“The containers,” I said excitedly. “I can use those to transport the plants from the garden. We could take them with us.”
“Whatever you do,” Liv said, “you should do it fast. Like Malyn said, we could have company here any minute.”
We set to work. I took Mish and the children into the garden and carefully began to extract the plants from the soil, hoping that I was getting all the roots as well. I took the healthiest specimens first and loaded them into containers, giving them a good dose of water before handing them off to Malyn and Liv to load into the transport. With any luck they would survive the journey west.
Liv also made a number of journeys down to the gully to fetch water, hauling back great quantities of it, and then she began to collect items from the garage as well: hammers and saws, a wheelbarrow, sacks of grain and anything else that looked useful. Then she started on the house, packing up cups and blankets and cutlery.
As we neared the end of our work in the garden, she appeared at the back door of the house, stooping to get her massive frame through.
“Brant? I’m not sure if I’m supposed to collect these or not. You better come look.”
Curious, I followed her inside the house and back along the corridor, her shoulders so broad that they barely fit between the walls. She stopped outside the storeroom and indicated inside.
“What are these?” she said.
The storeroom was very different from the last time I had seen it. Previously it had been home to various knick-knacks and tools that Arsha and I had kept for safekeeping. Now the floor was covered in rounded metal capsules that were approximately knee-height, shiny and black apart from a single horizontal stripe on which a row of LEDs blinked.
“Well, they…” I stopped, disconcerted. “They look like portable cryopods.”
“They are,” Mish said, appearing at my elbow. “Arsha went and collected them from a safe house in the city a week or so back.”
“But what’s inside?” I said.
“Arsha said it’s the embryos from the lab,” Mish said. “She wanted them taken out of the tall building in the city.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know,” Mish said. “She took us there one day and told me to look after the children in our play area on the third floor.” She frowned, remembering. “She had a bag full of brown bricks. They looked like rubber or something. I tried looking inside but she told me to get away. They had ‘X5’ written on them, I think.”
“X7?” I said.
Mish shrugged. “Might have been.”
“Plastic explosive,” Liv said. “That’s how she blew the data centre. But where did she get hold of it?”
“There was a weapons cache we found on the south side,” I said, thinking back to the time when Arsha had led me to the underground compartment so that I could arm myself with a shotgun. “She must have gotten it there.”
It all started to make sense. Arsha and I had already discussed the danger of having that repository of data sitting in M-Corp’s data centre. She must have decided to rig it with explosives in readiness for the Marauders – or anyone else – coming in search of it.
But I should have known she wouldn’t have endangered the seeds and embryos stored at M-Corp by keeping them in a place that was ready to go up in smoke. She’d transferred everything to the portable cryopods, then brought them here, where we had enough charge on the solar cells to keep them running.
I stepped carefully into the room and pulled a white sheet away from something sitting against the wall. Underneath were two a-wombs that Arsha had obviously unbolted and removed from the lab as well, to be used to grow the embryos when the time was right.
It seemed that Arsha had achieved more here in the city than I had by wandering out all that way into the darkness.
“Thank you, Arsha,” I said sadly, replacing the sheet and covering the a-wombs once again. “For everything.”
Some time later we had the transport loaded, going so far as to place a few chickens inside, as well as a jar of earthworms and some other insects the children had caught. There was too much here at Somerset to take everything. Maybe one day I would come back for more of it, but for now we would have to make do with what we had.
The children climbed up into the cab, their excitement at taking a ride in the big machine overriding the turmoil they’d experienced earlier in the day. In fairness, they had not yet realised Arsha’s fate. They did not truly know what they’d lost. There would be time later to explain it to them. There would be time for grief. For now we just had to get out of here as quickly as we could.
“Thank you again, Liv,” I said, reaching out and shaking her hand.
“Good luck to you, Brant,” she said. “I hope things work out for you and the little ones.”
“What about you?” I said. “What are you going to do?”
Liv’s eyes drifted away and she stared out across the city. “I’m going to go back. I’m going to return to Ascension City and try to make things right. I know I’m not well respected there but… in truth, I’m the leader of Ascension now. It’s my responsibility to lead those soldiers and take us in the right direction again.”
“What about the insurgents?”
“We need to work with them, not against them. There’s no reason why we can’t move forward together in peace, especially now that the Marauders are gone. That’s going to be my goal.” She looked back at me. “Cabre thought the future belonged to a select few, but it doesn’t. Everyone deserves their own piece of it.”
“That’s going to be one hell of a fight, to bring them all together,” I said. “I hope you can do it.”
“If I don’t, then things will never change,” Liv said. “Clanks will still live as slaves in AC. They’ll live in fear. I have to try.”
I nodded and Liv stepped back. Malyn moved forward and I took her hand, giving her a warm smile.
“I’m not going to help you up into the transport,” I joked. “I know you hate it when I do that.”
“You don’t have to,” she said, and her smile faltered. “I’m not coming with you.”
