Future Retold

by Daniel Pierce

  “Two thousand years. I’m from the old world—the place that built the ‘bots singing in your veins, and I know what could be again if we get rid of people like whoever it is that runs Kassos. What do you say? Give us a map. See what we do. Live free.”

  “What happens if it’s not for me?” she asked.

  Mira pointed into The Empty with her rifle. “We won’t do anything, but the desert will.”

  15

  Dayne wasn’t a good artist.

  She was an excellent artist. In short order, she drew a map that spanned areas we hadn’t imagined—the west and north in particular—while confirming a lot of the satellite data Aristine had on her tablet. What satellites could see was one thing; what their images could not explain was the purpose of some smaller settlements and the odd outpost that dotted the land.

  Dayne filled in huge gaps, and a picture began to emerge.

  “There are more people than I imagined,” I told Aristine as we examined the finished map, spread out on a large flat rock. The sun was well high, and engineers swarmed over the primitive equipment Doppkin had been using. They muttered in disgust, even while disassembling the rusted gear and replacing it with equipment that was centralized under one pumping system. They also began setting up a small pre-fab building that could sleep six people. The field would become a permanent asset, and the Daymares secured a perimeter to make certain there were no surprises while we assessed the wider picture.

  Silk and Aristine were making notes on a tablet as they asked Dayne pointed questions. With each answer, the need for highways became all the more pressing.

  “We need roads. Badly,” I said.

  “Which means labor, and food, and water. We don’t have it, and we’re not going to use ogres,” Silk said.

  “I have a solution,” Aristine said quietly.

  That got all our attention, so we waited to hear her speak.

  She pointed to the oil hauler, then back toward the Oasis. “We have oil. We have forges. We have almost limitless power.”

  I leaned back, eyes closed in disgust. “I should’ve thought of it.”

  “Thought of what?” Silk asked. “Bear in mind, I’m not of your time.”

  “Asphalt—that is, the stuff you can make roads out of—is more or less oil and stone. If the Chain’s forges can make oil tankers, then they can make a paving truck,” I said.

  “Trucks. We’ll shift more forges to building vehicles as soon as I send a message. I can have trucks rolling in a week. I can have three different kinds of vehicles rolling in three weeks, and we’ll have enough resources from this field alone to render out a highway system all the way to Kassos. And beyond,” Aristine said.

  “Will it slow down anything critical?” I asked.

  Aristine shook her head. “Not even close. We’ve been in need of an urgent cause, and now we have it. I’m going to engage the entire Chain in this, because the time is right. You intend to take Kassos, right?”

  “I do, and I will.”

  “Then we need to have a civilization that’s strong, connected, and well-stocked. This is how I can help. This is what I’m here for, Jack,” Aristine said.

  “I agree. With all of it. That means securing this area and setting all the wheels in motion, but we haven’t considered some events that are going to shape how I move forward. How we move forward.” I waved Dayne over from her seat, where she was under light guard by a Daymare.

  “Yes?” she asked me, her tone neutral.

  “Got a question, and it’s got nothing to do with the oil. Ever heard of a Cleaner?” I asked her.

  “The monster stories? They’re bullshit. That’s something we tell kids to keep them from going off when we’re on scav missions,” Dayne said.

  “Show her, please,” I asked Aristine, who thumbed her screen. She began scrolling pictures of the Cleaner, then its parts, and finally the images of the dead Scalebeast and the pictograms in its former cave.

  Dayne said nothing, but merely stared at the images. She swiped back to focus on the Cleaner, and it was a long moment before she looked ready to speak.

  “How big was this thing?” Dayne asked.

  “Bigger than anything I’ve ever seen, and not a natural creation. It’s a post-viral animal, and I find myself wondering why it came out to play. Anything happening in Kassos that would make these animals decide to move?” I asked.

  “Nothing in Kassos, but I know who I would ask.” Dayne pointed to the west, at a winding ribbon of water marked with settlements. “You might not like the welcome, but if anything is happening outside the city, that’s where I would go. The Wasseetuh have more scouts than houses, and they don’t stay in one place for long if they can help it.”

