“I was nearby,” he replies, and I feel a smile in his words. I wonder how long he’s been tracking me. He must have been careful, or I’d have known.
“I’m sorry about what I said. Before. About leaving me alone.”
How to explain that I thought I was in love with a boy who tried to kill me? That I thought there was a chance to have a normal life with someone who could see past my ruined eyes?
“Acknowledged,” he says, simply.
Something big and dark shifts in the mist near us. Niner turns and snatches a fallen assault rifle off the ground. Snaps the slide pull back and chambers a round. The turrets are still chattering bullets out there in the fog, useless.
“Timmy?” I transmit, widening my mind.
“Whoa,” exclaims the little boy. “A freeborn! Look at his specs . . . seven feet tall. Strong as a tractor. Maximum sprint speed—”
“Hack the turrets, please. Put them to better use.”
“Affirmative,” he says in a clipped voice, already concentrating.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I say to the group. “You two, mount the stag. I’ll go with Niner. Use your eyes, Gracie. Find a safe route out.”
“Mathilda,” she says in a small voice.
“We’ll have time to talk once we’re safe,” I interrupt.
“But Mathilda—”
“No time,” I say, dismounting.
“Listen to me!” shouts Gracie in a burst transmission. It staggers me and I lean against Tiberius’s warm hide. Wrap an arm around his neck and let my knees sag as an image from Gracie balloons in my mind.
“Is this the boy you’ve been looking for?” asks Gracie, her voice small again.
And the image expands in my mind’s eye. It’s a high-quality spy satellite photograph. Taken at night, on maximum zoom, from someplace high and with an infrared-capable camera. The darkest parts of the image are tinged green and brightened enough to be visible. A battlefield, the wiry legs of a walker just smudges of green.
And in the foreground: my brother’s face.
Nolan is crawling under a piece of mangled wire, arms tucked against his chest and his dirty hands curled into fists. The whites of his eyes are flashing as he glances upward in agony. Something black that could be mud or blood courses down the side of his face. Sweat glistens on his forehead and there is dirt caked around his nostrils.
I’m already ripping geo-tags out of the image before I can register the relief deep in my chest that my brother is alive, really alive. Nolan is a few hundred kilometers west of here, headed straight for the mountain stronghold called Freeborn City.
“Thank you,” I whisper to Gracie.
As my vision returns, I try to put the last part of the image out of my mind. Take a deep breath and stand up straight. But the horrible sight won’t leave me: the evil glint of a metal collar wrapped tight around Nolan’s neck.
9. SOLDIER BOY
Post New War: 9 Months, 26 Days
While it is true that human beings are magnificently capable of adapting to almost any circumstance, this trait does not always work out to the advantage of the species. Simply by presenting the proper contingencies for short-term, greedy choices, I built two great armies on the back of this celebrated “human adaptability.” The Gray Horse Army in the West and the Tribe army from the East were sent to take the Freeborn City in a pincer movement. Each army was led by a cunning survivor, willing to adapt to the most extreme circumstances . . . in exchange for promises of power.
—ARAYT SHAH
NEURONAL ID: NOLAN PEREZ
At night, the slave army doesn’t make campfires. It really is too bad because, trust me, it gets really fucking cold. Around dusk, the leashes start pulling us in toward the master walker. By the time the moon is out, dozens of eight-man fire teams are wriggling together in filthy piles just to stay warm.
The thought intrudes: I beat Thomas to death with my fists.
On the endless daytime march, I let my brain print the words in all-capital text across the inside of my forehead. BEAT. THOMAS. DEATH. What would Mathilda think of that? If she were alive, she wouldn’t know me. Wouldn’t want to know someone like me.
I beat him to death with my fists.
And Felix laughed. The leader of the Tribe laughed and laughed. He said I was just perfect to come along for the trip. Just the perfect little soldier boy.
In the slave army, everyone goes to the bathroom wherever they are. In the morning, all the masters lift up on their spindly black legs at the same time and start working their way forward. They move one leg at a time, picking the next foothold as if it were a chess match. A swarm of giant water bugs stepping carefully through misty forests and over crumbling mountains.
