by Ike Hamill
Logan made a face and shrugged. He held disdain for any profession that didn’t include a strong physical component. It seemed hard for the young man to even mention engineering without sneering.
“Where’s your pack?” Scarlett asked. “Where’s you saw and your tools?”
“I left them in the woods when we were fleeing for our lives,” Madelyn said. “I’ll have to reequip.”
“You can get by with just a saw and an axe for today. Those we can pick up on the way. We’ll cover you on rations and tools.”
Madelyn nodded. “Let me go leave a note for my, uh, Elijah.” She turned to walk back to the house. She really wanted to grab an extra shirt and a jacket, but she hadn’t wanted to say that in front of the others. They would have laughed at her.
Of course, they were already laughing at her as she walked back to the house.
“Your, uh, Elijah?” Scarlett asked.
“My, uh, Elijah,” Wyatt sang.
They all laughed.
“Shut up,” Madelyn said over her shoulder.
# # # # #
They stood at the side of the bright red vehicle. Madelyn ran her thumb down the blade of the bow saw they had picked up. It was terrible. Pitted with rust, the teeth were dull and not bent to the right angle. She would have to spend the first hour of the harvest just getting the thing ready to cut. The axe wasn’t much better.
“Go in and see what’s taking so long,” Scarlett said.
“We’re supposed to wait,” Logan said.
Wyatt threw his head back and groaned. “I’m sick of waiting.” He shed his pack and walked up the path to the safe house. They watched from across the yard as he banged twice and then let himself in.
“Why do we have to escort this guy anyway?” Scarlett asked. “I thought he was on pretty good terms with everyone. Why would they trade with him if they didn’t trust him?”
Logan shook his head. “I have no idea. You know Carter’s cousin, Amelia?”
“I guess. Short girl?” Scarlett asked.
“Everyone is short compared to you, but yeah, she’s not that tall. Anyway, she came and tracked me and Wyatt down when we were out at the Depot last night. She said that this guy Darren…”
Madelyn interrupted. “David.”
“David has been trading them parts for food. She said he’s going to go on another run, and they wanted us to ride along. Supposedly, he’s headed somewhat towards Heritage again, so we can get to the current cut faster than walking.”
“And you’re supposed to listen to where he goes after he drops us off,” Scarlett said.
“Yeah,” Logan said. “How did you know?”
Scarlett laughed at him. “Good thing you’re strong. You wouldn’t make it on brains alone. Everyone knows that you can pretty much track someone with those crazy ears. They want to know where he’s finding these parts so they can go get them for themselves. They want to cut out this guy so they don’t have to give him food to do the work.”
“Why bother?” Madelyn asked. She scraped some of the rust from the blade with her thumbnail. The red dust under her nail reminded her of Liam’s dried blood.
“What do you mean?” Scarlett asked. “Why would they want to give up food if they don’t have to?”
“Food is cheap,” Madelyn said. “It’s risky to go hunting parts, and it costs fuel. Seems cheap to give this guy food to do a task like that. I would let him take all the risk and then pay him in all the garden greens he could eat.”
“So why do you think they want to know where he’s going?” Logan asked.
Madelyn plucked her thumbnail on one of the blade’s teeth. It made a musical ping.
“They’re looking for something that they don’t want to tell him about,” she said.
Scarlett laughed. “You’re crazy.”
The door opened and Wyatt came out. He left it open behind himself. A few seconds later, the owner of the bright red vehicle, David, came out. He was followed by a teenager.
“Who’s that kid?” Logan whispered.
“He’s Niren,” Scarlett said. “You’ve met him before.”
“Hey, Niren,” Logan called, waving.
Niren gave him a quick wave and then rushed down the side of the building, away from the group. David and Wyatt joined them.
“Hello, all,” David said. “We didn’t really get to introductions the other day. My name is David.”
“Dave,” Madelyn said. “We’ll call you Dave.”
“That’s fine,” Dave said. “And you are?”
“Ready to go,” Scarlett said. “We’ve wasted half the morning already. Let’s get on the road.”
“Relax,” Wyatt said. He picked up his pack. “We would have wasted that same amount of time walking to the site. We’ll get there at the usual time for cutting and we’ll have twice the energy because we didn’t have to walk.”
Logan opened the back of the vehicle and they began to lift their packs and tools inside.
“I’m just saying,” Scarlett said, “we could have gotten there early.”
Madelyn moved to the passenger’s door before anyone else could claim it. She wanted to get a better sense of how to properly pilot the strange vehicle, and she thought she could do that better from the front.
As the other’s piled in the back, they made loud complaints about the lack of space. Madelyn was very comfortable. Dave climbed in behind the wheel. He didn’t touch anything except the wheel, but somehow the engine knew to come to life.
“Where are you headed?” Dave asked.
“As long as you’re going up the mountain, it doesn’t matter,” Logan said from the back. “We’ll stop you when you get close.”
“Okay,” Dave said.
They started to move forward. Madelyn didn’t know what to look for. He didn’t seem to be doing anything aside from handling the steering, yet the vehicle ramped up to a comfortable speed. The fan even came on, blowing warm air on their feet.
