Love, Death, Robots and Zombies

by Oliver Higgs

  “Wait. You’re saying Cabal would’ve killed Ballard, but he’s mad we did it first?” I ask incredulously.

  Echo’s blonde hair shakes wearily.

  “He wasn’t actively trying to kill Ballard. I’m just saying he was jealous, and if it had to be done, he would’ve rather done it himself. Having a stranger do it is entirely different. Now he’d kill us if for no other reason than to prove to himself he really was loyal to Ballard. It’s complicated. And anyway Ballard didn’t have to die. We killed him to set ourselves free.”

  “Weren’t you already free?” I ask, looking at her sideways. She looks like she might cry again. It takes her a minute to answer.

  “Just walk, Tristan.”

  So I walk. But another question occurs.

  “Do you think they’ll give him a horse?”

  “Probably. He’s going to catch up one way or another, Tristan. It’s just a question of what will happen then.”

  Despite all our reasons to keep moving, it takes a huge effort to keep walking through the night. We fall into a kind of daze, barely aware of our progress. Lectric trots with his head down. For a while I wonder why his step is a little uneven. Then–oh, I see. His metal paws have rubber pads for traction, but the front-left pad has been burned away. He must have stepped on a bit of gluefire during our escape. It’s not a big concern, but it must hurt. A sensory network is wired into his body, and he’s programmed to feel pain for the same reason we are–bodily preservation. Sentient bots who don’t feel enough pain invariably die in a hurry.

  The sky is growing light again. It feels like we’ve come a thousand miles when we finally decide to stop. Of course, we can’t just sleep on the road, because what if somebody comes? We head east for almost a mile until New Sea is visible. There we lie in the shadows of a half-standing house.

  Exhaustion has erased any concern for comfort. Even sitting brings a feeling close to bliss. Still, for a few minutes I can’t fall asleep because I’m listening for Cabal. I listen even in my dreams.

  Echo is still asleep when I wake. It’s somewhere around noon. Lectric is sprawled across the ground, soaking up the sun. I’m dead-thirsty and we’re out of water. I have a canteen in my pack, but it’s empty now. I’ll have to fill it from New Sea and desalinate the water.

  I have a lot of useful items in my pack. When Farmington burned, there were a lot of things I’d wished I’d had, and I’m never going to make that mistake again. Now my pack is always ready. Plus, sometimes I decide to range further from home and sleep under the stars. To that end, I keep an old blanket in there as well.

  With my canteen and desalinator, I head to the shore. Lectric rouses himself to follow. When I first came to the Library, I desalinated all my water from New Sea by the evaporation-collection method taught to me by my grandfather. The second time I met Toyota, however, I traded him for a graphene desalinator. They made a lot in the final days before the Fall, and apparently Toyota found a whole warehouse full somewhere down south. On one trip, it was practically all he took north.

  I fill the top-half of the desalinator with saltwater, then close the lid and use the little crank on the top, compressing the water inside. As it’s compressed, the water is forced through a graphene membrane between the top and bottom halves of the desalinator. The membrane has millions of nano-sized holes, too small for salt but just big enough for water. The only bad thing is that it’s very tiring on your wrist because you have to keep turning the handle to put pressure on the liquid–otherwise it takes forever for the water to trickle through.

  When it’s done, I unscrew the now-empty top half and rinse it in the ocean. Then, quite annoyingly, I have to pour the water from the bottom half back into the top and press it through two more times. I suspect this is only because I got a slightly defective one and some of the holes are too big, so it takes three passes to eliminate enough salt.

  After the third pass, I pour the water into my canteen. Then I gather more saltwater and run through the process all over again, leaving the new volume in the bottom of the desalinator because I have nothing else to carry it in. Meanwhile, Lectric pees coolant into the sand and refills his rubber bladder.

  Echo is awake when we return. She accepts the water cautiously and watches me with serious eyes. I can’t even begin to guess what she’s thinking.

  “We should get moving,” I say.

  She nods. Lectric barks happily; at least one of us is in a good mood.

