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

by Mark R. Healy

  “Thought you’d shot through,” she said. She looked me up and down and then turned her face away again, resting her head on the beam underneath her chin.

  “I’m going. I just came back to get what’s mine.”

  “Take it. It’s not as if I can stop you.”

  I walked over closer to her, still wary. She seemed stuck fast, and her left forearm was bent at an awkward angle under a thick chunk of concrete. Nearby, I thought I could see part of the backpack under more rubble. Her other arm was pinned as well, so I relaxed, knowing that she wasn’t going to swing a gun up in my face unexpectedly.

  I knelt by her. “Don’t try anything,” I warned. “You so much as look at me the wrong way and I’ll cave your face in with a brick.”

  “We’d be a matching pair then, huh?” She smiled weakly.

  “I mean it.”

  “Do I look like I’m about to pop out of here and roundhouse kick you in the face?” she said, her eyes regaining some of their fire. “You got me, okay? You won.”

  I stood again and began to lift smaller pieces of brick and concrete away from the pile, mindful not to tug at the wrong section and inadvertently bury myself under as well. In a matter of minutes I had freed enough space around the backpack to get a grip on it, and pulling delicately I was able to lift it free of the pile.

  The binoculars had been smashed and crumpled, and I tossed them away into the dirt. The other items seemed as though they might be all right. The compass was not there, and I remembered the female had placed it on her belt.

  “The shotgun,” I said to the woman, slinging the backpack over my shoulder. “Where is it?”

  “How the hell should I know? I dropped it somewhere. It’s lost.”

  “What about your handgun?”

  She tried to shrug but ended up wincing instead. “You tell me. It’s not as if I can look for it.”

  “Then I think we’re done here.” I glanced to the sky, then narrowed my eyes at her. “Hey, do you know about this poison in the sky? Where does it come from?”

  She didn’t raise her eyes from the dirt in front of her. “From the fires,” she said.

  “What fires? What are you talking about?”

  She offered no response.

  “All right. I’ll be seeing you.” Staring down at her, morose and defeated, I didn’t feel the kind of satisfaction I’d expected when our roles had been reversed. A day earlier, I’d have relished the thought of standing over her like this, back in control of my own destiny and with no one to stand in my way. Now she just seemed pathetic and sad, and that somehow thwarted my enjoyment of the moment.

  I turned away and began to step through the ruins again, and then I heard her voice, barely more than a whisper.

  “Was that really true? About Quattro?” The sincerity of her tone tugged at my sense of compassion, and I stopped. I turned back to her and she looked up at me, dispirited and sombre. “Am I… did they really make clanks out of junk?”

  I pressed my lips together and avoided eye contact. “No, it’s not true. I, uh… I made that up. To tell you the truth, I don’t know the first thing about Quattro Incorporated. I was just trying to get under your skin. Figured you might do something stupid.”

  “Well, looks like it worked.”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “So long, huh?”

  “How come you don’t know about the fires?” she said. I stopped again, and this time I met her eyes. “Where did you come from?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not telling you that, either. Goodbye.”

  “Cleanskin!” she called after me. “Don’t leave me here like this, man. Please.”

  I kept walking, threading my way through the ruins and trying to push her voice from my mind. Recollections came to me unbidden, of another clank in another ruined city many years ago who had suffered a similar fate, buried hopelessly and left without a chance of ever escaping. Max still weighed heavily on my thoughts at times. Even though he’d refused my help, I still wished there was something else I could have said or done to help him avert his fate.

  That was different. He was a friend.

  Was it, though? Did the woman deserve this end? Did anyone?

  I stopped, my hand resting on a cracked concrete wall, squeezing my eyes shut.

  Would her fate hang on my conscience for years to come, just like Max’s had? Or would I be able to shrug it away simply because I felt only disdain toward her?

  Her words came back to me, the comparison she’d made between me and the Marauders.

  You’re no better than they are.

  No. I wasn’t like a Marauder. I wasn’t like them at all.

  “Dammit.”

  I started back, stomping through the sand in frustration. I didn’t like either option available to me, in truth. Leaving her here was the easy and safe choice, but I knew the cruelty of it would haunt me for the rest of my days. On the other hand, hauling her out was dangerous. I didn’t know what she was capable of, or the extent of her injuries. She might try to overpower me again at the slightest chance.

  Unfortunately, the second option was likely the only one I could live with.

  “Information,” I snapped as I found the collapsed corridor again. The woman looked up at me, surprised. “You tell me what you know, and I’ll help you out of there.”

  She nodded emphatically. “Okay.”

  “But listen up,” I said, lowering my face to hers. “The moment I figure out you’re lying, leading me astray, or otherwise wasting my time, I walk. You got that?”

  “Yeah, that’s cool. No problem.”

  “I mean it.”

  “All right, man. What do you want to know?”

  “Where are the fires you’re talking about? How far away?”

  “Uh… maybe a day’s walk. North of here.”

  “And what are they?”

  “I don’t know. There’s dozens of them, maybe more. I don’t know how they started.”