My heart sank. “What?”
“I’m going with Liv.”
I looked between them, confused. “But… why?”
“You were right before, when you told me this wasn’t my fight. You have these children to look after, and that’s your responsibility, but it’s not mine. My responsibility is back there in Ascension City, with Elias and Lunn and those others I left behind. My friends are back there, fighting a losing battle against Ascension. I have to help them.”
“But–”
“This is my chance to do something, Cleanskin,” she said. “Something that really matters. To make my mark on the world.”
“Malyn, please–”
“I’ve already talked it over with Liv. We’re going to take the Humvee back together. She’s going to need all the help she can get back there. She’ll need the support of people like Lunn and the insurgents, and I can help her get it. We’ll take the fight to Ascension, right to their rotten core. We’ll cut it out and put things right. Then we’re going to get to work putting out those fires.”
“We’ll divert the seawater pump,” Liv chimed in. “It will take months, but it can be done. We won’t let you down.”
I desperately wanted to say something to change her mind, to somehow come up with the words that would make her turn away from this crusade and instead follow me out to the ocean. But looking into her eyes, I could see the resolve there. The belief. Her feelings for me, as strong as they were, would not come between the loyalty and the sense of duty she felt toward the friends she had left in Ascension City.
It was the kind of strength and integrity that had endeared her to me in the first place, so how could I begrudge it now?
“You said you wanted me to tell you how I felt about you, when all this was over,” I said.
She nodded and bit her lip, her eyes glistening with tears. “Yeah
.”
“Well, I still don’t know how to tell you. But let me show you.”
I reached out and pulled her against me. If our first kiss had been borne out of desperation and urgency, this was the counterpoint – an unhurried moment of tenderness in which we allowed the sensations to filter through our senses like a drug. A moment to savour. Her lips were soft and cool as they brushed against mine with all the gentleness of a feather. I experienced a sort of timelessness, as if the world had stopped to allow us a reality that was ours and ours alone. When she finally pulled away, I held her close and stared into her eyes, wishing that somehow things could have turned out differently.
She pulled away and wiped at her face with the heels of her palms, embarrassed.
“You have to go, man,” she said.
“Yeah.”
I nodded in farewell to Liv and then turned and climbed into the truck, where the children bounced on the seat in their excitement. I pulled the door shut and started up the truck. Its engine roared and it began to vibrate, and I reached out through the window to adjust the side mirror.
Malyn stepped up against the edge of the transport and I looked down at her. There were tears in the corners of her eyes again.
“When I’m finished up there with Liv, when all that’s done, I’ll come find you,” she said over the noise of the engine. “I’ll see you at the ocean’s end, all right?”
I smiled down at her and said, “All right,” but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.
As I directed the transport up the hill, I looked back and saw Liv and Malyn standing motionless, watching us leave. I swung us out of Somerset Drive and wondered if I would ever see this place again.
EPILOGUE
I took us past the city, manoeuvring the transport across the ruined streets and, at times, using it as a battering ram when the path became blocked. It was solid enough to take the hits, but with each blow I winced, wondering what was happening to our precious cargo at the rear. I only hoped the plants back there would hold together and not end up broken apart by the rattling as we tried to break free of the city.
As we bypassed the downtown district I couldn’t help but look back at the column of black smoke that still gushed from M-Corp. I toyed with the idea of going there and seeing if I could get inside. What if Arsha had survived the blast? What if she had somehow been thrown clear and now lay on the sidewalk calling for help?
But I knew that wasn’t possible. No one could have survived the blast. I tore my eyes away from M-Corp, the place that had been my home and the cradle of my hopes for so long, and told myself not to look back. I set my eyes on the road to the south and didn’t waver.
I was still reeling from the shock of what had happened. Arsha was gone. My friend and colleague for all those years, the one whose dreams I had shared, the one who had been there with me through all those terrible times… she was not coming back. The finality of it was almost surreal. Arsha had always seemed indestructible. She was always the one who had been in control, the pillar of strength. It didn’t seem right that I was the one to survive.
I thought again of her sacrifice. Had she planned it that way all along? Is that what her little speech to me was about? Had she really tried to dissuade me from taking on Ascension just so that she could find her own redemption?
I thought not. I suspected she’d wanted to find a peaceful resolution with Ascension if possible, but when they’d revealed their true intentions she had been left with no other choice.
I wished it could have been me in her place. She hadn’t deserved to die like that.
In any case, the hand had now been played, the resolution set in motion. Arsha was dead, and it now fell to me to see these children live in safety and happiness for as long as possible.
When we reached the wasteland, the excitement of the children abated somewhat, and they peered out the windscreen quietly, not knowing what to make of the environment. I realised they had never seen the world outside the city. They’d never seen it stripped back to this empty nothingness, this endless stretch of dirt and sand. To them, houses and streets and skyscrapers were the norm, and they weren’t quite prepared for this contrast.
