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

by Mark R. Healy

  “Need a ride?” Malyn said.

  25

  “How the hell did you find me?”

  Malyn shrugged casually. “There’s a pinger inside that flip. I tracked you down with this.” She pointed to a scanner that she had attached to the front of the vehicle. When I made no response, she raised her eyebrows. “I’m not as dumb as I look, y’know.”

  “I know you’re not dumb.”

  “Good, then we’re making progress.” She looked behind her along the street. “Listen, man, I’d love to make chit-chat with you for a few hours, but I really think it’s time we got out of here.”

  She patted the quad-cycle’s seat invitingly and I strode forward, swinging up behind her and threading my hands around her waist.

  “Do it,” I said.

  “Hang on.”

  She pulled on the throttle and the quad surged forward. It was an ungainly contraption, built low to the ground with its four thick wheels splayed out in an elongated ‘X’ shape. Thick blue coilovers provided suspension on each wheel, creating such a cushion that the vehicle almost floated above the ground despite the many bumps and dips in our way.

  “Where did you get this thing?” I shouted in Malyn’s ear as we streamed down the road. Her hair flapped in the wind and ruffled against my face, a not entirely unpleasant sensation.

  She turned her face to reply, her cheek brushing against my nose, such was our closeness. It felt smooth and cool and soft.

  “They assigned me to a salvage crew, cleaning up the garbage outside the city,” she explained. “Found a lot of wrecks, but there were a few diamonds there as well. This one was in perfect working condition. I told the soldiers I was going to drive it back to the warehouse, but decided to keep it instead. You like?”

  “I like anything that gets me away from Cabre right now,” I said.

  “Then I guess it fits the bill.”

  We were nearing the edge of the city and I thought again of the checkpoints that stood in our way. How many soldiers were still there? How would we get through? Surely their numbers would not be as great as they had been prior to the Marauder invasion. There were too many losses for them to maintain the same presence, and now with the insurgent uprising they would be spread even more thinly.

  “What’s your plan for getting out of here?” I said as Malyn turned us into the next corner.

  “Ride like hell,” she said simply.

  “Have you seen what’s going on at the checkpoints? How many soldiers are there?”

  “Enough to give us a headache.”

  I leaned forward further to make myself clearly heard. “Malyn, you don’t have to do this–”

  “Shut up, Cleanskin,” she said without turning around. “Shut up, and hang on.”

  We rounded the final curve and the checkpoint at the edge of the city came into view. Although the area had been hit heavily by the Marauders, the Ascension soldiers had done a decent job of re-establishing the perimeter, erecting a makeshift blockade in the area that had been breached during the conflict.

  I could see three soldiers within the checkpoint turning in our direction, finding positions that afforded them protection should they be fired upon. Malyn continued to gun the quad, bearing down on them recklessly and with no sign of relenting.

  “Malyn…”

  She kept her head down, resolute, her jaw set in determination. We picked up more speed, thumping across the asphalt and the buildings around us blurred past. We were close enough to see the faces of the soldiers now. They shouted something and one of them held up a hand to halt our progress, but whatever was said was drowned out by the roar of the quad.

  “Malyn!”

  She hit the brakes so suddenly that I lurched against her and almost cartwheeled off the seat. She turned us into a slide, the wheels kicking up garbage and debris as the quad carved a path sideways along the street. We came to a halt, the quad rocking violently as it settled less than fifty metres from the soldiers.

  “Hey!” Malyn yelled before the soldiers could react, “what are you dumbasses still doing here?”

  They looked between each other, confused, and then one of them recovered his composure and stood up.

  “We’re carrying out our assignment of protecting this checkpoint,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the one Captain Sims from Bravo Company sent out here to haul your asses back to The Midway, that’s who,” Malyn snarled. “Not exactly the job I had in mind when I got up this morning.”

  The soldier hesitated. “Well, we never received–”

  “Hey, deadshit, are your ears painted on? They’re calling in all available units for backup. The Midway is about to fall.”

  “I’m not taking orders from–”

  “Whatever,” Malyn snapped, revving the quad and sending it coasting toward the soldiers. “I’ve done my job. Call it in, if you like. Not my problem. Now get out the goddamn way, will you? We’ve been told to round up troops from Lima, if you can believe that. Do you know how fuckin’ far that is? Apparently comms are still down out there.”

  The soldier took his radio from his hip and lifted it to his face. “Uh–”

  “Move it!” Malyn said, practically barging him out the way. The other two soldiers closed in, their rifles half raised, but Malyn’s performance seemed to have put enough doubt in their minds that they decided it was better to let two clanks escape the city than to mistakenly put a bullet in Captain Sims’ messenger.

  As soon as she was clear of the checkpoint, Malyn put the quad into overdrive again, the front wheels almost lifting off the ground with the sudden momentum. I felt a surge of elation as the city was left behind us, but I knew we weren’t out of the woods just yet. There were still more checkpoints outside the city for us to negotiate.

  “Are they still manning the other checkpoints?” I said.

  “Don’t know.”

  “If they are, do you think they’re going to fall for the same trick?”