  “Can they be extinguished? Is there a way I can put them out?”

  “What are you talking about, man? Why are you so worried about them? They’re not spreading anywhere.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No, you can’t put them out. Not one guy. No way. You’d need a whole damn army to do that. There’s too many.”

  This was not the answer I wanted to hear. Still, I had to see them for myself to be sure. I moved onto the next line of questioning.

  “Who do you work for? Where are you taking me?”

  “I was taking you to Ascension City.”

  “What?”

  “Ascension City, man,” she said quickly, as if she feared I was going to leave. “It’s the precinct they control. To the north.”

  “You’re not Ascension, though. Or are you?”

  “No, I’m not Ascension.” She winced and tried to adjust her position. “Goddamn this hurts.”

  “Talk.”

  “I’m a mercenary, okay? I’m not part of Ascension, but I do things for them.”

  “What things?”

  “Whatever I can. Whatever they need.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “How does any of this involve me?”

  “Listen, Ascension are not some sort of charity. They’re not in the business of babysitting homeless clanks. They’re fighting a war. If you want to live within their precinct, if you want their protection, you have to work for it. You have to make yourself useful.”

  I stood. “I told you not to bullshit me. This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Wait, man! I can explain it.”

  “Okay, explain to me how you’re benefiting from their protection by wandering around the wasteland.”

  “I’m out here because I have a debt to them, a very large debt that can’t be repaid by… scrubbing fuckin’ floors, or hauling supplies around.”

  “What debt?”

  She closed her eyes, disconsolate. “They have some
one of mine.”

  “What do you mean they have someone?”

  “Locked up. They have him locked up. His name is Lunn.”

  “Why? What did he do?”

  “It was bullshit. He withheld information about some clanks who were hiding out in the precinct, spreading anti-Ascension propaganda. He did nothing wrong. He just didn’t want to rat on other clanks.”

  “So why wasn’t he put on trial? Why does he need you to free him? This doesn’t sound like justice to me.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “In case you didn’t notice, this isn’t the old world anymore. There’s no judges or juries, no lawyers. No justice. Every person is judged by what they can do, or what they can provide. By being useful, or by obtaining useful things. That’s the only currency now. If you can’t pull your weight, you aren’t going to get anywhere.”

  “So how did you end up out here?”

  “I was assigned to an Ascension unit that was tasked with wiping out the Marauder presence around that spire. I’m not a soldier, I was there to provide support. It’s dangerous work, and only clanks desperate or foolish enough volunteer. Clanks who need the work. Someone like me.”

  “And what about me? What did you want me for?”

  “I was lying out in a ditch and saw you heading up to the spire. At first I thought you were a Marauder, but then when you got inside the spire… well, that changed everything. You’re someone with skills. Someone who knows some things about the old tech.”

  “I’m your prize.”

  “Yeah. I figured if I hauled someone as valuable as you in front of Cabre, he’d let Lunn go.”

  “Cabre. He’s the leader of Ascension, right?”

  “You got it.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Maybe this clank had something to offer me after all. If what she said about the fires was true, if I really had no chance of stopping them by myself, then I needed to fall back to my next option – seeking the help of Ascension. If she knew how to get me to Cabre, perhaps it would mean a faster resolution to the problems I was facing. As it was, I still had no idea how to reach him, and might waste days or weeks searching for the city. Meanwhile, food was running out for the children back home.

  “All right, now we’re getting somewhere,” I said. “Here’s the deal. I want you to take me to Cabre.”

  She looked at me sceptically. “You want me to take you to Ascension City?”

  “Yes, but not as your prisoner.” I began to extract pieces of the debris around her.

  “Hey man, wait up a second. If you drag me in there as your prisoner, they’re not going to look kindly upon me. That’s the kind of weakness they don’t tolerate. You might as well leave me here.”

  I stopped, placed a lump of cracked timber back in place. “Have it your own way.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Come on. Let’s work this out. It sounds like we both have something to gain here.”

  “Listen to me very carefully,” I said. “They can’t know about what I did back at the spire. You got that? No one can know about that.”

  “Really? They’d treat you like a goddamn prince if they knew. I bet they’d be dying to get their hands on someone with that kind of knowledge.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.” I removed the timber again. “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to haul you out of here and save your life. That’s what you get out of this deal. In return, you need to take me to Cabre as quickly as possible. If you even think of double-crossing me or telling them about my secret, I’m going to disavow all knowledge of it. I won’t admit a thing to them. I’ll also tell them that it was your fault the raid on the Grid spire went bad.”

  She sighed. “What? That’s not true.”

  “You know that, and I know that, but they don’t. So if you fuck with me, I’ll fuck with you. Got it?”

  She grimaced. “Yeah. I don’t like it, but yeah. Okay.”

  “So this is how it’s going to play out: I let you out of here, and you take me to those fires first. I want to see them up close.”

  “Again with the fires? They’re really not–”

  “Shut up. Second, you take me straight to Cabre, or someone who can get me to him in the shortest time possible. That’s all I need you to do.”

