by Oliver Higgs
“Tracks,” Starbucks says, pointing. They’re from the sled. They lead up the further rise. We head down the first slope, stopping to examine the Grass Man. His head is gone. Taken as a trophy? His weapons are gone too.
I’m still looking at the body, just starting to step away, when there’s a crunch of boots atop the western slope. My head whips up–three men are coming over the top, startled, one raising a long-barreled weapon. A loud crack reverberates through the forest. There’s movement beside me. It happens that fast.
Has he shot me? I’m unsure a moment. Perhaps I’m already dead and have yet to realize it. But no, I don’t think I was hit. I’m frozen by the noise, by the suddenness of it.
“Drop the weapon,” one of the three says.
The laser rifle is still in my hands. I set it down.
“I think we’d better–” I start to say, turning to Starbucks. But Starbucks is on the ground. Starbucks has fallen backwards over the Grass Man. Starbucks has been shot in the head.
The shock of that moment rips a hole in time. I know instantly that he’s dead, but the abruptness of the change is too much to grasp. He was here. Right here. Now he’s not. A single moment, a cutoff point; life on one side, death on the other. It’s unreal, something to puzzle over, a joke in poor taste. Can this be? Did this just happen?
I’m leaning over him. His malleable expression has gone slack. There’s a hole above his right eye. It’s still smoking. The three men have come down the hill. They might as well have teleported. They’re saying things that don’t make sense. Everything is muted. I’m only dimly aware of them. One grips my upper arm. It’s like the touch trips an alarm in my brain, and then I’m screaming.
Chapter 18.
The next thing I know, I’m looking up from a cot beneath a green tent, and Echo is sitting beside me. Her eyes are bloodshot, but they widen when I catch them. She says my name and suddenly her hands are on my face, she’s kissing my cheeks, my eyes, my forehead. My hands are in her hair. And it’s only now, as she pauses to hover over me, eyes clamped on mine, that I know how much I’ve missed her. We were so bent on pursuing the Grass Man that I submerged everything else. Echo was always on my mind, but forced to the background to keep the emotional noise down. Now the feelings are free to come to the surface, and I’m embroiled in a tide of powerful longing.
An equally terrible grief rises alongside it. Starbucks was a step away, struck like lightning from a clear sky. I can’t suppress the rising sadness. I’m weeping, and she sits there gazing at me, her hand running lightly down my face, and I can’t stop or look away. I’m hypnotized. I’m glad too, because she’s here, willing to accept the pain and pleasure, to share it.
“I knew you’d come for me,” she says after a time.
“Starbucks–”
“I know, Tristan. I know.”
“Why’d they shoot him? Who are these people?” I ask
“Soldiers from Last Bastion. They’re at war with Cyberia. They shoot robots on sight.”
“But Starbucks wasn’t–”
“They don’t care, Tristan. He wasn’t human. That’s all that matters to them.”
I look around the tent. There are a few other cots, all empty. No one else is inside. The back of my head hurts. Oh yeah–someone hit me. I wouldn’t stop screaming, so they knocked me out.
“Where are the others? Where’s Jarvis and Octavia?” I ask.
Echo’s expression hardens.
“The Grass Man sold them, Tristan. Milly and Jareth too. I was the only one left.”
I close my eyes. Disaster. This is a disaster. But at least Echo is here.
“Who were they sold to?” I ask.
“I don’t know. An armored car came over a broken road out of the west. The Grass Man was expecting them. I only saw one robot get out. I don’t know if anyone else was inside. I don’t know where they were going …”
Her voice is shaky, on the verge of breaking.
“Octavia cried all the time for her brother. When the Grass Man came, when he realized Ambrose wasn’t–useful–he left him behind. But Ambrose ran after us. The Grass Man just burned him down, Tristan. It was terrible … And Jarvis–Jarvis was the bravest. He tried to keep our spirits up. He was sure Starbucks would come after us. Mudcross was bad, but at least we were all still together. When the others were taken, I thought I would die. I never felt so alone. The Grass Man never talked to us, never told us anything, but I overheard him when he sold the others. He was saving me for someone further north, some kind of collector. I was so scared, Tristan.”
