Madelyn's Mistake

by Ike Hamill

  Madelyn swung her head left and right, trying to get her sense of direction back. She had no idea which direction to find the road.

  “Go right,” Logan slurred in her ear.

  “Do you hear his engine?” she asked.

  “No. But go right to get away from the Hunters.”

  Madelyn nodded and veered to the right.

  # # # # #

  They were actually picking up speed and Madelyn felt like they were working pretty well together. Logan’s upper body was still useless and his balance was garbage, but as long as she focused on keeping them upright, his legs provided power.

  Her toe caught a fallen branch and she stumbled.

  Logan twisted to the side. He pulled her down as he fell. Madelyn landed on Logan and they rolled. His weight crushed her into the ground. She struggled to push him off as he tried to get back to his feet.

  Logan finally managed to roll off and they were side by side on the ground.

  “Are you hurt?” he whispered.

  “I’ll live,” she said. “Are they following us?”

  “I don’t think so. Something else has their attention.”

  He raised his arms and tried to shake them out.

  “My upper body is still in pretty rough shape. How come you recovered so quickly?” he asked.

  “You were closer. And there was a tree between me and the gun. I’d like to get ahold of that guy. I would teach him some manners,” Madelyn said.

  Logan swung an arm and hooked his hand around a small tree. He found enough strength to pull himself up. “He wasn’t wrong. We were following him.”

  “He left us for dead.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he knew that the Hunters would follow his vehicle instead of us.”

  “No,” Madelyn said. “Don’t give him that much credit. He left us for dead.”

  She rubbed her face with her hands and looked up at the sky. She spun one way and then the other.

  “Where do we go?”

  Logan flopped an arm one direction. “That way is home, but there are Hunters between us and the road. We’re going to have to head west and try to loop around them.”

  “Great. The dry valleys. I’ve hiked through there. It’s death.”

  Logan nodded.

  “I don’t think we have another choice.”

  “We could wait. Maybe the Roamers will follow Dave and go away.”

  “Maybe they will turn back and find us.”

  Madelyn thought that over. As much as she hated the valleys, at least they would be doing something. Even though it was her idea, she wasn’t really the sit-and-wait type.

  “Yeah. Okay. We head west. Which way is that?” Madelyn asked.

  Logan smiled. “We’re a pair. Help me up and I’ll show you which way to go.”

  Madelyn nodded. It was easier said than done. On the ground, Logan was doing okay. Once he got up on his feet, he looked like he might tip at any second. Madelyn walked behind him and kept waiting for him to fall as he weaved and crashed through the woods.

  “Let me help you,” she said. She came up alongside him and tried to get under his arm to prop him up.

  “No. I don’t think I’m going to get better if I keep leaning on you. Let me figure this out.”

  “It won’t matter how much control you’ve regained if we get swarmed by Roamers.”

  He cocked an ear to check before he replied. “We’re still good. They’re not moving this way.”

  “Our first good news today,” Madelyn said.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I learned a very important lesson.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t follow Madelyn when she gets curious. It leads to trouble.”

  “Is that the kind of person you want to be?” Madelyn asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  # # # # #

  “When I was a kid, we always had two bases,” Logan said. “At the beginning of the day, we would memorize what our two bases were. If there was any trouble, the kids would all split up and run for a base. Sometimes I wish there was still someone telling me the bases each day.”

  He was barely leaning on Madelyn. She was glad. Her back was beginning to hurt from supporting his weight.

  “When I grew up, you sat still,” Madelyn said. “My grandmother was a decent tracker. She would tell us that if we got lost, we were supposed to sit right down and wait. She would come before long. Of course, we didn’t have many predators around back then.”

  “This was before the Hunters?” Logan asked.

  “Of course. Don’t I look old enough to have grown up before the cull?”

  “It’s hard to imagine a world without the Hunters,” Logan said. “And it’s near impossible to imagine a world where you would tell a kid to stay in one place if they got lost. They would be helpless.”

  “Maybe your kids will get to grow up in a world like that. Like if they grow up in the safe harbor?” Madelyn asked.

  Logan paused next to a big rock. They had a long, rocky descent in front of them. It might be good news for both of them. A lot of the travel would have to be down on hands and feet. That would give Madelyn a break and all the stretching and reaching might help wake up Logan’s torso even more.

  “Don’t talk to me about the safe harbor. A kid could run across the safe harbor in thirty seconds. How are they going to get lost in a tiny corner of Kappa Three?”

  “It might not always be that small,” Madelyn said.

  “Yeah, right. Besides, do you see a lot of us choosing to have kids? I think your generation was the last to believe that procreation was a good idea. Some people don’t choose that path.”

  “You’ll get the itch. Give it time.”

  “You have kids?” Logan asked.

  Madelyn shook her head.

  He turned up his hands and raised his eyebrows like he had won the debate.

  “That’s good,” she said.

  “What?”

  “What you just did with your hands. You couldn’t have done that an hour ago.”

  Logan thought about it and nodded. “That was a tricky little device Dave was carrying. I’d like to get a chance to use it on him sometime. I wonder if he knows how it feels to have your body taken away and then given back one throbbing piece at a time.”

