Litsa had dreamed of that other world when she was a child, longed for feeling the sun against her face in a place where she didn’t have to fear what might be approaching over the next hill.
She carefully lifted one of her favorite books from the stacks, a story about a young girl who was swept away by a storm and delivered to a place where little people worshipped a great wizard and where a magical beast, a field guardian, and an armored warrior helped her on her journey to return home to a place called Kansas. In the end, it was all a figment of the girl’s imagination, but Litsa loved to hear the story over and over again, looking at the pictures and losing herself in the magic of it all.
But it wasn’t real.
No more real than all the stories in the other books, now. The world that gave birth to such magic and wonder had passed away, torn apart in the short span of a couple of decades. It was killed, by the Riy, but in some places, the Riy awakened the worst of the old ones, those who lashed out and killed without reason or sense, decimating entire populations in the name of safety. So many died before it was all over, either consumed by the Riy or killed at the hands of men who knew no other recourse.
Twenty years, her teachers told her. Only twenty years passed from the time the Riy first appeared until all was lost, and the old world was dead.
Litsa’s world—a never-ending struggle for survival—was all that was left of it. She was born 168 years after the rise of the Riy, so this life was all she, and generations of ancestors before her, had ever known. Stories were told, however, personal accounts of those who had survived the downfall, passed from generation to generation. Stories of the horrors they endured, the terrible events they witnessed, and how the cruelty of mankind swept from city to city like an insane wind, hot and fiery, the embers of the burning dead filling the air. All their machines, medicines, and science couldn’t stop the Riy. Those who escaped the mass executions banded together, escaped to the forests, the mountains, anywhere they could find safety from what was devouring the planet.
With most people confined to the hours of darkness, when they found safety, every day became another battle. The sunlight that once warmed the faces of her ancestors now hurt her eyes and represented danger, a time for killing, for running, for fear. Litsa had lived in the darkness for most of her twenty-five years, and it was there she found solace.
She placed the book down gently and headed for the nursemaid’s chamber. Her wounds were speaking to her again, and she needed to find something to silence their murmurings.
Litsa dressed her wounds as best she could and returned to the warriors’ chamber. She searched through the abandoned weapons until she found a bow that suited her hand and a knife with the right balance and heft. Her bed was just as she left it, and she curled up on her woven grass mat. It was daylight outside, and her internal clock was screaming for rest. Even though she had been out for hours, sleep softly whispered.
Within minutes, she was sound asleep.
Chapter 26
Sif descended the ladder, fuming at the fact that two of the simplest parts on board had failed them, and their odds of getting back to Resolute were less than slim. Without the replacement pump from Resolute and a functional transmitter to let Lucas know what they needed to fix the ship, they were grounded.
Hunter was already on the surface, a few feet away. They were wearing the same suits they would have worn on Mars, as they still weren’t sure if the air was safe to breathe. Everything looked okay, but they knew this wasn’t the same world they left.
With her foot on the bottom rung, and the other hovering above the ground, Sif wondered if she should say something Neil Armstrong–esque, like One small step for man, one giant leap yadda yadda. She had rehearsed what she would say before stepping foot on Mars, knowing her words would far outlive her, just as Armstrong’s had outlived him, but decided it didn’t matter now. She hopped off the ladder, and for the first time in over a month stood on solid ground.
It was early morning, and the sun glinted off their visors.
“This feels like another training session, doesn’t it?” Hunter said. “Pretending to be on Mars.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Sif replied. They had spent hours wandering around a landscape much like this one, in full gear, practicing what they would do on the surface once they reached Mars.
The temperature, according to the readout on her wrist, was seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit. The sky was cloudless and blue—and the sun. Seeing it from space was remarkable, but now all Sif wanted to do was rip off her helmet, take a deep breath of nonrecycled air, and feel the sun’s warmth against her face.
“Northwest, correct?” Sif asked. The location of the fire they observed from orbit should be a short distance from their landing spot—a quarter mile at most. It would take them some time to get there in their suits, as their mobility was more suited for Mars’s gravity. As such, the suits felt heavy and ungainly.
“Right,” Hunter replied, pointing in the general direction he wanted to go. “Let’s get started. I have a feeling our cooling systems are going to struggle a little once we start moving, so I want to get there and back before it warms up too much.”
“Copy,” Sif replied. “Hunter, what time of year do you think it is?”
He looked at the position of the sun in the sky and checked his own temperature readout. “Late summer. August, maybe. It’s going to get a lot warmer.”
They walked side by side, heading toward the fire’s general location. Each step seemed more difficult than the last.
“Were you ever stationed around here?” Sif asked, knowing there were a few Air Force bases in this part of the States.
“No, but I’ve been here in the summer. Ellsworth, Rapid City, about fifty or sixty miles north-northeast. I spent some temporary duty time there when I was a captain. It gets hot as hell in the summer and cold as hell in the winter.”
“Real garden spot, huh?”
“Yeah. The Air Force is famous for those.” He paused. “Was famous.”