“So what does this thing run on, anyway?” Madelyn asked.
“Pardon?” Dave asked.
“Hey,” Logan said. “Shove over. You guys are killing me.”
Dave glanced in the mirror and smiled.
“What kind of fuel? You said it didn’t need to be refueled.”
“Oh,” Dave said. “I just meant that it wasn’t low at the time. It takes regular fuel. I get it here and there.”
“The engine was idling when we found you, then we drove all the way down from the mountain, taking a less than direct route. How could you not need fuel after that?”
Dave shrugged. “It’s efficient, I suppose.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Madelyn said.
“You should have heard all the jargon floating around inside that safe house,” Wyatt said. “You want to hear stuff that doesn’t sound right? Put Niren and this guy in the same room. The things they were talking about were crazy.”
“Like what?” Madelyn asked Dave.
“Nothing,” Dave said. He gave his head a little shake. “They’re just looking for particular parts. I suspect they want them for their component metals. You know—metals that can’t be easily fabricated. They won’t tell me what they’re building, but frankly, I don’t care. I like the taste of fresh vegetables, and you people grow the best. They can ask me to find whatever…”
“Like what?” Madelyn asked. “What kind of parts?”
Dave shot her a glance. “Maybe you should ask your own people about that. Frankly, I’m not sure I’m the one who should disseminate that information. I just trade parts for food, that’s all.”
“Where do you live?”
“I could ask you the same. You were cagey with me. It’s understandable. I suppose you’ll understand why I would be cagey with you.”
“You can’t drive around all the time. The Roamers would be on you within a day. Speaking of which, I’d be curious to know why they were chasing us when your engine was creating all that noise and heat. They sh
ould have been drawn to you first,” Madelyn said.
“I suppose you were unlucky enough to be on their path to me,” Dave said.
Madelyn held her response. She wanted to figure out his game before she asked another question. It might be the only way to catch him off-guard.
# # # # #
They put on their packs slowly as an excuse to wait for Dave’s vehicle to roll around the corner. Everyone stood silent as Logan cocked his head and listened. Long after Madelyn lost the sound of the engine, Logan was as still as a statue. The young man eventually closed his eyes to listen.
When he opened them again, Scarlett handed him a map.
“He went north to this road and then took a left. I think he either went down here, or around this corner,” Logan said as he traced the lines with his finger. “That’s all I could get.”
“It gives them somewhat of a clue,” Scarlett said. “Those roads all peter out.”
“Which way is the cut?” Wyatt asked. He tightened his straps and was ready to hike.
Scarlett took her map back from Logan and then pointed. The two of them stepped off the road and began to head between the trees.
“Come on,” Logan said to Madelyn.
“You go ahead,” she said. She glanced up the road where Dave had disappeared. “He headed down a dead end. I can catch up to him and see what he’s up to.”
“After all that talk about the Hunters tracking his engine?” Scarlett asked. “How come you’re not afraid he’s going to be overrun.”
“Because he wasn’t afraid,” Madelyn said. “And he’s been at this for a while.”
“Okay,” Wyatt said. “We’ll catch you next time.” He smacked Scarlett’s arm and the two of them started walking again.
Logan turned to her.
“I suppose I’ll see you later,” he said.
Madelyn nodded. She took her borrowed bow saw and axe and leaned them against a tall oak tree. When she looked back to Logan, he was still standing there.
“You better catch up with those guys,” Madelyn said. “They’re not waiting for you.”
Logan shed his pack. “Screw it. I’ll come with you. Let me just leave a couple of things here.”
# # # # #
“Where is he?” Logan asked.
They were ducked behind a big rock, looking at the bright red vehicle. The thing was running, but empty. It seemed like Dave had stopped for no reason and then disappeared. There were no houses or buildings anywhere nearby that she could see.
“Let me have a look at the map,” Madelyn said.
“Scarlett took it,” Logan said.
“That was the only map you have? I figured you would have another one on you.”
Logan shrugged.
They saw movement and both hunched down.
Dave slid down the hillside with all the grace of a newborn giraffe. He was holding a white canvas bag away from his body.
“I guess he found what he was looking for,” Logan said.
Dave’s head snapped up. He was way too far away to hear, but his eyes searched in their direction. Dave turned and got behind the wheel. A second later, the vehicle began to head uphill, deeper down the dead-end road.
Logan listened while Dave disappeared around the corner.
“He didn’t go far,” Logan said. “We should be able to see him if we climb up here.” Logan pointed across the road. They climbed near the path that Dave had just slid down. Once they got to the top of the slope, Madelyn followed Logan at a run through the woods. He crept slowly to the edge of a drop and then pointed through the trees.
Madelyn saw the bright red vehicle. They crept closer.
“What’s he doing?” Logan asked.
Madelyn put her hand on his arm to shut him up. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Rather, she couldn’t believe that she was hearing something that Logan didn’t.
“What?” he mouthed. She pointed to her ear and then off to the west. Logan turned his head. His eyes grew wide as he figured out what she was gesturing towards.