  “Wasseetuh? Is that their river?” I asked.

  “Wasshita in our time,” Aristine said. “It’s a good-sized river, with some wetlands and local timber now. Looks to be at least several hundred people, based on our data.”

  “And you say they’re scouts? What else do they do?” I asked Dayne.

  She gave a small shrug. “River things. Fish, furs. Wood and some scavenged metals. Lots of steel, though where they get it, I have no idea. This is all second-hand information. I only saw them in passing. They’re wild as hell and they don’t like outsiders; that much I do know. When their men come into Kassos, they drink and whore until the money’s gone, and then they go home. They never stay.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?” I asked her.

  “They’re born with rifles in hand, I think. They like to shoot,” Dayne said.

  “Hmph,” Mira and Neve both said as one.

  “Great. Wild snipers who love to drink. They sound like marines. I’m sure we’ll get along just fine, once we meet,” I said.

  “You’re not going there, are you?” Dayne asked me with alarm.

  “No, but we are. This field has to produce, and Aristine is a general in command of something more important than you can imagine. Silk is my second, and the Daymares are going to build a secure area here so that we can keep what we have. That leaves you, Neve, and Mira, but it’s going to come down to me meeting and talking to these people. No one else. I understand people like the Wasseetuh, even if I’ve never met them,” I said.

  “I’ll go,” Mira said.

  “I need you here,” Silk said. “You’re my partner in the welcoming party, and you know it won’t be long until people start showing up here, looking for food and safety.

  Mira thought about protesting, but then her shoulders fell. “Right. I’m surprised they aren’t here yet.”

  “They’ll show. As soon as word gets around that we have a stable presence, we’ll have a village pop up. I give it a day, maybe two before the first visitors arrive,” Silk said.

  “Better get Neve. We’ll go in a truck, and she can cover me. We find a scout, ask our questions, and find out what they need to form some kind of alliance. I need that river basin as a borderland for when we start pushing outward,” I said.

  Silk and Aristine shot me warning glances, but it was Mira who made her wishes known. “You get shot by one of those crazy fucks, and when I’m done killing them I’ll put you down myself.”

  I bowed slightly. “No gunshots. No wars. You have my word.”

  “I mean it, Jack.” Silk’s tone was serious.

  “Same,” Aristine said as Neve strolled up, rifle over her shoulder.

  “I’m coming home. I’ve got a lot to do,” I told everyone, then Neve lifted a brow. “We’re going to meet some snipers and hope they’re sober enough to help us understand what’s happening out here with the monsters. We need a safe landscape in order to pave these roads and start building.”

  “Make sure you do,” Silk said in a low tone then touched the back of my hand with her fingers.

  “Promise,” I said, and I meant it. She gave me a searching look then kissed my cheek.

  “How far is it?” I asked Dayne.

  “By foot or by truck? Either way, ther
e’s a road for part of the distance, and then things get tricky, because the scouts will be wide-ranging around twenty klicks out of their main territory. In all, about a hundred klicks, but it could be more if we have to go around any threats,” Dayne said.

  “Unless it’s a chasm or washout, we won’t have to,” I told her.

  “Why?” Dayne asked.

  “Because I’m the only threat that will matter out there,” I told her. “We leave in an hour. Mira, help us gear up. I need ammo, food, water. Meds, too, since we’re going into combat. Dayne, how’s your healing rate?”

  “Fast. Bleeding stops in a hurry,” she answered.

  “Good. We take the small truck.” I turned to Aristine. “Anything on your sat data that looks like trouble?”

  “Nothing you can’t handle. Some marshy areas—I’d watch for post-viral animals there. Good place for variants to show up, and once you get to the river, don’t go swimming. I have no idea what lives in there, but I know what doesn’t.”

  “Which is?” I asked her.

  Her smile was grim. “Humans.”