We drove for hours and hours, the headlights of the transport carving a swath of light through the darkness. My spirits sank with each passing minute. If what Liv had said was true, there should have been light filtering through the further west we travelled, but the darkness seemed unrelenting. I wondered if perhaps the fires had intensified since Liv had ventured to the coast, and if the plume of smoke that was strangling the sky had extended its reach.
In those dark hours I thought of Malyn, too, and a feeling of bitterness overwhelmed me, that she should abandon me in this time of need. Had she gone back to Ascension City because of Lunn? Did she really love him, despite what she’d said, and gone back there to be with him? Had everything she’d said about me been a lie?
After a time I pushed those thoughts aside, ashamed. I was being selfish, I knew that. Malyn was capable of making her own choices, regardless of how inconvenient I found them. In my heart I believed that she really cared for me, and I could only hope that she would come looking for me when she was ready.
I was so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the light in the sky until the children started shouting at me to look. I craned my head out the window, and as the wind buffeted my face I saw a glorious slash of pale blue above, the light of a new dawn. I knew then that the darkness that had surrounded us had simply been the black of night. We’d driven through it and now the morning had arrived.
We found a little cottage on a hillside that overlooked the ocean, and with the transport’s fuel gauge dipping toward empty, I decided that this would have to do. As we climbed out I lifted my face to the sky and felt the warmth of the morning sun for what seemed like the first time in forever. Liv had been right – there was still a smoke haze out here, but not enough to stop the sunlight getting through. The sun was a darker shade than I remembered, but there was still enough light to give me hope.
The hillside had a good covering of thick green grass that waved in the sea breeze, and that too was a good sign. The children took the opportunity to stretch their legs, running and frolicking in the open spaces and pointing excitedly at the vast expanse of water down the slope, a thing that they had only read about in books before now. Out at sea great towers thrust upward, hazy and featureless in the distance, their origins and purpose unknown.
We wasted no time in getting our cargo unloaded, and I chose a plot of land not far from the cottage in which to start our new garden. The children were more of a hindrance than a help, but their enthusiasm could not be denied, and by the end of the day we were all covered in dark brown soil and grit, and the plants had found their new home.
The first week in the cottage was cold, wet and uncomfortable. The roof was in a sorry state and materials for repair were hard to come by, but in time we transformed it into a cosy home. A river wound down to the sea not far away, and fresh water was in good supply. The plants began to bear fruit again, and I even tried my hand at fishing after discovering there was marine life still surviving here. Catches were rare, but the children used the opportunity to run and frolic on the golden sands of the beach, and so it was time well spent.
The time came for me to tell the children that Arsha was never coming back, and after all of those battles and struggles against the Marauders and Ascension, this was perhaps the hardest thing I’d ever done. The children were still too young to grasp the concept fully. They didn’t understand the ramifications or the finality of death, but regardless, they were filled with a great melancholy that lasted many months. I rocked them to sleep more times than I could count as they cried her name and begged for her return. I could do nothing other than to hold them and tell them that everything would be all right, and more than once I shared their tears.
Mish carried her sorrow stoically, putting on a brave face for me and the children every
day. In the quieter moments late at night, I sometimes saw the pain creeping through her mask when she thought no one was watching, and I realised that she might never truly come to grips with the loss of her brother. She continued to battle with her identity, struggling against the child within her as she yearned to be the woman she could never become. The responsibility of raising the children at least seemed to bring her comfort, and I hoped that in time she would find peace within herself.
As the months passed the skies began to clear further. The smoke receded to the east and as the warmer months approached the sun’s bite returned in earnest. I didn’t know if the fires had run their course, if the seasonal changes had brought about changes in the air currents, or if Malyn and Liv had succeeded in their quest to liberate Ascension City and to douse the flames of the oil wells. In the end, it didn’t matter which – the skies became blue and sunny, and the future of the children and the animals we’d brought with us were bright again.
Over those first few months there were many nights when I would sit outside the cottage and gaze to the east, waiting and hoping that Malyn would appear. I imagined my reaction upon seeing her, rehearsing my greeting, practising all the right words and actions to welcome her home. How we would fall into each other’s arms and embrace, free of danger at last and looking toward the future together.
But she did not come, and eventually I put an end to my nightly routine and told myself to get on with my life.
I didn’t know what the future held for these children, or for the human race, but in time I managed to stop worrying about that as well. I just enjoyed my time with them, savouring the gift of their presence and the feeling of togetherness and love. I often thought of the cryopods back home, and the myriad uncertainties around their future. Was there enough power in the solar cells to keep them running? Would the embryos have deteriorated too much by now? Were they damaged during their relocation from the lab?
I couldn’t know the answer to any of those questions, not until I went back. One day, maybe when the children were old enough to fend for themselves, I would return to see if there was anything left to salvage, if there was more life I could bring back into the world. But that would have to wait. For now, my life centred around the cottage overlooking the ocean and the children within.
The Fires of Yesterday (The Silent Earth, Book 3) Page 27
