Writers of the Future Volume 28: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year

by L. Ron Hubbard

  The intruder clambered through the last of the obstacles, closing the distance into a stone’s throw from Gage. Taller than Gage, yet skinnier, he moved like someone who took the time to stretch. He wore a slack pack, a bedroll tied to it with wharf rope. From what Gage could tell, the intruder had been one of the lucky ones. He was maybe a year or two older than Gage, which meant he had been just under the high-water line the crud drew at fifteen years old when it hit. Crud stained his teeth orange, yet like Gage, like Adah, like all the children who had survived the outbreak, he was resistant to it. It made him amongst the oldest people alive on the planet not encased in one of the crud’s gem-like cocoons.

  “Down on your knees!” Gage shouted.

  The intruder threw up his hands. “I’m not armed.”

  “Down!”

  The intruder dropped to his knees. Blood and grime painted his pinched, starved features. A bee sting swelled on his forehead like an angry third eye.

  “Remove your pack,” Gage said. “Slowly.”

  The intruder’s eyes hungrily flitted from Gage’s machete to the chickens, then he unclipped his pack’s straps and let it fall from his shoulders. At the sight of the intruder’s black T-shirt, Gage’s heart raced. In gold print, a spindly pine rose from the crest of a bare hill, the all but forgotten logo of Lost Pine B&B, their home’s former business.

  The front door noisily unbolted and swept open.

  “Stay inside,” Gage said, his eyes fixed on the golden pine gleaming from the intruder’s T-shirt.

  “I’m unarmed,” the intruder whimpered, then col-lapsed.

  Adah tromped down the porch steps and stopped at Gage’s back.

  “He’s been here before,” Adah said. She held a broken bottle by its neck—the unfortunate loss of a container repurposed as a weapon.

  Lost Pine lay far from paved roads, a piece of the pre-crud world tucked away off maps of the wooded valley. Only a rare guidebook’s directions led to it, made rarer for the one Gage had burned after memorizing its directions. He would be damned if it didn’t stay that way. He furiously wondered how many crud-kids had seen meaning in the intruder’s T-shirt, instead of just another useless logo.

  “Do something,” Adah said. She stepped forward, and Gage blocked her with the flat of his machete. He dropped the hens onto the lawn, where they clucked complaints.

  “We have supplies for one more,” Adah said.

  “We have supplies, Adah. How many they’re for, we decide.”

  “He’s stung.”

  “If he’s allergic, there’s nothing we can do. The crud’ll take the opportunity and cocoon him before he dies.”

  “We should try something,” Adah said.

  “No,” Gage said.

  “Did we spend all our time preparing for the worst to come just so we could turn away someone who’s in need, someone helpless?”

  Gage glared at her.

  Adah shoved Gage’s machete aside, strode toward the intruder and crouched beside him. Gage scowled and joined her. A black eye rimmed the intruder’s pale cheek with purple and brown. Something like sunburn spread up his forearms from his hands.

  “Looks like he’s been roughed up,” Gage said. “Looks like he handled something mean, too.” He indicated the intruder’s hands. “Skin’s not bubbling or dripping like it would with poison oak or poison ivy. Be careful. Could still be something that can spread by contact. If he comes around so we can talk to him, we’ll see if we want to help him.”

  Adah’s fierce eyes surprised Gage.

  “We’re not like the crud-kids in Portland,” she said. “You said we were better than them. ‘We deserve what we have because we’re better.’”

  Gage opened his mouth to dispute her, then shut it. She had made up her mind, using his words. It would be like arguing with himself. He tried another way of thinking about it.

  “He could’ve led others here, Adah, the same people who gave him that black eye and sent him climbing through our blackberries. We’re far enough away from everything that when he left wherever he was, people had to suspect he had a destination. We should dump him down the road and hope whoever might be following him doesn’t notice the trail he tore down our drive.”

  Adah sat the intruder up and worked her shoulder under his armpit. “Help,” she said. The word was soft. She looked up at Gage, and he saw in her wide, dark eyes the word was laced with venom, too, if he failed it.

