The Fires of Yesterday (The Silent Earth, Book 3)

by Mark R. Healy

  During the long walk here I had detected not a hint of activity around the spire, but now, closing in, I thought I could hear the barest suggestion of voices in the distance. Searching around in the gloom, I found a half-buried sedan tucked away in a hollow and climbed in through the broken windshield, nestling down behind the dashboard where I could observe the spire discreetly.

  Shifting mounds of sand away from the seat, I got down low and produced the binoculars once again. Up the slope, the spire had returned to its default state, completely dark, dimly outlined against the roiling sky.

  I glanced to the west. Night was descending. Perhaps this was the best place to hole up until morning, when I could decide how I was going to approach the spire.

  What if the Marauders were up there, hiding quietly in the darkness, waiting for intruders to bumble into their midst? There would be no way to detect them in this light.

  That was when it occurred to me – the solution was to wait until the spire activated again. The entire area would appear like daylight when that happened, making my job of discovering any possible traps so much easier.

  I heard something again, and this time I was more certain that I wasn’t imagining it. It sounded like muffled laughter, and there was a low boom, like the sound of an object tapping on hollow metal. I sat very still and listened intently, trying to pick up some kind of hint as to its nature. It had definitely originated from up the slope. Whether it was simply noises from the inner workings of the spire, twisted and altered by distance, I couldn’t be sure.

  I heard something else, subtler and yet somehow more defined, a soft crunching and sliding sound like the wind blowing lightly across the sand. But right now, there was no wind, not even the faintest whiff. It was dead still.

  A sense of dread began to assail me.

  Then I understood. The noise was not coming from the direction of the spire. It was coming from much closer.

  Footsteps.

  I swivelled my head left and right, peering out into the murk to try to pinpoint the location. I considered climbing out of the wreck and heading back the way I had come, away from the spire, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. If I could hear them, they would most certainly hear me as I climbed out and tried to flee.

  My hiding place now seemed more like a deathtrap than the safe refuge it had initially appeared.

  Disconcertingly, I felt the earth move under me. My body seemed to lift and then sway backward ever so slightly. Alarmed, I feared that there was an assailant coming up right under my feet, somehow digging through the sand like a great carnivorous worm intent on devouring me. I gripped the crumbling plastic of the dash and prepared to vault out to safety, then heard the barest of scrapes, of something hard sliding across metal. I looked up.

  Something was climbing on the roof of the car.

  I stifled a panicked scream, clamping a hand over my mouth and sitting there frozen, bug-eyed as I prepared for whatever it was to make its move. My other hand drifted down and touched the stock of the shotgun that was wedged in the backpack between my legs. My fingers closed around it and I drew it upward with agonising care, as if it were a taipan that would turn and strike me on the wrist with the slightest provocation. I knew that even the barest noise right now might mean death.

  I lifted the weapon, pushing myself back into the seat as far as I could go. I levelled the barrel at the open windshield and sat there, frozen, not really knowing from which direction the threat would come. I wondered if perhaps it would simply punch down through the weakened metal of the roof and carve me in two before I even got a chance to sight it.

  Then the weight of it shifted and the car began to rock forward again. Something thick and round appeared over the hood of the car, and for a moment I thought it was a great grotesque head peering back into the cabin at me with hollow and soulless eyes. I realised after a moment that it was just a large boot. It pressed down on the hood and the wreck shifted slightly again, and then the thing had passed over me, placing all its weight on the front of the car. It wavered there for a few moments longer, a dark shape that blotted out most of my view, and then stepped off lightly and began climbing forward up the slope.

  It was a clank, a very large and bulky one at that, but I could see no other visible details from this vantage point. Looking to the left, I saw the outline of another one just like it creeping through the sand not far away. To the right, the same.

  The feeling of terror I’d experienced began to wane, but I did not lower the shotgun.

  I could not make out any further shapes out there, but it seemed evident that a line of clanks was stealthily ascending toward the spire.

  Something big was about to go down.

  5

  As the figures continued their slow progress up the slope, I considered leaving my hiding place and getting the hell out of there altogether. If a large-scale showdown was imminent, I didn’t really want to be anywhere nearby. At this point I wasn’t even sure who was involved. Most likely it was Marauders or Ascension, or possibly both, but I wasn’t savvy to the workings of this environment anymore. I’d spent years tucked away in the city, with no way to keep abreast of the power shifts or the new factions that may have recently arisen.

  All I knew was that I wasn’t affiliated with any of them, and that meant I didn’t have a group with which I could side, apart from maybe Ascension – and they were unlikely to look kindly upon me if I stumbled across their path during a battle.

  The problem was that I had no idea of what else might be lurking out there in the gloom. Was this the first wave of invaders? Were there more closing in from behind me right now? Or were they sitting back there with rifle scopes at the ready, waiting for me to stick my head up like some clueless imbecile?

  I decided it wasn’t safe to leave just yet. If luck was on my side, perhaps there would be no conflict at all. For all I knew there was no one guarding the spire. These intruders might reach the top of the hill to find the area empty, taking the spire without a fight, in which case I would be able to sneak off without them ever realising I was here.