“Like Edwards,” Sif said. “A runway surrounded by miles and miles of flat desert.” Edwards Air Force Base was the home of the USAF test pilot school where she and Hunter first met.
“Edwards is one of the good ones. Tyndall was more my speed, though. Panama City, Florida.”
Sif had been to Tyndall, located on the Florida panhandle, east of Naval Air Station Pensacola, where she earned her wings. “I agree. No snow, lots of sun and sand.”
She stopped when Hunter grabbed her arm.
“Hold on,” he said. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“About fifty yards, eleven o’clock. I just saw something move.”
Sif looked to her eleven o’clock, stared. “No, I—” Then she saw it, too.
But there wasn’t just one. There were three.
“I think we just found who built the fire,” Hunter said.
Fifty yards away were three people crouching beside one another, trying to hide behind some bushes. From their postures, Sif could tell they were apprehensive and scared. “Jesus, what do we do, wave?”
Trying to decide on a proper greeting would have to wait, as all three of them bounded away, heading due north.
“I think we spooked them.”
“Look at us, Hunter,” Sif said, holding her arms wide. “Wouldn’t you be frightened if you saw two people in space suits wandering around?”
“We need to follow them.”
Sif could still see them, running to the north, glancing back over their shoulders. She couldn’t help but think about the Native Americans who once called this land home—these people were dressed so similarly. “If they’re heading home, I bet we won’t have to wait too long to meet the rest of them.”
Sif and Hunter followed the three until they disappeared from sight, still heading north in an almost straight line. They were heading home, and it didn’t matter that they were leading the strange beings in the white su
its and helmets right to it. To Sif, this meant one of two things: either they were too scared to think clearly—trying to lead them away would make more sense—or wherever they were going would provide safety, probably in numbers.
The sun was higher, and her suit grew hot. The cooling system was working, but the first drops of sweat were tickling her lower back.
“So what’s your plan, Hunter?”
“Plan for what?”
“When we meet the rest of them. Do we say, ‘We come in peace. Take us to your leader’?”
“Jesus, Sif, I have no idea.”
“You saw how scared they are. They’re going to see us as a threat. And as soon as they get back to their village, they’re more than likely going to send a welcoming party to meet us. And they might not be too welcoming.”
“Maybe,” Hunter said after a pause. “Hopefully, they still speak English, and we’ll be able to explain who we are.”
“What, through these things?” Sif said, tapping his helmet with her gloved hand. “If we’re going to talk to them, we’ll have to take our helmets off.” The farther they walked, the less Sif felt the need to keep her suit on. If there was a contagion in the air that could harm them, they would have to deal with it sooner or later. Seeing other people only strengthened her desire to unlatch her helmet and toss it to the ground.
“Okay,” Hunter said, “when we meet the rest of them, we’ll have to appear as nonthreatening as possible. Hands in the air, that sort of thing. We don’t want to take our helmets off yet. Not until we know it’s safe.”
Speak for yourself, Sif grumbled to herself, but she knew he was being cautious. If it was a disease that had changed the planet so drastically, then the survivors might have built up a resistance, an immunity she and Hunter didn’t have. But they would have to breathe the air eventually. “Look, I understand the need for caution—you and I both agreed we should wear the suits until we knew what we were up against—but we can’t stay in these things forever.”
“I know. I wish I could rip this helmet off just like you do, but we can’t. Not yet.” Hunter stopped, leaned over to view the three people’s tracks a little more closely. “Sif, look at this.”
She looked, saw how the footprints seemed to scatter in the dirt, then head off to the north again. “They stopped here for a moment. Waiting to see if we were still following them?”
“Might be, but look here, and here,” Hunter said, pointing at some dark spots in the dust. “What does that look like to you?”
Sif pressed a gloved finger into the dirt, lifted her hand. “It’s blood. One of them is hurt.”
“Can’t be too bad, though. That’s the first time I noticed it.”
Sif stood, looked around. There was nothing around them for miles, as far as she could see. “What do you think happened?”
“I don’t have any idea,” Hunter replied, standing erect as well.
“We keep going?” Sif asked.
“We keep going. But we keep an eye to our back. If it was an animal that hurt one of them, I don’t want it sneaking up behind us.”
Sif looked over her shoulder, studied the terrain once again. In the distance, she could see Beagle’s nose sticking up, but nothing else. They had first aid supplies in the ship—which might come in handy if they ever caught up with the injured person—but absolutely no weapons with which to defend themselves. She suddenly felt exposed. “I’m going to head back to Beagle to get the first aid kit. Maybe we could help the one who’s bleeding.”
“You don’t have to,” Hunter said, patting a pouch on his suit’s right leg. “I brought the basics. In case one of us got hurt.”
“See? I’m not the only one who’s ready for anything. Pretty good for an Air Force puke.”
Five minutes later, they encountered crop fields, a sure sign that the survivors hadn’t lost all of the most important skills over the years. These people were farmers. “Cornfields. I’ll be damned,” Sif said. She ran her gloves along the stalks—they weren’t as tall as what she remembered seeing while driving across Kansas or Nebraska, and the ears were much smaller, but it was corn just the same.