  “And what about my terms?”

  I slid a large block of brick and mortar away and it thumped onto the ground. “You don’t get to choose terms. You get your freedom from this deathtrap here. You get your life back. You’re getting more out of this than me as it is.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I dropped down low and slid my hand underneath her, remembering the knife she kept on her belt. I located it at her hip and extracted it carefully. Then, feeling around in the sand and along her body, I made sure she wasn’t concealing the handgun and keeping it at the ready for when I pulled her out.

  “Hey man, at least buy me dinner first,” she said. I turned to look at her quizzically, her face just centimetres from mine, and her dark eyes sparkled with some of that old mischievousness now that she had been spared from death. She even went so far as to smile at me sarcastically.

  “I just don’t want any surprises,” I said, withdrawing my hand and stowing the knife in my pocket. “And one other thing. If you can’t walk, or if you’ve busted something and you can’t run, I’m going to leave you behind. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is. I’m in a hurry and I don’t have time to carry an injured clank across a hundred clicks of desert.”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  With much of the debris clear, I gripped her good arm and helped her to ease out from underneath the pile. She cried out three or four times as her weight shifted, but I showed no pity, making sure that I avoided any position where she might find a way to overpower me. After a great deal of struggle she was freed, and she collapsed on the dirt, exhausted and gasping in pain.

  “Thank you,” she said looking up at me, cradling her broken arm on her chest. “I mean that.”

  Underneath where she had been lying I found the compass. Its glass face was cracked, but thankfully it was still in working condition. I stowed it in my pocket.

  “Can you walk?” I said.

  She grimaced, struggling up onto her elbow bravely. “You just try keeping up with me.”

  9

  “Keep heading north-east, man,” the woman said.

  I stopped and looked behind as she limped along, trying to keep up. Her pace was far too slow for my liking, and I’d already considered leaving her behind a number of times. Her purpose here was to expedite my arrival at Ascension City, not to delay it. Despite her knowledge of the city’s location and those within it, I decided I might well be better suited by just leaving her behind and forging on by myself.

  “You going to make it?” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said crossly, gritting her teeth and temporarily increasing her speed. The extra effort accentuated her limp, making her sway heavily from side to side, and she grunted in discomfort. “I told you I’d be okay.”

  “You don’t look okay.” I ran my finger along the knife I was keeping at the ready as she neared, prepared should she decide to try to overpower me. She’d wrapped her broken left arm in her singlet, exposing her pale midriff. The muscles there bunched and twisted as she pushed herself past me.

  She glared at me. “Hey, have you ever been hit by a three-tonne meat tenderiser?” she said.

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “Well, until you have, you can’t possibly understand how much this hurts. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s been ripped apart and then reinserted in the wrong place, and I think my ankle is busted. This is hard work.”

  I got started again, easily overtaking her. “I can appreciate that, but it doesn’t really change anything. I have to keep moving. I don’t have time to keep waiting for you.”

  “There’s a little bridge, should be only a coupl
e of hours’ walk away. Once we cross that, it won’t be much longer. We’ll reach Ascension City tomorrow.”

  “Good enough.”

  “Glad to see you happy,” she said, sarcastic.

  “I’ll be happy once we’ve reached Cabre, not before.”

  “And what are you going to do then? Do you think he’s just going to welcome you into his arms like some long-lost son?”

  “I’m going to talk, and I hope he’ll listen.”

  “I told you, man, unless you’ve got something to offer him, you can forget about it.” She winced as she tightened the singlet over her broken arm, drawing it in closer to her body. “If you tell him about the spire, he’ll listen, and he might be thankful to me for finding you as well. We both win.”

  “No. I don’t want to tell him about that.”

  “Then he won’t listen to you,” she said flatly.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Oh really? Why is he going to listen? Because you’re so important?”

  “I’m not important.”

  She laughed to herself. “Is it because you’re a cleanskin? Are you going to tell me about that, now?”

  “Nope.”

  “C’mon, man. You’ve got me over a barrel here. You’re pulling the strings. Do you really need to keep all of these secrets?”

  “Yeah, I do.” I gestured at her with the knife. “You seem to like talking. Let’s hear more of your story.”

  “Me?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “What the hell do you care about me for?”

  “I want to know about this Lunn guy for a start. What’s the deal with him?”

  “Lunn? Uh, he’s been my companion for a long time, I guess. We went through some nasty shit together.”

  “Like what?”

  “Okay, we don’t have much else to do, so what the hell. I’ll tell you the story. Lunn and me hooked up in the early days of the Winter. Back when the last humans were dying off and things just… fell apart. There was a complete breakdown in everything we’d come to rely on. No one really knew what to do.” She glanced at me. “You were there. You must have been through it yourself.”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “So for a few years we wandered together in the darkness and tried to find some place where we could be happy. Safe. In those early days up in the north here there was only pockets of clanks banding together. There wasn’t a community, really. And then the Marauders came together, and that ruined any damn chance of security. Everyone was on the run, living in fear.”