  The shadowy forms continued upward, drawing ever closer to their target. I continued to scan my immediate vicinity, but there was no sign of anyone following. The quiet whisper of boots on sand had receded, and as the sky darkened further I was left with a kind of sensory deprivation, with no sight or sound to break up the nothingness around me.

  It wouldn’t be long before I’d be forced to take action, one way or another. If I didn’t hear anything soon–

  Suddenly the spire flared into life, a dazzling, breathtaking column of pearlescence wiping away the darkness and stabbing needles of agony into my artificial retinas. There were cries from those on the slope, and then harsh laughter from near the spire, and I heard a voice ring out across the wasteland.

  “Light ’em up, boys!”

  Gunshots crackled from several locations around the spire, and I forced my eyes open through the blinding pain, desperate to keep track of what was happening. Those who had been crawling up the slope were rolling and diving despairingly, caught unawares and unprotected with their cloak of darkness suddenly snatched away. I squinted through the binoculars and saw that they were clad in grey uniforms, which most likely meant that they were part of Ascension.

  It was difficult to make out the details of their adversaries, obscured by the halo of the spire as they were, but I thought I could discern the markings of the Marauders on their faces. There were four that I could see, crouching behind weapons crates and sandbags and other makeshift barricades.

  Of the advancing party I could see six, but they were at a distinct disadvantage out in the open. As I watched, a tall and skinny male with a large backpack was struck down. He tumbled back along the slope, rolling several times before coming to a standstill, face down.

  The other Ascension soldiers gathered their wits and found what cover they could, unleashing return fire with their assault rifles and causing the Marauders to duck
for cover. Commands were shouted, and they began to fan out further, keeping low in an attempt to flank their opponents. The Marauders responded, sending two of their number further to one side and laying down a blanket of suppressing fire.

  Two more of the Ascension soldiers were hit and went down, and one of the Marauders also took a round in the face and fell to the ground without a word.

  I scanned my immediate vicinity again. I still couldn’t be sure about who or what was lurking nearby. The urge to get moving, to get away from this conflict was very strong, but the danger was still too great. I couldn’t risk heading out into the open yet.

  More combatants had fallen while I’d been looking away. I could now only see two Marauders left and one from Ascension hidden behind a small outcropping of rock. They took shots at each other, and I saw dust kicking up around the soldier as rounds impacted nearby. He was hit in the shoulder and cried out, hunching down further, but it was clear that his large frame could not be entirely concealed behind the rock. He was hit twice more, bellowing with rage and frustration.

  The Marauders didn’t let up. With the soldier pinned down, their barrage intensified.

  Unexpectedly, the soldier sprang out of his meagre cover, hobbling noticeably as he attempted to run toward the spire, valiantly taking the attack to the Marauders despite his condition. He squeezed off bursts from his rifle as he closed in. The Marauders peppered him with rounds, causing his body to convulse and shake with the impacts. His rifle swung upwards and then fell from his grasp altogether, and bits of flesh from his torso and arms flew off in all directions as bullets tore through him.

  He crashed to his knees, heaving, and pulled something from his belt. As he fell to the earth he lobbed the object into the air, a black ball about the size of a fist, and the Marauders abruptly ceased firing, crying out in alarm. The ball drifted through the air as if in slow motion, tumbling and glinting in the light of the spire, and then it exploded above them with a deafening boom that was loud enough to shake the air itself. Shrapnel flew out in all directions, even reaching far down the slope to where I sat in the wreck. The sound of metal punching through the rusted chassis was like a sudden burst of hail, and I cringed back into the seat, ducking my head. When the reverberations cleared I slowly lifted my face, noting a black metal spike quivering in the dashboard in front of my nose.

  Up by the spire, everything had gone quiet.

  I waited there for minutes on end, anticipating that one of the combatants would pull itself up from its prone position in the soil and claim victory, for someone hiding out in the surrounds to come forth and pick over the detritus, but there was nothing. No sound, no movement. After the frenetic firefight, the stillness seemed unnatural. It almost seemed too quiet. And yet, from what I could tell, it seemed that I was the only one left.

  I wouldn’t have a better chance to access the spire than this.

  I crept out of the wreck slowly, shotgun at the ready. I checked the terrain behind me first, where the expanse of sand and weeds had been made white by the glare of the spire. The only thing moving out beyond my position was my own elongated shadow. If there really was someone else out there, they were too well concealed for me to find.

  Starting up the slope, I strained with both eyes and ears to detect any sign of a threat. Starting with the bodies on the slope, I checked each in turn to determine if they really were dead. Each of them had sustained extensive injuries – holes in chests, parts of faces blown off, fragments of innards blown across the sand. On the whole it was a gruesome task, but I had to be sure that they weren’t faking it.

  Further along, the Marauders were in even worse shape thanks to the shrapnel grenade. They’d been torn apart. Strangely, even though the explosion had occurred relatively close to the Grid spire, its metal facade was unmarked. None of the spikes had been able to penetrate or even embed themselves in its walls. They had all simply bounced off, and now lay strewn across the ground, bent and broken.