It was the clicking sound that meant they were being hunted. Invisible creatures were swarming through the woods, looking for the heartbeats of humans. If Madelyn and Logan were caught by the things, there would be no bargaining. The monsters would tear them apart, atom by atom.
Logan turned to whisper a frantic idea in her ear. “Just like before—we’ll run down there and steal his car. You can drive it. We can get away again.”
“Hold on,” Madelyn whispered back.
She saw something that confirmed an unvoiced suspicion that had been building inside her. Dave snapped up from what he was doing at the back of his vehicle, turned his ear towards the clicking, and then went back to his task. A second later, he left the vehicle with his empty white bags and picked a path away from the buckled road surface.
“Come on,” Madelyn said. She stayed low and waved Logan on.
“Now you’re making sense.”
The clicking sound seemed to stay the same intensity as they moved towards the vehicle. It was difficult to tell at that distance. When the Roamers got closer, the volume and frequency would both ramp up, but when the clicking was faint and slow, it was nearly impossible to gauge how far the things were.
Madelyn grabbed Logan’s shirt when he started to go for the passenger’s door.
“Let’s follow him,” she said.
“What? They’re coming. We can’t afford to hang around here.”
“That guy deals with these things all the time. He’s out here amongst them. If he’s not nervous, why are you?”
“He’s a moron,” Logan said. “You can die out here with him if you want, but I’m not sticking around for it.”
“Nobody is going to die,” Madelyn said. “Take a chance. We could learn something. When we stole his truck the first time, Dave only panicked when he saw this thing rolling away. And he leaves it idling all the time. I think he has figured out a way to repel the Roamers.”
“Impossible.”
“How else do you explain it? Nobody out here in the hills is able to drive around a beacon like this. If he didn’t have some secret, he would have died a long time ago.”
“Don’t mistake stupid for clever,” Logan said. “My dad used to say that.”
“He sounds clever,” Madelyn said.
“Enough of this. We need to go.”
“No.”
Madelyn walked to the edge of the road and found the trail that Dave had left in the brush. She started to track him and then heard the sound of Logan at the vehicle. He was tugging on the passenger’s door. He cursed at it and ran around to the driver’s door. That was locked too. Frustrated, Logan searched around and found a chunk of pavement.
He was about to swing it at the window when Madelyn spoke up.
“Don’t do that. Dave armed the vehicle this time. The glass is shatterproof and it has a security system. If you manage to break the window, the vehicle shuts down. Then we’ll all be cooked.”
He didn’t believe her. At least he didn’t believe her completely. She had sewn some small seed of doubt in Logan. He looked at the rock and then dropped it with a sigh.
“Let’s find the bastard then,” Logan said. “We’ll make him drive us out of here.”
# # # # #
Dave was completely absorbed in his task. He held a little device out at arm’s length. A wire drooped from the device and trailed up to Dave’s right ear. Madelyn peered around a tree. Logan was on the ground, creeping silently closer to the man.
She hoped to get some sense of what Dave was doing before Logan ran up and abducted the man.
Dave’s arm swung straight up. The device in his hand lit up and he twisted it.
Madelyn blinked as something swam into focus above them. She saw a silver web between the trees. It didn’t appear to be a physical thing. The strands looked like tiny shafts of light, reflected by invisible mirrors. It disappeared when Dave lowered the device. He tucked it back into h
is bag and found something else in there. He started screwing together the segments of a metal pole. Dave was just about to attach another strange device to the end of the pole.
Logan sprang up from behind Dave.
The pole fell. The device flew from Dave’s surprised hand.
Logan grabbed Dave’s arm and pulled it behind the man’s back.
“You’re going to take us out of here,” Logan said.
“What are you doing?” Madelyn demanded. She came forward and pulled Logan away from Dave.
“You want to die out here?” Logan asked.
“Calm down,” Madelyn said.
“He locked his vehicle so we would be left out here to die.”
“Logan,” Madelyn said. “We followed him. He didn’t know we were out here. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I had an agreement with your people. They sent you to follow me?” Dave said.
“No,” Madelyn said. She sighed and let go of Logan. “We were curious. We came on our own. I suspected that you have some sort of technology to keep away the Roamers. You do, don’t you? You’ve got some secret that allows you to move around at will, right?”
Dave gave them a sad smile and a little nod. He bent and picked up one of his white bags.
“Yeah. I’ve got a whole bunch of things I’ve put together over the years. This one, for instance,” he said pulling a black object from his white bag.
Madelyn dove to her right to put a tree between herself and Dave. It didn’t matter. She felt the energy wash through her. Her limbs were instantly numb. She collapsed to the forest floor. Madelyn could only move her eyes. She saw Logan’s arm resting against a tree—he was down too.
Dave brushed off the device he had dropped earlier and affixed it to the pole. With the pole fully extended, he raised the device into the air. Madelyn lost sight of it until Dave pulled it back down again. The man didn’t give Madelyn and Logan another look. He packed everything into his bag and disappeared.
Madelyn was left to contemplate how she would die.