  Gage helped carry the intruder inside.

  Gage brought the intruder into his home, but he would not entertain the idea of the intruder in their lives.

  For Gage, the crud should’ve overwhelmed the intruder and cocooned him. He and Adah should’ve been dealing with a man-sized cocoon as hard as murky yellow ice. Their noses should’ve stung from its mothball stink. That they smelled only the intruder’s weathered body odor upset Gage. The intruder was a survivor. But Gage couldn’t believe his scrawny body was all that had kept him alive. He didn’t weigh much more than Adah.

  They laid the intruder on a couch in the piano room. Adah retrieved water from a rain catcher—filled by frequent Northwest rains—and made a mug of pine needle tea using a match and four minutes of propane for the stove. Between Gage’s questions, she tilted the steaming tea to the intruder’s lips.

  “Who are you?” Gage asked.

  The intruder said his name was Monk.

  As far as Gage was concerned, crud-kids who changed their names after the outbreak were un-reliable, always trying to reinvent themselves and obscure who they were. Aliases were the opposite of alibis.

  Monk said he had been to Lost Pine before. It was when he had gotten the T-shirt. The couple manning the B&B had given it to him when his time was up, as a memento. They couldn’t keep boarders for long without making the place unsustainable.

  Monk’s voice remained low and steady, as though he had prearranged his words. Gage’s tone hardened.

  “What were you doing here?” Gage asked.

  Monk’s pinched features stiffened as though he was rolling words through a rock tumbler in his mind so when they came out their edges would be worn smooth.

  Monk had worked for his stay, tending the chickens and washing laundry and gathering kindling. He was willing to work again. He knew the law of the land—finders, keepers. He wouldn’t dispute it. Ownership of Lost Pine had changed hands when Adah and Gage found it unmanned. They were the rightful heirs. Who was he to say otherwise?

  Monk asked where Martin and Sue, the previous owners, had gone.

  “Crud got ’em,” Gage said.

  Monk said it was a shame.

  Gage wanted to hate Monk for his nonchalance. But six years of living with crud had changed the rules. You accepted loss at its face value—something was gone that once was there—or it tore at you and wore you down till the crud crept in and cocooned you too.

  Monk asked if he could see Martin’s and Sue’s cocoons.

  “We took out the shelves in the fridge and fit the woman’s—Sue’s—cocoon inside,” Gage said. Monk was appalled, and Gage explained. “It’s practical. The cocoon vapors hold off decay and mold growth. Her cocoon makes it a kind of fridge. It’s just not cold. Martin’s cocoon is sterilizing water in our rain catcher.”

  Monk said it was smart, but questioned if it was wise. Bodies should be buried.

  Gage glared at him. “We don’t have enough to waste for the sake of making ourselves feel good.”

  “Where did you go when you left Lost Pine?” Adah asked.

  It was a little over a month ago, Monk said. He had made his way to Portland, but the crud-kids had formed gangs he wouldn’t join. They had rolled him, then run him out of town. It was why his pack contained nothing but an old, dirty bedroll, a water bottle, and edible flowers and roots he had dug up since—nothing, really. The gangs weren’t to be trusted. They
were animals. Everybody grubbed for the same meal, same drink, same housing, getting meaner and meaner. He was lucky to make it out with a beating. He had seen others shot.

  “We’ve been there,” Gage said. “Portland’s far. Rough going between there and here.”

  Monk said he didn’t have a choice. He didn’t know of anywhere else to go. Word was cities were all breaking down. The backcountry wasn’t safe, but with fewer people to encounter, it was safer than lingering around a city and hoping for discarded scraps. Scraps were almost all anyone started with, anyway.

  “Seems like anyone with a mind to could’ve followed you,” Gage said.

  Monk said when he managed to shamble out of the city, the crud-kids left him for dead. People did that, just gave up on life and walked away from the city till they dropped. He had seen the bodies along the roads, encased in the yellowish cocoons that overtook them right before they would’ve died. Nobody had foreseen a different fate for him. He had only made it because he knew he had somewhere to go. It had given him strength.