  On Big Road again, I try to estimate what time Cabal might catch us. I do this maybe fifty times and there are still too many uncertainties. I can approximate how far we’ve gone, but I don’t know how fast a horse can run, if he’ll even have a horse, what time the army will arrive, or what time Cabal will leave. The only thing I’m fairly certain of is that he’ll come north along Big Road, and if he does have a horse he’s going to catch us in a big damn hurry. Twelve hours walking is probably only three or four hours riding.

  Which means we can’t stay on this road. Even coming back to it was probably a mistake. If Cabal spots us from behind, he could take us out from a distance. After thinking about it, I tell Echo we’ve got to leave Big Road again. I want to be close to water, but I don’t like the idea of being trapped between New Sea and our enemy, so this time we strike out west instead until Big Road is safely out of sight.

  The Great Ruins of my old city–with its fallen towers rusting in jungles of twisted girders; with its massive crumbled complexes that once housed untold thousands; with its Headless King and the fantastic sculptures of the old, dead American Empire–all of this has fallen behind us, leaving a seemingly endless stretch of smaller ruins surrounding the metropolis. Family-sized dwellings fill the area. Few are still standing. It seems impossible that enough people once existed to fill them. Where did they get all their food? The plumbing must have been a nightmare. Baffling.

  “We could just keep going west, you know,” I say. “We’d have to gather a lot of water first. I don’t know how far we’d have to go, but we could try it. I know there’s a river near Cove that runs north. We’d hit it eventually.”

  Echo looks at me sideways. Her hand moves absently to her necklace. There’s something she’s wary about–beyond all the normal things there are to be wary about, that is–but it eludes me.

  “We should keep going north,” she says.

  “Why? I mean, Cabal knows we’re heading that way and we’re going to hit the z-line eventually. We can’t go east because of New Sea, and we can’t go south because of the army. West means more desert, so it’s a big risk–but so is north. At least west there’ll be desert-foxes and coyotes and other game. What’s good about north?”

  Echo is reluctant to answer. Finally, she says, “Haven.”

  I frown at her. I’ve heard the name once or twice, but I know almost nothing about it. A small group came through Farmington once heading for Haven. My grandfather wrote them off as crazies.

  “That’s someplace up north, right?”

  “Not some place, Tristan, the place. A place where everyone is safe and free, and they’ve got food and water, and laws to protect people, and working tech from Old America. They’re rebuilding, Tristan. Making things the way they used to be. The way they should be.”

  I can see in her eyes that she believes it. A secret hope burns there with startling intensity. It’s one of the things she keeps hidden. But I can only think of Hyperborea, where Conan went. Didn’t turn out as he expected.

  “So it’s a city-state? Ballard said Cove wants to reinvent America. They’ve got laws and stuff too. How’s that any different?” I ask.

  A shutter comes down over the hope in her eyes, protecting it from intruders and people who don’t understand. People like me. She makes a dismissive noise and looks away. This is why she was reluctant to tell me. Hope is a treasure in the wasteland, even rarer than water. To keep it, you’ve got to guard it. When Echo speaks again, her voice is more factual, less involved.

  “Haven i
s a good place. Not greedy and harsh like Cove. They don’t burn people’s homes down. The people there are trying to rebuild things the right way. It’s the last, best hope for our world, Tristan.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She just shakes her head and turns away.

  “It’s north of the z-line?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Going to be hard to get there.”

  She looks at me sideways again and nods. I shrug, relenting.

  We turn north again, parallel to Big Road–not that I’m committed to actually crossing the z-line. I just think it won’t hurt to get a little further before arguing more about turning west. There’s no point standing around. I’m pretty good at ignoring hunger, but I’m starving if I bother to pay attention. I don’t have my rat traps to rely on now, which means we’re going to have to use the crossbow or machine-pistol. I’m not seeing many signs of games out this way either.

  For an hour, we walk in silence.

  “Fin wasn’t so bad, you know,” Echo says out of nowhere.

  I meet her eyes briefly.