We let that sit for a time, reflecting. I curse at Last Bastion.
“Why’d they have to shoot Starbucks? He was on our side. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“I know, I know. It’s the way they think, Tristan. Listen, I need to tell you something else. They’ve got–”
“Awake?” a man interrupts, coming through the tent-flap. “Good. You’re to come with me.”
“Where?” I ask.
“The Commander wants to see you.”
“I’m coming too,” Echo says.
“He didn’t ask for you. You wait here,” the soldier insists.
“Did I trade one slaver for another? I’m not a captive here, am I? If the Commander doesn’t want me with Tristan, fine, I’ll wait outside his tent. Not here,” Echo says.
There’s a ferocity to her I’ve rarely seen. The soldier looks her up and down a moment, then grunts and motions for us to follow.
It’s dark outside. I must’ve been out only an hour or so. We’re at an encampment in the forest. Men are assembled in small groups around three fires, talking, lounging, eating. There are about twenty in sight, probably others in the tents and still others keeping watch. Throwing back a devilish orange reflection on a spike near the fire is the Grass Man’s missing head. The skull-mask is still affixed, though a chunk is missing. The black eyes leer at us from the grave. Maybe it’s a petty gesture, but I spit as we pass.
The Commander’s tent looks much like the others, only there are two men standing guard outside. Echo is made to stop at the flap while I follow the soldier inside. The Commander is sitting at a table. My immediate impression: an impressive white beard, blue eyes, strength, an aura of authority. He gives me an appraising look as I’m led to a chair opposite him.
“Commander Boris Bellring, Special Operations, Fourth Battalion, of the Last Bastion of Mankind. And you are?” he asks. His voice is deep and slow.
“Tristan,” I say.
“Tristan. Very well. What were you doing in the company of a machine, Tristan?”
“You mean the robot your men murdered?” I ask, feeling a flush of anger.
“You can’t murder what was never alive, boy.”
“He wasn’t a threat to you. You had no reason to kill him,” I say.
“It had a laser rifle. And we have every reason to put down every walking machine between here and Laska. Now answer the question.”
“We were after the Grass Man,” I say.
“The what?”
“The robot you killed–I mean, the other robot, the one whose head is on a spike out there. He abducted our friends. We were trying to get them back.”
“Is that so,” he says. For some reason, he sounds doubtful.
“Yes,” I say emphatically. He looks at the soldier behind me, then back at me.
“Start from the beginning,” he says.
So I do. I tell him how we boarded the caravan, but then I have to go backwards to how we met Starbucks and Jarvis in the ruins. I talk of Byron’s betrayal and the zombies at Mudcross. He shares more looks with the soldier. Doubt brews among them. When I’m done, he sighs and says, “Bring the other one in.” I assume he means Echo.
I’m wrong.
“You!” Byron yells when he sees me, his eyes going wide, and he lunges. The soldier has to wrestle him back. He’s yelling things about betrayal and trickery. I’m so startled by both his presence and the rig
hteous anger he’s busily affecting that I can’t properly react. I’m just staring at him slack-jawed.
“We have a dilemma,” the Commander says, his voice grave.
Byron was picked up by Last Bastion scouts on a small boat somewhere north of where we left him. He must’ve told the scouts something about the caravan being ambushed and the Grass Man going north. Maybe he wasn’t expecting the men to radio back to a larger encampment and bring him along. Byron had to know that if the soldiers freed anyone from the old caravan, he’d be identified as the betrayer. By now he’s pumped them full of his version of the story, which, I’m both astonished and outraged to discover, holds that I betrayed the caravan.
When I grasp what he’s saying, I rise from my chair, hurling curses at him, and he falls back convincingly as though frightened. All his reactions are calculated to put me in a bad light. But nobody could possibly believe him–could they? The soldier behind me pushes me back down.
“Just ask Echo!” I shout, looking at Bellring.