  16

  Dayne made another copy of her map that was small enough to take with us, and I said my goodbyes. Silk, Mira, Aristine, and Breslin all gave Dayne a quiet word that made her face go pale with fear; it was Silk who went last, and I distinctly heard the phrase slow and bloody even as she smiled at Dayne and touched her arm in a gentle manner. When we got in the truck, the former Kassos commander was utterly silent for the first ten klicks as I picked my way along a route her people had been using for the past few months.

  “I’m not going to shoot you, just so we’re clear,” I said, breaking the thick silence

  “No, but everyone else might if you get eaten by a monster. They’re looking for a reason to put me down.”

  “Take it as a compliment and a demonstration, then,” I said.

  “Of what?”

  “How we feel about each other in The Oasis. I’m the leader, but we’re more family than anything else. We’re thousands strong and growing, with five settlements, two of which are twenty centuries old. We’re not going anywhere, Dayne. We’re the future.”

  “Aristine said you have satellites?” she asked.

  I nodded. “And aircraft, and reactors, and more weapons than we’ll ever need. Why?”

  “Kassos has things like that, but it’s always in such an uproar that no one can agree how to use them. It’s a pit of snakes, all fighting for position, and for the future of their worthless children.”

  “Are all the children worthless? That’s a hell of a thing to say about kids,” I said, grinning.

  “The elites are. Never did a scav patrol. No time in the desert. No time at work. Soft, every one of them. Soft and dumb, and a lot of them don’t even survive to thirty. They’re killed in accidents, which look a lot like murder at the hand of other families. It’s a shithole, but it has power and money, so it’s a golden shithole.”

  “Dayne, I have news for you. What you’re describing is hardly new. It was the way of the world long before the virus ever broke free. In fact, it’s normal. It’s hard to turn the tide of that kind of system, but we’re doing it in The Oasis,” I said.

  “I hope you are. I really do.”

  “What’s our next reference point? I asked her. We were approaching a low rise, broken with cacti, scrub, and some odd trees that were deep green, narrow things with waxy leaves. They resembled holly trees, but arrow straight and crowded in groups.

  “Just past here. A small collection of traders, maybe ten people in all. There’s a crossroads, sort of.”

  “Safe to approach?” I asked.

  “In this truck, yes. They’ll think we’re from Kassos. Not many visitors out here.”

  We drove over the ridge as the sun began to set, casting the western sky in Vulcan’s fire. A line of iron clouds approached from the south, carving the light with a hard band of shadows. The houses were low, rough, and powered by a single windmill spinning lazily in the slow evening breeze.

  I touched the brakes as soon as I saw the first body.

  “Gun,” I said, parking and sliding out of the truck in a single motion, my gun in one hand and blade snapped out in the other. We were sixty meters away from the nearest house, and there was something pinned to the whitewashed wall of it. It was a woman, or what was left of her.

  “Left. Two more people,” Dayne said, her eyes wide with fear.

  I flicked my eyes to see what had her tweaked. There were two people run through with a long, white blade, but my eyes began to pick out details that revealed it was no sword that had killed them.

  It was a tooth.

  “Another Cleaner,” I growled.

  “How do you—”

  “Those people were killed by an animal, and it left its calling card. They’re pinned to the wall with a tooth of some kind, or maybe a claw. Hell, it might be a giant fucking albino porcupine, for all I know, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Not in this world,” I said.

  “Do you see the—the monster? Or whatever it is?” Dayne asked. To her credit, her gun never wavered, and her eyes, while rounded with fear, were open and alert.

  “Look at the ground,” I said. There was clear evidence of something big, though not as large as a Cleaner. “Lizard, I think, or something like it, but that piece of bone has me worried. Looks like it was fired at them, like a weapon.” I stopped then knelt to examine some more tracks. “Disregard that. It wasn’t fired.”

  “Those are human prints, and they’re alongside the animal,” Dayne said.

  “And then the prints vanish. Someone was riding that thing,” I said with disgust. Mounted lizard cavalry with bone spears and a love of murder. Fucking perfect. It must have been a Tuesday, because only Tuesdays can suck ass that hard, even two thousand years in the future.