  “He was a good hunter. Always found us food. He never … never did anything to me.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, looking at her out of the corner of my eyes. Echo only shrugs, staring carefully ahead.

  “We had to do it though. Once we ... once we killed Ballard. We couldn’t leave the others,” she says. I’m not sure if she’s telling me or herself. Probably both.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “You hate me, don’t you.”

  “What? Annabel. Why would you ask that?”

  “You look angry whenever you look at me. And call me Echo.”

  Do I look angry? Living alone has not given me good practice monitoring my expressions. I do feel some anger toward her, but I was trying to ignore that. Mostly it’s because she’s supposed to be the innocent girl with the long hair in the desert, and instead she’s the girl who was travelling with Rodrick’s Raiders. Does that mean I’m angry she didn’t die in Farmington like I thought? That doesn’t make sense.

  “I’m not ... not angry at you,” I say, but it doesn’t feel entirely true.

  “Sure. I bet you wish we never found you though.”

  Of course I wish that. Then I’d be back home reading Volume Seven. But why stop there? I might as well wish Farmington had never burned to the ground or that Old America never fell. Nobody can ignore the world forever. It finds you and shoves its troubles down your throat until you choke on them, and then it watches quietly while you vomit everything back up on the people around you.

  “Why do you want me to call you ‘Echo?’“ I ask.

  “I haven’t been Annabel since the Fire.”

  “Doesn’t really answer the question.”

  Echo sighs.

  “I took up in a cave after Farmington burned. I was starving. Cove’s army had kept after Rodrick’s Raiders and they were breaking up. Ballard, Fin and Cabal stayed together though. Fin came across my tracks in the desert. When they found me, I didn’t talk for a while. I repeated some things though–mostly just ‘food’ and ‘water,’ whenever someone mentioned those. So Ballard called me Echo, and I’ve been Echo ever since.”

  I begin to see why she travelled with them–she couldn’t survive on her own. Not that that makes it ok or answers my other questions. I want to ask her again why she would turn against Ballard and risk her life to go on the run with me, but somehow I know she won’t answer–maybe she can’t answer–so I swallow the question.

  Here and there we find a house still standing. We conduct brief searches for useful items. It’s during one such search that the high-pitched whine of a distant motor echoes across the barren land.

  Echo and I freeze, staring at each other. The whine gets louder.

  “Bike,” she whispers. We scramble to a broken window and crouch beside it, peering east toward Big Road. We’d walked west until Big Road was well out of sight, but it’s hard to stay exactly parallel with the road. Since then we’ve apparently drifted closer, because soon a bug-sized dot can be seen speeding along the horizon in that direction. It must have heavy-duty off-road wheels to be that steady on the broken road.

  It’s unlikely anyone can spot us at this distance, but we both duck out of sight regardless. I reach for my spyglass in the pack but then think: what’s the point? It can’t be anyone but Cabal, and what if his eyes catch some glint off the glass? Better to just stay hidden.

  The motor’s pitch reaches a threatening crescendo as the solar cycle passes, then drops slowly as the bike recedes. The sound reminds me of a giant mosquito. Appropriate, given that the owner wants to drain our blood. Studebaker has apparently outfitted him even better than expected. Perhaps a little too well, because now he’s passing his prey. He disappears into the distance.

  “Well, at least-” I begin, stopping when Echo’s hand shoots up.

  I squint, listening. The sound is getting louder again. No. A second sound. Echo looks at me with wide eyes. Her hand closes except for the first two fingers: two solar cycles. Lectric whimpers and rests his head on my boot. A second bike passes us in the distance. We wait for more. Neither of us can relax even after the last dying echo has faded into silence.

  “Two then. Bikes, not horses. Seems Cabal made a good case against us,” I say.

  “Or they want him back sooner, and they don’t fully trust him. By sending someone else, they can be sure he won’t desert with their equipment.”