Uphill. Downhill. Rain. Sun. Day. Night.
Once the daily march begins, there is no stopping. There are no breaks. There is only one foot in front of the other. Breathe in. Breathe out. Another step. And another. Another.
I mostly watch my feet. Count out the syllables quietly in my head. Each jolt of my boots on the ground pushing out a word. With. My. Fists. I’m finding that the more I think about it, the more I don’t want to stop with Thomas.
Somewhere a half klick ahead of us, Felix Morales is riding a piece of custom hardware—a low quadruped that looks kind of like a black horse. He leads a small contingent of walkers piloted by real soldiers who fight for Felix and the Tribe. They take the best food, the best weapons, and the strongest soldiers from our constant raids.
With. My. Fists. With. My. Fists.
Eyes locked on my boots, I have time to think of how surreal this is. Thousands of us on the march, people kidnapped and dead on their feet, almost completely quiet. I hear only the hum of Rob-made power supplies inside the walkers. The scrabble of a hooked claw pushing down a tree or snapping into rock for a foothold. The tired repetitive clinking of guns and canteens and loose straps as we soldiers march on and on.
Nobody talks on the march. Small talk makes you tired. We’re all busy trying to breathe.
Each night, I drop to my knees next to whatever river or pond we’ve stopped near and I drink until my lungs throb. Each night when I lift my head, the faces around me have changed. Only one face has stayed the same. Sherman. The black man with a gray beard who was there when I had my time with Thomas. He shook his head when I insulted Felix because he knew what was coming for me and he felt bad. Out of the few hundred we marched out with, he is the only one left.
He knew me before it happened. I’m glad of that.
Technically, there is one other face that has stayed the same. A guy everyone calls “Hey You.” He hardly counts as a person. Hey You is checked out. He’s a tall white guy, gaunt and blank-eyed. He marches like a machine, mouth open, panting with crooked teeth. Has a tongue like a salted slug. Hey You is smart enough to eat when the master walker drops MREs scavenged from military bases. But the guy chews up most of the plastic, too. He goes where he’s supposed to go. Fires wherever the targeting lasers point. But he’s not here.
His body wants to live so bad that it kicked out whoever he used to be.
Somebody broke him. Somebody who rides at the front of this column: Felix.
For now, all I can do is stay upwind of Hey You. The guy shits his pants loud, like clockwork, every single day about two hours into the morning march. He doesn’t have any awareness of himself anymore. I wish he was the only one. But in the handful of minutes before I collapse into exhausted sleep at the end of our daily march, I can see that other squads have their own Hey Yous.
Sometimes two or three out of eight.
The alternative to fighting is wrapped tight around our necks. Sweat-stained leather cuffs, actuated at the base so they can close like fingers on the most vulnerable spot of a person: the neck.
Sometimes, I hear the whip smack of a leash retracting. A squeal maybe, or a cut-off curse. A body hitting the turf. If the master calls you in, the leash snaps your neck and that’s it for you. You’ve
got maybe a couple of seconds on the ground, time to watch those sharp black legs cut through the air overhead while your brain dies. If the master walker is destroyed or disabled, this thing called a dead man’s switch activates and winds up the leashes. Eight necks snap at once.
There is no tolerance. Not if you’re hurt or sick. A lot of grim-faced soldiers are hiding injuries. Marching along on sprained ankles or with broken limbs curled up to their chests. Hacking coughs that stagger them forward. Flushed faces and confused eyes.
In the NYC Underground, we used to congratulate newcomers on being survivors. We thought that the will to survive at all costs was honorable. Now I see the ugly side of it. The will to live doesn’t stop when it should. It pushes us past the point when we should just die. Forces us to keep on going like broken machines.
We stop marching in the afternoon, at the foot of a steep hill. It’s bare and gray and made of broken shale rock. The sun beats down from clear blue sky in the west, just short of the crest, and most of us sit down in the shade of the master walker.