  “That’s a good goal,” Madelyn said. “Next time we see that guy, I say we give him a little lesson.”

  Logan nodded.

  # # # # #

  Madelyn looked up at Logan as he climbed to the top of the ridge. He had recovered completely—there was no doubt. She was still trying to find her sense of direction. They had no food, no water, and he didn’t need her anymore. She wondered how long until his childhood training would take over and he would suggest they split up and head off alone to find their bases.

  “Can you see town?” she asked.

  He was just standing there with his mouth hanging open.

  “Logan?”

  The trees were still blocking her view. She thought she could see a trace of the smoke from the bonfire, but it could have just been the overcast sky. Madelyn passed behind the rocks as she climbed. She didn’t get a view until she struggled to her feet next to Logan.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Her mouth fell open too.

  “The Wisdom,” she said.

  “I thought that was just a rumor,” Logan said. “They got all kinds of shelters ready. Made us all prepare, and then nothing.”

  She pointed at the big cloud. “That’s not nothing.”

  “Clearly.”

  The sky was overcast, but the dark cloud stood apart from the blanket of gray overhead. It seemed to boil within invisible walls. She couldn’t be sure from their distance, but it seemed that the cloud wasn’t yet over Fairbanks. It looked poised to strike, hovering just beyond the northwest corner of the settlement.

  “What does it do? All I heard was strange stories,” Logan said.

&n
bsp; “It tells lies,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “And tries to kill you.”

  “Oh.”

  They contemplated the cloud for a moment.

  “Kappa Three is right on the other side of that. I wonder if it can go inside the safe harbor,” Logan said.

  “I’m sure it can.”

  Logan sighed. Earlier, he had seemed dismissive of the promise of the safe harbor. She could tell from his sigh that it had been an act.

  “That could just be smoke,” he said. “Maybe there’s one of those inversions happening where the warm air stops the smoke from rising?”

  Madelyn didn’t want to argue. “I guess.”

  “Yeah. That’s it,” Logan said. He shook his head a little to clear away the possibility that he was wrong. The motion didn’t go well with his diminished balance. Logan swayed on his feet for a second.

  “We’re not going to make it back before dark,” Madelyn said. “I don’t suppose you know of any of those bunker things around here.”

  “You mean a PUB?”

  Madelyn shrugged.

  “No. We only built bunkers near harvest locations for emergencies. There’s nothing out this way that I know of. If we got supremely lucky, we would find an old hunting lodge or something, but those are few and far between.”

  “Great,” Madelyn said. She stared at the dark cloud and the town just beyond it. Maybe it was some strange meteorological trick that was collecting smoke in a layer above Fairbanks. She couldn’t believe in that idea, as much as she wanted to.

  She realized that he was looking at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You look weird.”

  “I was just thinking—I try to join and I get spit back out. It has happened too many times to be a coincidence. I try to fit in down there and I keep getting flung back out to the wilderness.”

  “You chose this,” Logan said. “I’m not faulting you for it. I was curious too, and I’m even more curious now, but don’t forget that you’re the one who wanted to follow Dave.”

  “He’s working with someone down there,” she said.

  “Caleb.”

  “He’s up to something, and Dave is a part of it,” Madelyn said. “I think we should find out what they’re after.”

  Logan nodded.

  Chapter 12

  {Tracking}

  ELIJAH’S FIRST STOP WAS for information. It didn’t take long to find out where Madelyn had disappeared. It would be next to impossible to get anyone to tell him where the harvesting would take place tomorrow, but today’s schedule was common knowledge. Elijah got a location from the guys who would go pick up the wood cut by Wyatt and Scarlett.

  Once he was out of town, he made good time.

  If required, Elijah could run at a decent clip for several hours. He would never do such a thing unless he was sure that he was alone. He reached the spot in no time. Subtle signs pointed to where Wyatt and Scarlett left the road. A leaf was flipped upside down. A twig had been scuffed by a shoe. With a deep breath, he could even smell their trail.

  Madelyn was even easier to track. Elijah was tuned to her scent.

  He moved up the hill at a slower pace so he wouldn’t miss anything. He found the spot where they left the road and blinked as he collected details of the vehicle’s passage. He tracked Madelyn and Logan and stood over the spot where they had spied on the vehicle.

  Elijah didn’t know much about David. He only had the information that Madelyn had shared. To the best of Elijah’s knowledge, David was the only outsider who had arrived in a vehicle recently.

  Elijah walked down the hill slowly, listening to the sound of the Zumbidos in the distance. They were following something. Whatever it was moved in the opposite direction of Madelyn and Logan—that was good news.

  He found the spot of the scuffle.

  Dave had moved carelessly. He had trailed a strange scent with him.

  Elijah glanced around and collected evidence with his eyes. Madelyn and Logan had tried to sneak up but then were attacked. Elijah crouched and touched the ground where Madelyn had lain. She was injured, but had left under her own power.