  “Probably not.”

  I craned my neck to look over her shoulder at the next checkpoint, but it was still too far away for me to see if there were soldiers within it. Following the perimeter wall along to the south I could see that many of the breaches made by the Marauders had been patched up in one way or another, in some cases by makeshift repair jobs and in others simply by planting transports and other large vehicles in front of the gaps. I thought I spied a hole in the wall we might fit through and pointed excitedly.

  “There!” I shouted. “We can make it through!”

  “You sure?”

  Up ahead, the headlights of a Humvee emerged from the checkpoint and swung in our direction with almost palpable intent. Malyn never eased off the accelerator for a moment, instead curving away and bouncing the quad off the old highway and over the dirt toward the breach in the wall.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” she said.

  The Humvee swerved in pursuit, quickly ascertaining our target and coming at us from a vector that would intercept us at the wall. Malyn crouched lower, her knuckles white on the throttle as she gripped it with all her might. I pressed lower as well to reduce my profile and hopefully create less wind resistance, trying to eke out every last ounce of speed from the quad as it swept across the terrain.

  “Come on, baby,” I heard Malyn urge.

  The gap in the wall was closer now, and I realised my previous estimation had been wrong. It was smaller than I had initially thought, barely wide enough to admit the narrow frame of the quad. Any misjudgement from Malyn at this speed would result in a collision that would tear us to pieces.

  A soldier appeared atop the Humvee and bullets scattered around us as he opened fire. Malyn paid them no attention, her focus firmly on squeezing the quad through that narrow crevice in the wall.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Cleanskin,” she shouted.

  There were more bullets, and the Humvee loomed frighteningly close as it bore down upon us.

  The wall rushed toward
us, that crumbled gap seemingly smaller than ever.

  Then we crashed through, one of the wheels scraping noisily against the concrete and causing the quad to careen sidelong and almost flip before Malyn was able to get it back under control, twisting savagely on the handlebars and crying out with the effort.

  I looked back and saw the Humvee appear at the gap like a watchdog poking a glowering eye through the fence at a retreating intruder. One of the soldiers dropped through and pointed his rifle in our direction, but after a moment he lowered it again despondently.

  “We’re clear!” I shouted jubilantly.

  “Never in doubt, man.” Malyn grinned. She took a hand and balled it into a fist, thumping me companionably on the thigh.

  I lifted my hand and placed it on her head in return, showing my thanks. She tilted her face toward me and a little smile crept onto her lips.

  “So where are you taking me?” I said.

  She pointed vaguely to the horizon. “South.”

  26

  We sped away from Ascension City for the best part of a day. Malyn pushed the quad relentlessly, spearing through gullies and across the plains without any thought of slowing down. As luck would have it, the quad was beautifully suited to eating up the kilometres out here, its rugged suspension negotiating the terrain as if the wasteland were its natural habitat.

  We didn’t talk a lot. I was exhausted by the ordeal I’d been through, my body and mind aching and crying out for rest after the constant fighting and fleeing. I suspected Malyn had reached a similar frame of mind, and I could feel a tenseness in her body as I pressed against her. She knew that we weren’t out of danger yet, and that we wouldn’t be for some time to come.

  We made great progress across the wasteland until the quad ran out of juice. As it coasted to a slow halt across the dirt, Malyn tugged on the accelerator as if hoping that it would somehow find new reserves, but it was no use. With a final chug the engine gave out altogether and we were left alone in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the low howl of the wind to break the silence.

  “Well, that’s that,” Malyn said.

  “Yeah.” I swung away from the seat and took a couple of steps away from the quad to give her room to disembark, then reached forward and held out a hand to assist her in getting down.

  She gave both me and the hand a doubtful look. “Seriously?”

  I put it in my pocket and shrugged, embarrassed. “Uh–”

  “I think I can find my way down off a quad-cycle, man,” she said, demonstrating the fact nimbly in one fluid motion. Noting my discomfort, her expression softened and she thumped me good-naturedly on the shoulder. “But thanks for the offer.”

  I smiled ruefully. “Any time.”

  “So how far to reach home?” she said.

  I glanced at the dark horizon. The area was unfamiliar to me, but from what I could tell we had already come most of the way. We’d travelled through hours of dark night, and morning couldn’t be too far away.

  “Maybe half a day,” I said. “Not sure exactly.” I nodded at her. “Where are you headed?”

  She gave me a quizzical look. “Same place as you, obviously.”

  “Look, you’ve already done more than enough for me–”

  “I’m not doing this for you,” she said, flexing her stiff fingers. “I’m doing it for me. I needed to get out of Ascension City, and you had somewhere to go. I figured I’d tag along, unless you have a grievance with that.”

  “No grievance.”

  “Well, all right. Let’s do this.” She glanced behind us. “They’re going to come for us. You know that, right?”

  I began to walk. “Yeah, I know that.”

  “And you’re not worried about leading Cabre straight to your people?”

  “Cabre already knows about them. He’ll come whether I’m there or not. I have to warn them. I have to get them to safety.”