“Oh, right, ask her! You turned them all against me, you and your tricks and your empty words, you son-of-a-bitch,” Byron yells. “You made them think I was you, even as I was caged and dragged away–and where were you and your robot friend during the ambush? Out in the woods, waiting for them to take us! Go ahead, deny it.”
I’m aghast. The temerity of his lies is simply beyond me. Rage chokes me. I’m lunging for him before I know it, wrapping my hands around his neck, and the soldier has to put an immobilizing headlock on me from behind.
“Enough of this,” the Commander declares. There’s no denying the authority in his voice. He’s on his feet, glaring at us.
“I take it you deny the charges?” he asks, looking at me.
“Me? It was him, don’t you see?”
“I’ll take that as a yes. But you were in the presence of a machine when we found you, which in Last Bastion territory is a crime in itself, and that puts you in a very questionable light.”
“Starbucks was on our side,” I sputter.
“There are no machines on ‘our’ side, boy. And these robots are as dead as any of the plague-walkers, only smarter. In the south you may have things confused, but here we know who the real enemy is. In any case, one of you is a very convincing liar, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with convincing liars. While I waste breath on you, there’s a war going on, and I have a mission to attend to. So. I’m going to let the courts deal with you. If you’re lucky, they’ll only hang one of you.”
He nods to the soldier and waves us toward the flap.
“What courts? What’s happening?” I ask.
“The courts of Last Bastion. Do you know of any others? I’m already losing two men to escort your female friend. Now they can escort you too.”
What does he mean by that–he’s sending Echo to Last Bastion? I’ve heard the city-state mentioned a time or two in Farmington, but I know nothing of it. I want to protest, but I don’t know what to say, and two more soldiers are already bringing us outside. In keeping with his role, Byron spits at me. It sends me into another rage, and they have to drag us to separate quarters.
Later I’m in a tent with Echo, under guard. They weren’t going to let her in, but she threw a fit with such ferocious determination that the guard grew tired of her, backhanded her once and shoved her inside, whereupon Echo took a deep breath, fixed a strand of hair and sat calmly beside me as though she’d just won an argument.
My rage has dipped toward depression. I can’t believe we’re here–Starbucks dead, Jarvis and Octavia missing. First the robots want to capture us, then the humans. The goddamn zombies have been our best allies yet.
Echo’s presence is soothing, however. We’re in this together now. It’s us against the world again, as it was in the desert. She still has her necklace, and she fingers the heart-shaped jewel absently in the tent.
“Why did you keep that?” I ask.
“My necklace? I kept all the things you gave me. They were like treasures from another world. This is all I have left.”
I nod and leave it at that. Then I remember something.
“Did you know they were planning to send you to Last Bastion?”
Echo glances at me and probes her cheek with her tongue.
“Commander Bellring implied able-bodied young women are in high demand in Last Bastion … They need babies,” she adds when I continue to stare at her. “They’ve lost a lot of people in the fighting with Cyberia, he says, and a sickness left many of their women infertile. If they don’t find more soon, in a generation or two they’re not going to have enough people to hold down the city.”
I let that sit a moment. I’m almost afraid to ask what she thinks of that possibility. I’m sure she wouldn’t want to be forced into anything–but strong walls, steady food, a sense of community? It could be better than starving in the wild, evading hostile robots and roamers.
“Cyberia. That’s the same place the Doctor warned us about,” I muse. “He said it was run by one of his brothers. One of the Seven. So Last Bastion is at war with them? Still, Starbucks was on our side. Killing all robots indiscriminately can’t be the answer. Foundry, Cove, Last Bastion–I have yet to hear of a single city-state I’d actually want to live in.”
“Haven will be different,” Echo says, though she casts her eyes downward, and I can hear the hope stretched thin in her voice.
“Yeah. Different,” I say, lying on the lone cot they’ve left in the tent. Echo squeezes in next to me, and things feel a little closer to right, even here. We create our own kind of psychological bubble, shielding us from the outside world. Her breath tickles my neck, her frame moves against me.