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that. All the big lizards we’ve come across are too busy eating people to let them ride.” Dayne shielded her eyes into the western glare. “Came from the west, that’s for sure. I don’t know these people. Or person. I only see one set.”

  “Agreed. Let’s use our scopes and search. Wish we had a drone right now.”

  “You have drones?” Dayne asked. “No wonder you think Kassos is weak.”

  “Drones and more.” My smile was wintry, but I touched Dayne on the arm to let her know it was nothing personal. “You take east. I’ll look west. Let’s find this asshole.”

  Our search lasted ten seconds, when I heard the roar of a beast that could only be our lizard mount and its master.

  “Over there?” Dayne asked. “Sounded like an echo?”

  “Something odd about it, but yeah, let’s go.” I trotted toward the sound, weapons ready. We slowed as we approached a copse of trees huddled around a depression in the land, and some of the trees were shaking. The beast was inside them, and it roared again in a surreal echo, then I saw a long tail whipping back and forth in the underbrush.

  “It’s a well. Echo is coming from inside the well,” I said in a low voice. We stalked forward, eyes open for other targets, but it was only the massive creature—and then I saw the flash of metal and a round whined overhead. “Down!” I snapped.

  We hit the sand as a second shot came closer, but still high. My eyes picked up a man in the trees, standing on the swaying back of his mount, which came clear in my vision once I put the size in perspective. It was a monitor lizard similar to ones we’d shot before, but nearly seven meters long and with taller legs. It looked fast. And the eyes met mine as a meter-long tongue flickered in our direction. “Don’t shoot. I want him alive.”

  “The lizard or the man?” Dayne asked in shock.

  “Both, if we can help it.” I blurred into motion, leaving Dayne as I ran at top speed into the trees far left of the rider’s field of vision. He swore in a guttural tongue, then his lizard began to turn, but was foiled by the heavy growth and thicker trees close to the middle, where I could now see low stone
walls covered with moss. A spring house, I thought, and with a victim or victims trapped inside. When I hit the brush, I bore down on my muscles as white flashes filled my sight. I tore through the growth at a speed that was inhuman, running up the muscled tail of the lizard with the pommel of my blade lifted to send the rider into a deep sleep, but his gun was facing me, and he fired. There was no avoiding the shot, but I whirled and took the bullet across my leg. It carved a deep groove that scorched like lava, and then I was close enough to grab the sonofabitch by his greasy hair and jerk him into the air with me as I fell.

  Before we hit the ground, I had my hands around his neck, yelling that he should call off his monster. I didn’t know if he understood me, but my weight crushed him like an accordion, leaving him heaving for breath and on the verge of puking.

  I lifted my shotgun and put it on the nose of the—well, hell, it was a dragon. There was no other word for it, and the massive animal hissed, revealing a mouth full of teeth like ivory daggers. Then its cheeks expanded, and a dozen long spines stuck out. That was what had killed the people pinned to the house, and I bellowed at the thing to stand down while my foot was planted firmly on its rider’s chest.

  The man made a sound, and the dragon looked down, then flicked its long tongue out in a questing motion. The man repeated the sound, and the beast sat back on its haunches like a German Shepherd.

  “Well, fuck me,” I said.

  “I do not think so. She does not like your kind,” the rider said in a weak voice.

  “You speak? Good. Who’s in the spring house?”

  “I have no idea. I just arrived. I was searching the settlement when I heard screams,” the man said.

  “Bullshit. There are two dead bodies run through with one of your pet’s pigstickers. You expect me to think you weren’t getting ready to feed some more people to this—to whatever this thing is?” I asked.

  “Her name is Cyndar and no, she was not about to eat anyone. You may be able to kill me, but you will do so without me admitting a lie. Do you think my people are the only Konnodar riders in this land? Don’t be daft,” the man said, his eyes fighting to stay open. I’d hit him hard.