  Malyn matched my pace now that her leg had been repaired, a far cry from the last time we had been stuck in the wasteland together.

  “Well, I hope we can get there in time,” she said.

  “You and me both.” I looked across at her. “Listen, Malyn. I uh… I can’t thank you enough for this.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “No, really. You risked your ass more than once for me. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “It was the right thing to do. I owed you.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  She scowled at me, as if irritated at having to explain herself. “You’re as thick as a brick sometimes, man.”

  “You mean when I pulled you out of the rubble after the sandstorm?”

  “There’s that,” she said. “Then there was the whole thing with Cabre when we arrived in AC. Do you remember that?”

  I thought back to that first meeting in the war room. “I remember them chewing you out about the mission.”

  “Yeah, that’s putting it lightly. They were about to rip me a new one in there until you stood up for me. Hell, I probably would have ended up in the lock-up. So where would I be now?”

  “Okay. Consider us even, then.”

  “Sure.”

  In the distance, a Grid spire shone brightly for a moment in the gloom before going dark again.

  “There!” I said, pointing. “That’s the spire where we first met. We can navigate using that as a reference.”

  “But we’re not going anywhere near it, right?” Malyn said. “There’s a good chance Ascension are there, especially with Cabre in such a hurry to get the Grid restarted.”

  “Yeah, we’ll head west of it and swing around further south.”

  “Maybe if we’re lucky, Ascension will be busy fighting the insurgents for a while yet. That might give us some extra time.” She clambered ahead of me up an incline and onto an old highway. “Say,” she said as I reached the top, “what happened to old Ocano back there?”

  “He wasn’t in great shape,” I admitted. “He got caught in one of the explosions at the lock-up. I’m not sure if he’s going to make it.”

  “Shame,” Malyn said sincerely. “He wasn’t a bad old guy. Hard as nails, but fair. Honourable.”

  “Hey, I was wondering… if Ocano owed you a debt, why didn’t you persuade him to release Lunn when he was in the lock-up? It would have saved you all of that work for Cabre.”

  “What do you think I am, a miracle worker?” Malyn said. “Captain Ocano owed me a debt, sure, but he wasn’t going to commit treason to pay it back. It was a stretch just to convince him to let me inside so that I could see you, let alone getting him to release a prisoner without Cabre’s authorisation. There’s no debt big enough to make him do that.”

  The Grid spire came to life again a few minutes later, casting its radiance across the wasteland and, ironically, allowing us to keep up a good pace even when night closed in. We gave it a wide berth, moving away from the highway and past the ruins of a small town that lay silent and still, covered in a thick layer of dust.

  I began to think of home, and what I might find there. What would I say when I came home empty handed? I imagined their disappointed faces turning away from me when I told them that my time out in the wasteland had been for nothing. Worse, I’d now attracted the attention of Cabre and his men, placing us in even more danger than we’d been in before.

  Now we could not even wait in our home for the end. We’d be forced to flee into the desert, where the children would most likely die of thirst or starvation in a matter of days.

  There was nothing really left now but to spend as much time as I could with the children, the only things in this world that I loved, before they were lost forever.

  “You okay, man?” Malyn said. She grasped my shoulder and shook me out of my grim musings. “Looks like you’re going to dark places, there.”

  I grimaced. “I guess I am.”

  “Chin up, huh? We’ll reach your people soon. We’ll get them to safety.”

  She was still unaware
of the significance of my ‘people’. I hadn’t told her about the human children yet, and as we made our way across the sand, I wasn’t sure how to do it. I wondered if perhaps she would think I was crazy, that I was making up stories and decide that she was making a mistake by coming with me.

  We still had hours to go before we reached home. There would be time to tell her the truth.

  We passed the junkyard where I had once fought Wraith, and I knew it wasn’t far now. There was an extra spring in my step as we walked, and Malyn was forced to jog every few paces to keep up.

  “You’re not going to start sprinting are you?” she joked. “Because I’m totally wrecked. I’m finding it difficult to even walk right now.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s not far to go.” My anxiety was increasing with every step and I began to dread what I would find at home. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  “You’re worried they’re already there, aren’t you?” she said, as if reading my thoughts.

  “No,” I said. We exchanged a glance, and I could tell she was reading me like a book. “Okay. Yes.”

  “Try to relax, man. I mean, Cabre probably has an insurgent rifle pointed at his nose right now.” She glanced behind us. “Probably has more to worry about–”

  She stumbled and almost fell, clutching at my arm for support. She wrenched me around, pointing skyward urgently.

  “Look!” she said.

  Drifting past the glowing form of the Grid spire was a pinprick of light, like a star that had descended from the heavens and now skimmed across the sky beneath the murky clouds. As we watched, it began to meander east, oscillating as it headed away, but then it steadied and surged south, almost as if locking onto a target.

  Within a few minutes it would pass right over us.

  I turned and began to run, and Malyn matched me stride for stride, this time making no complaint about my pace. We pushed our bodies to the limit, striding across the sand and onto the more solid footing of the old highway that led to the city. There was no energy expended on idle conversation. We both knew what we had to do, and every ounce of energy was directed toward that goal.