  I didn’t waste time looking any further. Backup for either faction could arrive at any minute, and I didn’t want to be around when that happened.

  I stepped over a shattered flip that was lying on the ground. Most likely the Marauders had been using it to tap into the Grid as they attempted to manipulate it over a wireless connection. There was also an exposed access panel nearby in the wall of the spire that they had been using to power it up. Further around I found the service entrance, having memorised its location on the schematics back at M-Corp. I needn’t have bothered, because the area was clearly marked by a series of scorch marks that blackened the alloy of the spire. It was evident that the Marauders possessed some knowledge of the entrance but had been unable to breach it.

  Levering open a small panel nearby, I inserted the data shard and activated the subroutine, which in turn bypassed the encryption. A curved triangular wedge of the exterior parted and a series of lights flicked on, illuminating the dark innards of the spire.

  Stepping through, I followed a short and narrow corridor through swirling dust, ending in a space barely larger than a closet. The tiny room contained some of the oldest-looking tech I’d ever seen. The server implanted in the wall was overly large and grey, and from its rear, black and blue cables snaked out of it in all directions, embedding in the wall behind it. It was dusty and dented, and I could hear a fan whirring away noisily somewhere inside, which led me to believe that it might not even be comprised of solid state components.

  “It’s a goddamn clunker,” I said to myself, flabbergasted.

  I had no doubt that, above me, in the central processing element of the spire, the components would be far newer and more impressive. This service port, however, was completely anachronistic, and I was surprised that it was even still ticking along.

  “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got,” I said, wiping away a film of dirt from the display panel and tapping upon its surface to bring up the access portal. Once again I was greeted by an encryption layer, but the shard was able to generate a key that allowed me to proceed through to the command line itself. Placing the shard back into my pocket, I got to work.

  I recalled the commands I had learned at M-Corp and considered them carefully, not wanting to enter them in the wrong order and thereby foul up the entire process.

  I entered the first command at the blinking green cursor:

  Prefix-list suppress seq 10

  I waited afterward for some kind of response from the system, an acknowledgement that the command was accepted, but it simply took the command without feedback of any kind. I ploughed on, hoping that it would alert me should I make some kind of mistake in the syntax or enter the commands out of order.

  I typed in the second command and waited again. Nothing. Then the third.

  I scratched my chin. “Well, I sure hope you–”

  I froze. Something nudged against my neck just below the ear.

  “Well, aren’t you the clever one?” someone said behind me.

  6

  She reached out and carefully hooked her fingers under the strap of my backpack, easing it over my shoulder and off my back.

  “Don’t even think of reaching for the shotgun,” she said.

  “Look, I’m not here to–”

  “Shut up,” she said in a measured tone of voice. “I don’t have time to listen to you bleat.”

  She took the backpack and placed it down on the floor, out of my reach.

  “Get down,” she said. I complied, sinking slowly to my knees. I started to turn my face, but she shoved the gun harder at my neck before I could catch a glimpse of her. “Don’t turn around. Hurry up, get down. All the way down.”

  I sank to my knees and she placed a boot between my shoulder blades, shoving me roughly onto the floor.

  “Put your hands behind your back. Come on, hurry up.” Her boot was on my back again, pushing me down firmly into the floor. I considered flipping over and attempting to knock the weapon out of her hand, but with so little room to move, all
I was likely to do was end up with a bullet in my back. For now, I didn’t see a way to turn the tables on her.

  She secured something around my wrists, tight enough to bite into my skin painfully. I winced and tried to turn my head again to look at her.

  “Take it easy, will you?” I said.

  She didn’t answer, instead hooking the toe of her boot under my ribs and turning me over onto my side. Our eyes met, and, with some relief, I realised she wasn’t a Marauder. Her cheeks were unblemished. But she wasn’t wearing the uniform of an Ascension soldier either. Her pale camouflage jacket was devoid of buttons, hanging open to reveal a grey singlet and a thick leather belt, upon which were hooked a number of implements: pliers, a small pouch, a knife in a leather scabbard. In her right hand she held a silver handgun with a long barrel. Her face was thin and pale, framed by short, matted black hair in a bob cut that protruded from the dusty hood of her jacket. The letter ‘Q’ had been tattooed on her left temple.

  Her dark eyes examined me calmly as she looked me up and down. There was an intelligence about them, a keenness. Her gaze lingered on the scar on my face.

  “Aren’t you a mess?” she muttered absently.

  “You aren’t a Marauder,” I said.

  “Sharp one, huh?” She leaned across me and her eyes focussed on the display panel, flitting back and forth. Her brow furrowed. “What on earth were you up to?”

  “Listen, everything was like this when I got here, I have no–”

  Her boot lashed out and connected sharply with my ribs. I grimaced.

  “That’s enough of that. I’m not stupid.”

  She reached down and gripped my arm, unceremoniously hauling me up to my feet, keeping the gun pointed at me the whole time.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that, man. Right now, we just have to get out of here.”