to run and risk Dante getting caught by the thing, or to fight it and risk alerting more enemies in the area with the noise. He threw his rifle around his back and pulled out his knife. “Get behind m—”