  Elijah stared at their shuffling footprints. They looked like they had dragged an elephant through the woods. He followed until the light faded. Elijah took stock. If he kept up his pace, he would catch them overnight.

  That would raise questions that he couldn’t answer.

  He took one last look at the tracks he had been following. It looked like Madelyn and Logan were doing better. Their trail showed that they were walking side by side and they hadn’t stumbled in a while. The Zumbidos were far away. She was safe for the night.

  Regardless of the logic of the situation, he wanted to keep following. He wanted to see her with his own eyes and verify that she was safe. When Madelyn had agreed to switch to gardening, Elijah had feigned indifference, but he had been overjoyed. Now, even though she had made the safe decision, she was back out here unprotected.

  Elijah shook his head.

  Once he picked out a good tree, he got a running start and then propelled himself up the bark. He stopped when he was high enough to avoid casual eyes and ears. Elijah wrapped himself around a branch and fell asleep.

  Chapter 13

  {Test}

  AMELIA STOOD BACK AND looked at the mess of equipment and wires. Her hands were raw. She and Niren had been up most of the night, making the coils and testing them exhaustively. According to Caleb’s model, they couldn’t afford more than a one percent deviation from perfection. If the field was at all misshapen, the whole construction would collapse immediately.

  “What are we forgetting?” Niren asked.

  “Sanity?” Amelia asked. She let out a low whistle.

  “It’s not so bad. I’ll have my hand on the kill switch the whole time,” Niren said.

  “We both will,” Amelia said.

  Their custom coils were hanging from a metal scaffolding that was bolted into a rolling rack. For this experiment, they were working in the partially-flooded basement. Caleb said it would be safer to work down there, but he hadn’t explained why. All their power cords ran down the stairs in fat bunches. Amelia tripped on them every time she had to go use the outhouse.

  She would be happy when this experiment was done, one way or the other.

  From bottom to top, their device was about two meters high. If Caleb was right, they would create a tiny loop of energy right in the center of the two-meter box. The only thing holding that energy in place would be those coils, made from a kilometer of scavenged copper. She and Niren had inspected every centimeter of the wire to make sure it wasn’t corroded or pitted. An imperfection in the wire would turn that segment into a miniature fuse. It would self-destruct when they applied current. Then, in a puff of smoke their prison of electric fields would collapse.

  “I wish we had time to unit test the box,” she said.

  “We tested each coil,” Niren said. “That’s good enough.”

  “Is it?” she asked. She could imagine one of the parts exercised right to the point of failure by one of their tests. They were relying on those parts for their safety.

  Caleb and Brook swept into the room each with a handful of papers.

  “Okay, we have all the shape points calculated. We have to put them in by hand for obvious reasons.”

  Niren and Amelia exchanged a glance. The reasons were not obvious to them at all.

  “Because we can’t have a console anywhere near this stuff. That’s why were down in the dungeon. We have to be as far as possible from any ether contamination,” Caleb said.

  “Good thing you said,” Niren said as he stood. He pulled a rolled up screen from his pocket and headed for the door. The thing only pulled phantom energy from the ether, but it definitely qualified as an ether-connected device.

  As Niren left to take the thing upstairs, Caleb threw up his hands in disgust.

  “You people are trying to kill us,” Caleb said.<
br />
  “We are?” Amelia asked. She gestured to the papers. “As far as I can tell, you’re the architect of our next disaster.”

  Brook was already over at the handmade equipment, entering the field values into the controller. Caleb and Amelia watched—once Brook got going, it made sense to let her finish so nothing would be mixed up.

  Niren came back out of breath and pulled the door mostly shut behind himself. The door hung crooked from its hinges and wouldn’t close completely without a wrestling match.

  “Okay,” Brook said. “That’s it for the constants. We just have to ride this one control to keep the values within tolerance.”

  Niren stepped forward. “I can make a circuit for that. It would be simple to sample that voltage and then backfill the…”

  “Stop!” Caleb said. “You’re stalling. Amelia can do it manually. She knows the limits and she keeps her head in a crisis.”

  Amelia nodded and moved into position. Caleb was right. He was condescending, but he was right. Of course it meant that he was going to be the one handling the substrate. She had the high-risk role. He took the job that came with the most glory.

  Caleb turned to address them. “If anyone sees anything unusual or alarming, you have to yell immediately so we can trigger the locks. We can’t take any chances with…”

  “We got it,” Niren said. “You’re stalling.”

  Caleb frowned. He pulled his Swiss Army knife from his pocket and folded out the small blade. He cut the wax from the lid on the mason jar, careful to keep the whole thing within the cube of coils. When he popped off the lid, he smiled and tilted it down so everyone could see. They had debated how the conductive metal lid was working to contain the substrate. Under it, David had sealed a circle of glass made from the bottom of another mason jar. Stuck down with more wax, the glass completely surrounded the substrate. Caleb pulled the metal lid and ring out of the cube and handed them to Brook.

  “This is it,” Caleb said. They all held their breath as he worked the tip of his blade into the wax that sealed glass to glass. He moved his other hand back so that it wouldn’t be within the cube of coils.