Army of the Unsettled: A Dystopian Novel (Academy of the Apocalypse Book 3)

by K A Riley

  For him, the cuts and gashes covering his face and body are a reminder of every accident, injury, and battle scar from every enemy who tried to kill him and failed.

  With his Emergent ability, he probably would have healed from the same slash across the throat that killed Mattea. I’ve seen how his skin magically puckers and closes up, taking minutes, or even seconds, instead of days or months to heal. Except he never completely heals. The bleeding stops. The skin seals. The bones mend. But the scars remain, and they just keep adding up over time.

  It sounds sort of conceited to say, but I honestly believe that without the Academy’s students and faculty, Arlo, left in the world on his own, would quickly transform into something unspeakably horrible. What does someone impervious to pain and so close to indestructible have to fear from the world? And, without fear, without any natural predators, someone like Arlo could easily become one of the many would-be gods we’re in training to take down.

  Why did that girl have to grab Mattea?

  As if Arlo has just read my mind, he says, “It should have been me.”

  I slip my hand onto his forearm and tell him, “No. It shouldn’t have been any of us.”

  And then we all start crying again.

  With the six of us standing in a dazed bunch, our cheeks wet and our eyes red, Sara’s got an uncharacteristic hesitance in her voice when she asks, “What should we do?”

  Before the question is even all the way past her lips, something sad and soul-crushing occurs to me: We’re not heroes. We’re not indestructible or immortal. We’re not even fully trained fighters or survivors. We’re kids. Kids who just got a first-hand taste of our own fragility, of our own mortality, in the middle of a chaotic world we don’t understand and can’t possibly hope to control. And now I feel foolish for my eagerness to go on this mission and for my bravado in thinking it wouldn’t be any different than one of our hundreds of training sessions. I’m embarrassed for the pride I had, for knowing our teachers trusted us, and for every smile and group cheer Matholook and my Asylum and I shared grinding our Grip-bikes down here from the Academy as we went happily skimming from settlement to deserted settlement in search of clues we thought might help win an impending war.

  How do Kress and her Conspiracy deal with moments like this? How do they know what to do next? How do they even know they’ll be able to go on?

  “We could go back to the Academy,” Ignacio suggests, his eyes sunken and dispirited as he gazes out across the sea of desert between us and our mountain. He wants to sound confident, but there’s no hiding the tremor in his voice. Right now, nearly everything about him—his dark, narrowed eyes, the round knots of his muscular shoulders, the smooth lines of his jaw—they all seem a little softer, a little weaker, and drained of life and strength.

  Libra shakes her head and says she’s not sure how we’d even get back to the Academy now. She’s still crying as she kneels down and adjusts Arlo’s hoodie over Mattea’s body. It’s a sweet gesture, almost motherly. Which makes it even more heartbreaking. Libra’s lower lip trembles, and it’s like she’s trying to talk while slowly drowning. “We can’t take her with us. The terrain…the climb…How will we…carry her?”

  I’m about to protest, but I realize she’s probably right. We prepare and train for a lot of situations. We study combat, communications, weapons, history, politics, and diplomacy. And after all that, we’re totally unprepared to handle the logistics of ferrying our murdered friend up a mountain on a Grip-bike.

  “We can’t leave her here,” I object, my hands in defiant fists at my sides.

  Adjusting her body harness of throwing darts, Sara points into the distance where the high, arched walls of another settlement glint silver in the sunlight. “How about there?” In the silence that follows, she fidgets with the feathered flights of her darts, twisting them in their leather sleeves like they’re hotdogs on a grill. Unlike mine, her hands are delicate and clean, hardly the hands of a battle-tested warrior. “It could be our only option,” she points out.

  We’ve investigated four of these settlements so far—all abandoned—and we haven’t found anything close to the kind of clues we’re supposed to be tracking down and reporting on. The one in the distance, the one Sara is pointing to, is called Pueblo Outpost. It’s a lot bigger than the settlements we’ve visited so far. Its curved, synth-steel perimeter walls must run four or five hundred yards in each direction, and they’re polished to a high shine in a way the dusty, battered, wood, brick, and aluminum walls of the other settlements we scouted definitely weren’t. Otherwise, though, it doesn’t look any more promising. There are no vehicles around it, no lookouts in the six elevated sentry-posts we can see from here, and no exhaust from the three glass and chrome smokestacks jutting up into the sky from behind the wall. I’m not optimistic we’ll find any signs of life there. And forget about finding help.