Sitting on a flat rock, I unlace one boot at a time and set about emptying the dirt and rocks. I move fast. If the walker starts moving and my boots are left behind, then I will die. I know this because I saw it happen to someone else. I don’t want to know how long I’d keep walking barefoot, feet sliced up and infected.
The others sit down on rocks of their own.
I don’t bother learning the other slaves’ names. They turn over nearly every week. And the new ones always go first. Mentally, I think of them by their characteristics: Raccoon, Skinny, Baldy, and Hey You. Me and Sherman round it out. We’ve got two empty spots—waiting for new recruits.
This is rare. A time to rest during the day. Time to sit in a loose circle and actually talk to each other. Well, not all of us talk, of course.
Hey You stands in the sun, motionless with no commands while the heat blisters his face. Another slave, a white guy with a long beard, tosses small rocks at him. I call this one Raccoon. His face is beyond dirty. Circles of grease and grime run under his eyes that make him look like an animal. The rocks just bounce off Hey You’s face or chest and land in the dirt.
“Why do you think we’re stopped?” asks Sherman. He is slope-shouldered and middle-aged, lips cracked in his bushy gray beard. No time to shave or even comb your hair. A woman, skinny as a skeleton because she is too weak to scavenge extra food while we march, answers.
“Who cares, just enjoy it,” she says, digging at a small onion plant. She brushes dirt off the leaves and eats the leaf whole. Chews mechanically and without shame.
“That’s the spirit,” says Baldy.
The old man lies out on the hot rocks. His joints crack while he does it. His breath comes out in a long sigh. I know for a fact that all the fingers of his right hand are broken and have been for a week. His hand is swollen up like a baseball mitt and seeping dark blood from under the fingernails.
“For God’s sake,” he says. “Somebody yell at me to wake up if this thing moves out. I’m so tired I could die.”
I nod at him and his eyes close. He won’t last much longer. The old man can’t hold or fire his gun properly anymore.
“It’s a battle,” I say, quietly. “You know that, Sherman.”
“Whoa, the kid spoke,” says Raccoon. “What do you know about it? I thought you was a Hey You until just now.”
“We’ve seen it before,” I say.
“Yeah?” asks Raccoon. “Where’d you get picked up?”
“New York City,” I say.
Raccoon laughs and tosses another rock at Hey You. “Bullshit,” he says. “You saying you lasted since the march origin? Months? That’s impossible, little man.”
Sherman regards me darkly. “It’s true. I been with him. We’re the last ones. You seen the kid march? He don’t get tired.”
“Ah, he’s good at marching, but you’re both fucking bad at lying.”
I consider Raccoon.
He’s the type who’ll die trying to escape before I can get the stink of him out of my nostrils. I decide to ignore him and help these people. Staring at the dirt and speaking in a low, steady voice, I give them the information that could save their lives. Or maybe it won’t, but at least I’ll know I tried.
“In a little while,” I say, “just after nightfall, we will climb this ridge and mount an attack on whatever settlement is over there. First, the walkers will put up flares so we can see our target. Then they’ll fire smoke. A lot of it. Their radar can see through it. But we can’t. Our walker will spot-illuminate our area so we can walk. Our job is to fire wherever their targeting lasers go. If you don’t fire, or if you miss too much, or if you hit a walker, you’ll be recalled. If you stop to take cover, you’ll be recalled. And if you’re dumb enough to get hurt and show it, you’ll be recalled.”
“Recalled?” asks Skinny.
I tap the cuff around my neck.
“You kill or you die,” I say.
Skinny looks at Sherman, an open question on her face. The man hangs his head and speaks very quietly: “I close my eyes when I pull the trigger. It helps not to look.”
“My God,” says Skinny.
I pull my boot back on. Strap the laces tight. The sun is dropping over the ridge. I can hear the walker’s power supply flutter up an octave. It won’t be long now.
“Wake up, old man,” I say, standing.