  “I’ll ask you point blank,” Gage said. “Did you lead anyone here?”

  Monk said he never even thought to tell anyone about Lost Pine. He liked the place enough he wanted to keep it secret. When he could, on his way to Lost Pine, he avoided the slightest sign of other people. But it was a long haul. He was wearing down by the time he arrived, so when he thought he had made it, he made noise. He thought he had reunited with Martin and Sue. He couldn’t believe it. It was a miracle. Gage and Adah should understand.

  Gage set his lips in a hard, bitter line. Adah looked at him, pity crimping her open features, asking what they’d do with Monk now that they knew his story.

  “You can stay one week,” Gage said. “Make yourself useful, and we won’t have problems. Work for your food, and you can take some with you when you leave. It’s all anyone can ask anymore. We’re not animals. But if either of us so much as suspects you led someone here, I won’t hesitate to cut you down. I don’t have to be mad to kill you, understand?”

  Monk nodded.

  “We’re not a gang,” Adah added. “We’re honest people.”

  Monk smiled at her.

  “Could you eat some eggs?” Adah asked.

  Monk said he could.

  The television transfixed Gage with its live feed. He couldn’t look away. The first interstellar craft mankind had ever encountered was streaking through the high atmosphere over the Atlantic, somewhere between the Bahamas and Portugal. It had originated from near a Red Dwarf star, Gliese 876, and closed the fifteen light-years separating it from Earth, unnoticed until recently. Deep-space imaging spotted others in its wake, each less distinct than those preceding it. They spread out over years and would arrive in waves, until the largest one at the end, a moon-sized behemoth that was still a barely visible speck. The first one approached alone, fast and far ahead of the others.

  Gage’s parents had given in to his pleas and let him stay up and watch even though he had school in the morning. With a wink, they said it was so late he might not have to go to school, but they’d see. Sitting within an arm’s length of the television’s glow, his stomach tingled with excitement, roiled with fatigue. His parents felt like a warm, comforting presence at his back.

  Though it was a clear night, the footage wasn’t much to see. A dot like a miniature shooting star shimmered into view amongst the spill of constellations. Gage could only tell it was the craft they had been waiting for because a little special effect centered it in a highlighting circle. The camerawork was a bit shaky as it zoomed in and tracked the craft. A reporter said something about the footage being taken from the deck of a naval destroyer, one of many positioned throughout the Atlantic. His mic crackled with the heavy wind billowing his jacket. Picture after picture showed rows of fighter jets at the ready.

  Gage felt like he was joining history.

  The dot continued across the high atmosphere at a flat angle. Tiny pieces of it broke free and fluttered away like a faint tail of sparklers. Someone said something about ablative shielding, nothing to worry about; mankind and the aliens had found similar ways of dealing with heat shielding. It was an encouraging sign; human technology was on the right course. But the point of light kept going, kept shedding and getting smaller. The camera panned from one horizon to the other, following the shining dot as it passed overhead. A reporter said something about a splash in the ocean detected by the destroyer’s sonar, and orange, powdery snow. Then the camera went inside. The destroyer’s feed ended, replaced with two speechless talking heads back in the studio, their faces professional masks that stretched between worry and dignified composure.

  The warm presence of Gage’s parents went chill at his back, then cold. Gage wanted to turn around and tell them it’d be all right, wanted to turn around and have them tell him it’d be all right, too. He knew he shouldn’t be watching television. He was sorry. He should be asleep, resting for school in the morning. He felt like he should apologize. There was no television anymore, anyway. He shouldn’t have asked to watch. There hadn’t been television in almost six years. He wanted to turn around and warn his parents about it all. The dark urine wasn’t the result of dehydration or the vitamin C they took to prevent seasonal coughs. What they had was already in them, everywhere. Doctors didn’t matter anymore. Rumors about clean zones were untrue. Trade winds distributed the crud worldwide. They weren’t resistant like he was. It wasn’t their fault. He wanted to hug them and tell them he loved them. He wanted to tell them it wasn’t fair he’d spend the rest of his time with them in noisy mobs in grocery markets, pharmacies and hardware stores, exchanging worried glances with other people’s healthy kids; and at quarantine checkpoints standing by while they squabbled with officials over valid clean papers; and slowly marching in lines for experimental vaccine shot after experimental vaccine shot which would leave bruises but make no difference. The rushed transfer of everything they owned to him would be misguided. All he would gain from them in the end would be what he could carry, along with a doting neighbor’s daughter named Adah his parents had arranged to take before her parents succumbed to the crud.