  Wiping her eyes and nodding, Libra says she agrees with Sara. “She’s right. We should go to the Pueblo Outpost. It’s right here. And it was on our list of places to check out. Maybe we could take Mattea there. Maybe someone could help.”

  She doesn’t say it out loud, but I know we’re all thinking it: Even if we’re lucky enough to find someone there who doesn’t try to kill us at first sight, Mattea is beyond medical help. We’re talking about something much more unimaginable: getting help giving her a proper burial and keeping her out of reach of the vultures and other desert scavengers that have claimed this mostly lifeless land as their own.

  As if she’s come down with a nervous tic, Sara continues to fiddle with the darts in her bandolier and adjusts the snug, X-shaped straps cutting across her torso. Sliding a lock of her short blond hair behind her ear, she squints into the distance. Her normally blue eyes are cold now and have gone pewter gray. “It is one of the places we’re supposed to investigate and report about.”

  “You mean keep going with our mission?” Ignacio asks through an incredulous snarl. His fists curled into hard, tight knots, he swings around to face Sara. He’s tall and imposing, a boy who is going to rival Brohn in pure physical prowess someday. Despite his bluster, though, he doesn’t seems to know what an intimidating physical presence he is. But that’s starting to change as he grows older, more confident, and more aware of the potential for power he has over others.

  In the Academy, Brohn is his mentor, and I’m guessing he has his hands full trying to keep Ignacio’s confidence from spilling over into narcissistic arrogance.

  Startled by Ignacio’s hostile reaction to her suggestion, Sara steps back, and for a second, I think he might actually lunge forward and hit her.

  Sara drops her eyes. Dancing in the light breeze, loose tendrils of her hair flit around her face. Although she’s fair-skinned, the light and heat out here don’t seem to bother her. “There’s more riding on this than a single life,” she says into her chest, her eyes returning to their normal, watery blue. “We need to be practical now, not emotional.”

  I pivot toward Sara, my voice a predatory growl. “Mattea was our friend.”

  “I’m not trying to be cold-hearted,” she answers through a choking sob. She points a trembling finger in the direction of the open-eyed, blood-covered feral girl lying dead on the ground. “That girl probably wasn’t out here alone. If we stay here—”

  Frack. I hate it when she’s right.

  As if the cosmos decided to prove Sara’s point, whatever she was going to say next is cut off by the grinding sound of Skid Steers and the advancing, unmistakable battle-cry shrieks of one of the small but deadly recon squads from the Army of the Unsettled.

  4

  Chased

  Bouncing over the remnants of a cluttered and pock-mocked highway, the Unsettled Recon and Strike Squad—made up of four of those treaded, souped-up Skid Steers, four dirt-bikes, and a huge rust-red cube van with steel caging all around it and a roof-mounted grenade-launcher—bursts up from a canyon along with swirls of sand.

  It’s an alarming sigh
t, and I feel like I’ve gone instantly from predator to prey.

  With war-whoops and sporadic gunfire piercing the air, the fast-approaching patrol flies toward us through the undulating waves of heat rising from the ground. The fleet of pursuit vehicles bounces, skims, and rumbles over the rough terrain, leaving a sky-concealing cloud of dust and smoke in its wake. Their hurtling, churning caravan is lit up by dozens of muzzle-fire flashes. Bullets ping off the rocky ground and plunk into the low dunes of sand to either side of us.

  The Unsettled usually rely on a combination of firearms, knives, and an arsenal of homemade spears, clubs, and swords. Just our luck, this group has guns while we’re stuck with our dangerous but currently useless collection of close-range weapons.

  “Get behind me!” Arlo shouts. “I’ll slow them down!” Skidding to a stop and whipping around, he draws out his scythe and swings it in a swooping arc over his head.