“I missed you,” I admit.
“Tristan, I … I don’t want to be apart again. Just stay with me, wherever we go,” she says, and despite all that’s happened, it’s gratitude that fills me most as I drift off to sleep.
A soldier’s boot to the cot wakes us in the morning. My arm is numb, my brain slow, and it takes me a few seconds to get my bearings. When I do, there’s an awareness of all we’ll have to face today, and it brings a profound disappointment–this life again? Echo moans concordantly.
We’re on the road before we know it. Two men are sent to guide and guard us–Sampson and Barabas. They’re both wearing camouflage. Each carries a rifle and has a plasbrid pistol holstered on their hip. There’s no pretending Echo is free now. The three of us are tied in a line by our wrists: myself, Echo, and Byron. Barabas leads us while Sampson brings up the rear. Our packs, along with rations for the trip, are on a small cart pulled by Barabas. Volume Seven is still in there. It’s been so long since Toyota gave it to me. How thrilled I was in that moment. We’re supposed to get the packs back after we’re judged in Last Bastion–unless we’re hanged, of course.
As we head north into the wilderness, I can’t help but think of Starbucks lying dead in the forest. Are they just going to leave him there until the earth covers him? Probably. He deserves better. Someone should pay for his death, but who? The soldier who shot him? What about all the others who would’ve done the same? It was the Last Bastion mentality that killed him more than anything.
What will I tell Jarvis?
Who am I kidding? We’ll never see Jarvis or Octavia or any of the others again. The tides of fate have swept them away, drowning Starbucks in the process.
Once again, our path leads north. We stick to the wilderness, keeping off the roads, as these parts are travelled mostly by sentient robots. At one point we cross a stone bridge leading northwest over a bend in the river. A road runs west from the bridge, and a stone tower sticks into the air from a small town in the distance. Echo asks what it is.
“Pillar,” Barabas says.
I glance back into wide blue eyes. She mouths the name to me. For a moment I can’t think of where I’ve heard it. Then it comes to me. The Doctor, speaking of Haven: an enclave north of the z-line, west of Pillar. My heart pounds a little
faster. We head north again, however, leaving Pillar far behind us. Echo looks wistfully west, as if to catch a glimpse of the sanctuary from her dreams.
Sampson, we discover, is big and strong but simple-minded. Barabas is more on edge and orders the simpler man around. I almost forget Sampson’s name at one point because all we ever hear him called is “Dumbshit.”
Last Bastion is a week away, which gives us a little time to maneuver. At night, we’re bound securely to a tree. I have no idea how we might escape, but I do know all three of us have no intention of reaching the city-state.
On the second day, Echo starts manipulating the situation. Her tactic is unsurprising really, because it’s the same brutally simple genetic appeal she’s been forced to survive on since being orphaned at Farmington–though I’ve never seen her use it this deliberately. It starts when we reach a small stream. We’re untied temporarily to fill canteens and wash up. Echo takes off her boots and rolls up her sleeves and relishes in the water. She splashes it on her face, washes her arms and hair. She throws back her head and runs a hand down her face and neck, pulling at her collar as the water drips down her skin. Wet streaks appear on her shirt. The fabric clings to her skin. It’s impossible not to realize that she’s the only female in the group. She comments in an offhand way how she’d just die to stay there and bathe in the stream all day. All four of us are staring at her, probably picturing the same thing.
The next part I don’t actually see. She has to use the bathroom, and Sampson unties her and escorts her into the forest while we wait. When they come back, she’s leaning heavily on the big man’s shoulder, limping. What I notice most is the careful way in which he supports her.
“I stepped on a rock,” she says, wincing.
“Why were your boots off?” Barabas asks, scowling.
“In Farmington, I never wore shoes. You can drag me to Last Bastion. You can’t tell me how to live,” she says, then turns sweetly to Sampson and thanks him in a private voice for all his help, holding out her wrists docilely to be tied back into line. I’ve never seen her act this feminine, and it’s intimidating in a way. She’s better at charming people than I realized.