  We stay in the house a while, making sure Cabal and his escort won’t double-back. Sooner or later, he’s got to figure he passed us. When we start moving again, we head half a mile further west, away from Big Road. This creates a problem, however, because soon we’re out of water. It’s amazing how fast it disappears. With our bodies constantly on the move and the day fairly warm, there’s no way to make it last. We need to hit New Sea again, but that’s on the opposite side of Big Road.

  “We should wait for dark,” I say. I don’t feel comfortable crossing the distance in daylight. Echo nods. Clearing a spot beside a half-standing wall, we settle in for a few hours. I remember the way the nails went into Ballard’s neck, and the whole scene starts replaying in a loop. It’s familiar by now. Has it only been a day? Impossible.

  “It’s dark,” Echo says, shaking me awake.

  I fell asleep? Apparently so. The light has changed.

  “We should go,” Echo says.

  “Right,” I say, blinking, momentarily confused. We trek east, straining our ears for the whine of electric motors. It takes forever to reach Big Road. How is it so far? Then we’re across with no sign of the bikes, but my heart is still in my throat. I’m paranoid. Echo must think I’m a coward. She’s right too. I’m scared of everything.

  We’re about half a mile beyond Big Road, crossing the smaller side-roads of a destroyed neighborhood, when the buzzing comes again. Echo curses. A pinprick of light stabs our eyes. Not back west, along Big Road–no, not there but directly north. Immediately, I know what’s happened. When they turned back, they fanned out to smaller roads on either side to cover a wider area. Now one of the bikes is headed straight toward us.

  Chapter 6.

  We scramble off the road. We’ve got only seconds before we show up in the glare of the headlight–if we haven’t already. We make it maybe twenty feet before throwing ourselves into the rubble of a fallen home. Our landing kicks up dust; I pray it won’t be seen. I’m half on top of Echo, hidden behind the rubble, and the world is filled with two things: her wide blue eyes and the growing buzz of the approaching vehicle. Are we hidden? Just barely. A low, broken wall conceals us, yet something might stick out. There’s no time to evaluate, no time to shift positions.

  The whine of the engine becomes intolerably loud. The bike is going slower than necessary, maybe because it’s dark and the roads aren’t what they used to be, or maybe because the rider is keeping an eye out for us. The headlight washes over our rubble, throwing long
shadows into the ruins. The rider pulls abreast of us, twenty feet away.

  Is he stopping? Oh Crom. We’re bones. But no. He’s passing–thank God.

  An image comes to me: I could stand and put a bolt through the back of the driver. But then we’d have the other bike to contend with, and I might miss the first. Better to stay hidden. Or is that just an excuse? Because I’m scared shitless and would give anything not to move.

  We lie still and listen for the second bike, but nothing comes as the first fades into silence. It’s as I thought: they’re on both sides of Big Road. And suddenly I’m very aware of Echo’s slim body pressed into the ground beneath me; the rise and fall of her chest, the delicate length of her collar bone, the hollow at the base of her neck. It’s unfamiliar, this closeness with another person. Her body is so malleable, so right.

  “Tristan ...” she says.

  “The other bike ...” I mutter.

  Her lips are marvelous. I’m smothered in sudden desire. My eyes capture every detail of her darkened face, the smoothness of her skin, the way her hair falls–because things like this don’t happen to me, and I want to remember. I want to keep the moment as a kind of secret. I’ll lock it away where I bury my feelings, and take it out in quiet moments. Now that I have this memory, it can never be taken away.

  “I think it’s safe,” she says.

  Then I remember Ballard on top of her–Ballard, one of Rodrick’s Raiders–and she’s just a half-starved wretch lying in the dirt of a ruined neighborhood. Angrily I push myself up. What was I thinking? The bikes are nowhere in sight.

  “We should go,” I say.

  We continue to New Sea. The moon is out, reflecting beautifully off the slowly shifting current, off the bits of ruins still jutting from the ocean. Echo is silent as I desalinate our water. We drink greedily, gratefully.

  “What if the other bike’s still ahead?” I ask.

  “Pretty sure I heard it in the distance,” she says. “I think they both passed. Makes sense, anyway. The army will want them back soon. They’ve got bigger worries than us.”