  The trick he’s been practicing—he calls it casting an Aegis Shield—has saved us before. With his Emergent ability to affect the molecular density of the air, he has the power to create a sort of “bubble of thickness” that’s been able to slow down attackers in the past.

  I used to think his ability to affect the weight of the air was magical, bordering on impossible. It was Rain who pointed out to me how close to normal it is. “Everything from babies to cats,” she explained, “has the ability to be heavier when they don’t want you to pick them up.”

  Thinking she was joking, I laughed even though she didn’t, and then I proceeded to spend the entire night awake in the Lounge with the weird reality of her statement pinballing around in my head.

  With the knuckles on Arlo’s blistered hands turning ivory white and his face in a compressed grimace, I brace myself for the inevitable “thickness” that will slow our attackers down and give us the few seconds we need to regroup.

  Only…nothing happens.

  Arlo waves his scythe again. When the steaming hot desert air doesn’t react, Sara grabs him by his arm and shouts at him to get moving.

  “I don’t understand!” he calls out over the din of gunfire.

  “Who cares?” Sara cries back. “Let’s go!”

  When Matholook, stunned in wide-eyed disbelief (or is it disappointment?) doesn’t move, Sara clamps her other hand to his arm and yanks him as hard as she can until he snaps out of his petrified daze and starts running along with her. Stumbling and weaving, they sprint shoulder to shoulder, their boots kicking up a storm of red and gray sand behind them.

  Ducking gunfire and vaulting their way over a small field of scrub brush, Libra and Ignacio dash over and scan their Grip-bikes to life. Matholook bolts over to the bike we’ve been sharing and gets ready to leap on, but I stop him and suggest we’ll go faster if he takes Mattea’s bike, instead.

  As I say the words, I’m flooded with an instant wave of sorrow and guilt. Our friend died minutes ago. It’s too soon to be dismissing her place in the world and turning her things over to someone else.

  Focus, Branwynne!

  While Matholook leaps onto Mattea’s green Grip-bike and I clamber onto my yellow one, Sara and Arlo are busy sprinting toward their own bikes.

  I’m frantically waving for them to hurry up when Arlo goes flying forward like he’s been slammed between the shoulder blades with a sledgehammer.

  I leap off my bike and scurry over with my head down to help Sara get him back to his feet.

  A bullet has pierced the meat of his shoulder, and blood is already seeping through the chest and sleeve of his blue and white compression top.

  Arlo grumbles that he’s okay, but his voice is fuzzy and weak.

  Sara and I help him onto one of the two black Grip-bikes. “You’re sure you’re, okay?” I cry.

  “I’m fine,” he growls, as blood continues to seep through his shirt and down his side in dark patches. “Let’s go!”

  Sara and I dash over and leap onto our bikes and slap on our helmets. With Libra in the lead, the six of us peel out, leaving our pursuers, our dead attacker, and Mattea’s body behind.

  Hurtling over the creased and uneven landscape and leaning into sharp, precarious turns to avoid the scrub-brush and jagged rocks jutting up from the ground, we race toward the giant silver wall surrounding the Pueblo Outpost.

  It’s a long shot. We have no idea if we can even get inside or who or what might be waiting for us if we do. But the uncertainty of the settlement is better than the certainty of what’ll happen to us if we stay out here while the Unsettled use us for target practice.

  Bouncing and jostling at breakneck speed, we power the bikes as fast as they’ll go, with the Unsettled grinding along—shouting and firing their pistols and rifles—behind us.

  Thankfully, they’re not known as expert sharpshooters. Plus, their guns are pretty ancient, and it's times like this when I’m secretly glad the Wealthies have stockpiled all the best weapons in their skyscraping arcologies.

  As for putting any sort of distance between us and them, we can easily outpace the Skid Steers and the lumbering cube van. But a quick look over my shoulder tells me just how fast their dirt-bikes are closing in. The Unsettled drivers, their sand-brown jackets and military-style cargo pants billowing in the wind, rev their bikes to a whirring, break-neck speed as they skim and bounce over the rough and rock-ribbed fields.