“I’d be willing to bet their village is close by,” Hunter said, spying a clear path heading away from the fields, worn into the ground by use. “If we follow this trail, it’ll lead us right to them.”
And then, Hunter fell.
It took Sif a second to register what she saw. She dropped to the ground as quickly as she could in the cumbersome suit and crawled on all fours to where Hunter lay.
He was on his back, motionless, the shaft of an arrow protruding from his face mask.
Chapter 27
Litsa sat up, listened. There were other people inside the Dak. She grabbed her bow and slung a full quiver over her shoulder. As she ran toward the entrance, she felt the reassuring weight of the knife as its sheath bounced against her thigh. If the Takers had returned, they would regret ever setting foot inside her home again.
She didn’t have to run far until she heard them more clearly. She stopped, nocked an arrow, and drew her bow, two more arrows at the ready, balanced between the fingers of her right hand. She rested the string against her cheek and listened.
One of them spoke. A woman’s voice, familiar.
“I’ve got to stop, just leave me here.”
“Talia? Is that you?”
Silence. Then a reply.
“Litsa?”
She released her pull on the bow and ran toward the voices. They had come back. Her enthusiasm quickly faded when she saw their faces. It was Talia, along with Conrad and Geller, and Talia was hurt. She was shot in the leg during the Takers’ assault. The men had wrapped the wound, but it was still bleeding. Talia looked weak, her eyes half-open. “How bad?” Litsa asked.
“The bullet is still in there,” Conrad said. He was a young man, late teens, and his eyes, although heavy with exhaustion, were bright with fear. “We haven’t been able to stop the bleeding.”
“Litsa,” Talia sighed, grabbing Litsa’s arm as they helped her to the ground, “thank God you’re here.” She was in her early twenties, a gatherer. “There’s more coming, we saw them.”
Litsa felt the heat rise up her neck. “Where? How far?”
“There are two of them, following us. We didn’t know where else to go,” Geller said. He was a little older than Conrad, but not by much.
“How far?”
“We moved as fast as we could,” Conrad said, “but they’re slower. Maybe five, ten minutes away.”
Litsa searched the boy’s eyes. He began his training to assume watch duties a few months back, so he knew how to handle a knife at least. “What weapons are they carrying?”
Conrad thought for a second. “None that I could see. We were close enough for them to use rifles when we first spotted them.”
There was something else he was struggling with.
“What is it?” Litsa asked.
“They don’t look like the others.”
“In what way?”
“They’re wearing white suits. Heavy, bulky. And helmets.”
The Takers wore dark clothes, black to match the night, and even though they wore face masks and goggles—which were rumored to assist their night vision—Litsa had never heard of them wearing what Conrad just described.
Maybe in the daylight, when the Riy are active, they wear different kinds of protective suits, Litsa thought. No matter. If they were Takers, she would kill them. And she had to move. “Geller, you take Talia to Lauren’s chamber. Clean the wound as best you can, and keep pressure on it.” He nodded. “Conrad,” she said, standing, “you’re coming with me.” She took the knife from her belt and handed it to him. He took it from her without hesitation, and Litsa saw the fire flicker in his eyes.
“I’ll do whatever you demand, Litsa.”
She slapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to the ranks, Conrad. Today, you’re a warrior.”
From the watchers’ station above the
fields, Litsa could see Conrad off to the west, partially concealed behind a clump of bushes, right where she wanted him.
And then she saw the Takers, approaching the fields. Conrad was right; they were moving slowly, almost leisurely, studying the ground as they walked. And then there were their suits—white, bulky, topped with large helmets with gold-tinted visors glinting in the sunlight. Seeing the two Takers in their white suits reminded Litsa of something she had seen as a child, but she couldn’t recall exactly what. One seemed slightly larger than the other, taller. The shorter one walked slightly behind the taller one. Litsa decided the taller one was the leader. She would take him first.
As they entered the fields, Litsa readied her arrows, laying them on the ground beside her. She studied the figures closely to see if they held any weapons in their hands. As Conrad said, it didn’t appear so, which infuriated her. How dare they return to this place, and how dare they think they could walk across their lands without expecting a fight.
Litsa nocked her first arrow and slowly rose to a firing position. They seemed to be studying the ground, pointing at something. Then Litsa realized what captured their interest in the dirt: a blood trail. Talia left a blood trail, and they were following it. Tracking one of the injured who escaped their raid. She pulled her bow, rested the nock of the arrow against her cheek.
When the taller one stood and pointed at the trail heading to the Dak, Litsa let her first arrow fly.
She nocked her second arrow, pulled, and then paused.
As she watched the leader go down, Litsa remembered where she had seen suits like that before.
Conrad, as instructed, made his move, blade in hand.
Litsa saw him, and started to run.
Chapter 28
“Hunter. Hunter.” Sif shook him, and he grabbed her arm.
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