Drawing my rifle off my shoulder, I give him a nudge in the ribs with my foot. I pop the magazine out of my scraped-up M4 and slap it to make sure the rounds are sitting right. Nearly lost in the dusk, Hey You has also drawn his rifle. He is smiling crooked, staring blankly into the sky with a slug trail of drool hanging from his chin.
He hears the motors, too.
“You should all check your weapons,” I say. “If you want to live.”
I feel the whumph of the launches in my chest. Hear the sparking fizzle of greenish flares crackling across the sky. Olive shadows stretch away from the spider-legged walker standing along the ridge above us. Its body is flattened, a stubby back-mounted launcher aimed on a high trajectory so the flares will illuminate the sky for as long as possible.
Then the battle whistles start to scream.
We move as one, all of us slaves scrabbling up the side of the embankment under our sprawling masters. I already hear small-arms fire from the other walkers crawling into battle. My rifle is slung over my back and the cold black shale kisses my knees and slithers out from under my fingers.
“Scavenge,” I say to the others. “Don’t forget.”
The fighting is terrible but if you don’t find more ammunition and food and clothes or armor from the fallen bodies—don’t look at them too close, especially the kids—then maybe you don’t die right away fast but you sure do die later and a lot slower. . . .
We’re over the ridge.
Flares crowd the sky like falling stars, sizzling quietly, spraying hard grayish light over the battlefield. Drawing my rifle, I see that I have ten quivering shadows splayed out on the ground around me, cast by ten bright lights in the sky. So does every walker and slave crossing the rocky plain under heavy fire from mounted turrets.
Beyond the front line, I catch sight of familiar metal buildings. A complex, low and fenced, hunkered down a half klick away. My sister and I lived in a work camp just like this one during the New War. I never knew there were more of them scattered around the world. I guess Archos R-14 needed places where it could experiment on children. Where it could change them the way it did my sister.
All these work camps were built by Rob. They are surrounded by hidden turrets built to keep prisoners inside. The automatic guns aren’t great at keeping us out. Bullets start to streak from camouflaged black muzzles, whining low across the battlefield and smacking into the front line of walkers. The leashed soldiers up there take cover behind their walkers’ legs. A few lob potshots at the turrets, but it’s pointless from this distance.
This is the fourth wor
k camp the walkers have hit. I don’t know why. But I do know we find sighted children like Mathilda every time.
The little ones are targeted first.
Our walker pauses. Drops its rear end nearly to the dirt and aims its stubby launcher again. Canisters start spewing out, tumbling through the air and spitting smoke before they even hit the ground. A half-dozen other walkers are doing the same trick.
Raccoon fires his weapon and I wave at him to stop.
“Not yet,” I hiss, watching his neck cuff for the telltale shudder that comes before a neck-snapping recall.
Ahead of us, smoke is pouring onto the battlefield. Gray and swirling. A moist fireworks smell washes over me before the fog does. The auto-turrets fade away into the smoke until they are just bursts of muted light followed by the crack of bullets. Like lightning flashes behind storm clouds.
Mathilda and I used to crouch in our bedroom next to the open window when we were little. Cold, rainy wind would sprinkle in through the screen. Bruised Pennsylvania skies. We’d hide from the lightning, giggling, and count out loud the seconds until thunder—trying to guess how far away the strikes were.
The front line of walkers marches into the thick gray mist, dissolving into dinosaur-sized shadows. The leashed soldiers trail them like puppies into the fog. Bright lights blink on, jarring, one for each walker. The hot spotlights illuminate the ground to help the slave soldiers keep moving. It also makes them obvious targets, but that’s not a big concern for the walkers.
Red lines start to slice through the clouds. We must be in range. The walkers are painting targets with streaks of laser light. Small-arms fire crackles. Short bursts from men and women who are trying to stay on their feet in the disorienting smoke. Trying not to see what they’re shooting at.
Who they’re shooting.
And now it’s my turn to step into the mist. My turn to hope I don’t see who I hit. Once, I saw a girl who had eyes like Mathilda. Every single walker reoriented to paint her at once. She disappeared in a concentrated spray of incoming fire. Felix is killing the sighted ones on purpose.
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