  Even with my visor down, I’m squinting into the dust cloud and trying not to get blinded by the stinging bits of sand and debris being kicked up all around us, when the hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

  Over the space between us, Matholook shouts out, “Did you feel that?”

  I holler back, “Yeah! What was it?”

  “I don’t know!”

  A second later, we find out as each of the small, magnetic reactors powering our Grip-bikes sends up a spray of electric-blue sparks.

  As we shriek and flash our fingers over the accelerators in the hand-bars, our six Grip-bikes glide for another few seconds before seizing up, sputtering, and grinding to a complete stop.

  “What happened?” Libra cries, frantically slapping her palm pointlessly against the ignition pad on her bike’s control panel.

  “It’s a Systems Diode Dampener!” Ignacio yells across at her, like it’s her fault we’ve stopped. He presses his fist to his chest and winces. “I can feel it!”

  “Come on!” I shout, slinging myself off of my Grip-bike, tossing my helmet to the side, and breaking into a run. “We can make it!”

  I’m not nearly as confident as I sound.

  The others follow suit, ditching their helmets and their Grip-bikes, and bolting along with me.

  With at least two hundred yards between us and the settlement, we race on foot toward the wall as the bullets of the Unsettled continue to plunk into the ground behind us. No matter how many times it happens, in the Academy’s training rooms or even out here in the real world, I will never get used to being shot at.

  Although he’s probably the strongest of all of us, Ignacio isn’t very fast and is struggling to keep up. Matholook is also lagging behind, and Libra keeps shouting at both of them to keep moving.

  With the bulky weight of her sledgehammer to deal with, even Libra is having trouble navigating the uneven terrain and all of the crevices and low rock formations standing between us and the possibility of safety. That leaves me and Arlo far up ahead with Sara, who’s skimming along, light on her feet and falcon-fast, already almost at the wall.

  “Can you try again?” I shout over the sound of gunfire, the shouts of the Unsettled, the revving of engines behind us, and the thunder of our boots on the hard ground, but Arlo’s face slumps in defeat as the rest of our team finally catches up.

  “I can’t,” he pants. “Nothing’s happening!”

  Joining Sara, the rest of us slam to a stop at the wall and duck as another spattering of gunfire dings against the towering barrier of overlapping synth-steel slats.

  Breathing hard, Sara slaps her hand against the wall
. “Now what?”

  In my mind, Haida’s voice says, Follow.

  Overhead, the white raven drops down from the sky on a steep descent. Tucking her wings tight to her body, she dive-bombs straight at the wall about a hundred yards from where we’re standing.

  I gasp as Haida looks like she’s on a suicide mission, but instead of smashing into the wall, she seems to pass clean through it, disappearing for a second before climbing high up overhead on the other side.

  “There!” Matholook cries out.

  With the rest of us racing along behind him, he sprints the hundred yards along the perimeter of the wall to where the silver pedestrian door Haida just flew through is sitting ajar.

  I send Haida a mental Thanks! as the six of us slide to a stop at the heavy security door, and we can see immediately why it’s open.

  It’s an automatic door—triple-hinged and as thick as the wall, itself. Built with an automatic closing mechanism, the door has been prevented from shutting all the way by the body of a man lying dead on the ground.

  Whirring its gears and tapping against the prone man like it’s trying to wake him up, the door is stuck in a futile attempt to close.

  He’s lucky. It must have a sensor that stops it from cutting him in two as it tries to complete its sealing and locking protocol.

  Okay. Maybe he’s not lucky. But there’s something to be said for staying in one piece—even after death.

  Dressed in khaki pants, a white linen shirt, and a pastel-pink blazer, the dead man looks like he’s been attacked with a machete. Recently. He’s got long, blood-soaked gashes in his clothes, and he’s been nearly decapitated. The tendons and bones in his neck are exposed to the sun with a glossy, oval-shaped pool of his blood staining the sand around him. It’s a gruesome sight, but also a welcome one since the body is all that’s keeping this door open.

  Questions flash through my mind: Who is this man? Who killed him? And is his killer inside this settlement waiting to do the same to us?