  He knew it was a dream. He had had it before. He knew he should just turn and face his parents. They’d be cocooned in what looked like murky yellow ice. He’d see others in the gem-like coffins before he’d see his parents in them. He’d hear reporters say they weren’t dead, just preserved. He’d hear people say it didn’t hurt. He would turn and see his parents’ faces, heavy eyelids closed over their demonstrative eyes, mouths opened as if to say they loved him, too, yet filled with crud-amber. He wanted to take his eyes off the talking heads as they fish-mouthed without words on the television screen. He wanted to turn around and see his parents. It couldn’t be worse than what had happened since. It couldn’t be.

  But it was.

  Monk insisted he should help repair the obstacle course blocking Lost Pine’s drive. Gage put his foot down. Monk acted put out, but after a day of rest, his swollen stings showed little sign of shrinking, and Gage could tell he was relieved. Monk stood shakily on the porch. Adah held him steady by an arm.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Adah said.

  Gage made sure she had her broken bottle, in case Monk suddenly found his strength.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said.

  Gage dressed in layers of thick, long-sleeved clothing and leatherwork gloves. He secured a helmet he had made out of material salvaged from the screen door under his collars. The outfit made him clumsy and slow and hot. It was the only way he knew to keep the bees from swarming him that didn’t involve smoke, which might signal their presence from a distance.

  Looking at the path Monk had torn down the drive, Gage angrily set his jaw. To someone who could read the land, it was an arrow pointing to the front door.

  Gage had designed the obstacles as would a madman by adding thorny catches and spr
ingy trips at random, offering no pattern for the eye to catch on. It had taken him the entire month since he and Adah had arrived at Lost Pine to arrange them the way he wanted. Yet they hadn’t stopped Monk, and Gage couldn’t imagine they’d hold up against crud-kids when they got desperate enough to wander down the valley en masse. His mind set on redoing them before Monk’s departure, he expanded them.

  He worked his way from the road toward the house. Even in the shadowed understory, summer heat sapped his strength. Bees buzzed and climbed over his helmet and occasionally burrowed between the folds of his clothing to lodge stingers where he couldn’t get at them. The stings swelled and left sore bruises that made him question if he should be doing all of what he was doing. He imagined it was Monk who stung him.

  After setting a log atop a wedge trigger, he stepped back to inspect its camouflage when his foot slipped into the trigger hole. Pain knotted in his ankle, splintered into his shin. The log teetered above him. He didn’t know how much it weighed—far more than he could lift; he could only roll it. He scrambled away over crosshatched brambles, then faced the log with disappointment. It remained stable. It wasn’t good enough. It should’ve careened onto his shin and broken it cleanly where the hole held it in place.

  He put weight on his ankle and hissed. Tried again, hissed.

  Limping back to the house, he wondered if he should make the traps so mechanical. If they didn’t kill intruders, as they hadn’t killed Monk, they’d signal the presence of a designer and draw attention to Lost Pine.

  Pain screwed into his ankle with each step. He pressed through it and decided mechanical traps may not be prudent, but deterrents weren’t enough. Traps had to be perfect and deadly.

  He found Adah and Monk behind the house, cleaning out the chicken coop. Adah had crawled inside. Monk sat on a stump nearby.

  “Adah keeping you busy?” Gage asked.

  Monk said she was. She was quite the homesteader. First, it was laundry, then making soap with ash and fat saved from the chickens that had died, then filling in the night hole and digging a new one, then setting raccoon traps, then the coop.