Echoes of War

by Cheryl Campbell

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t keep doing this. I keep getting it wrong.”

  “What’s with the damn riddles? Start making some sense or I’m leaving.”

  He shook his head, his face pinched like he was in pain. “I don’t know how.”

  “If I’m going to make E Block for supplies and return before dark, I need to go. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Stay.”

  “Why, Jace? You have to give me a reason for you acting like a freak about this. I don’t understand what you’re even talking about with dead dogs. Do you mean Brody? What does he have to do with whatever you’re trying to say? Tell me. Please.”

  “I can’t.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck and sighed with frustration. “I’m done with this guessing game.” She grabbed her pack. “Figure out how to explain whatever the hell this madness is you’re babbling about by the time I get back.”

  “Wait.”

  Dani finished securing the rusted buckles on her pack before slinging one strap over her shoulder. When Jace didn’t offer any additional answers, she slipped her other arm through the second shoulder strap and tied the pack close to her body. Then she headed out the door to start her day, ducking to clear the metal piping running through the interior of the abandoned building they lived beneath as she went—a habit at this point.

  As she neared the exterior walls of the building, she noticed that the sun was out. As much as she wanted to walk in the sunlight and enjoy the warmth, she forced herself to adhere to Jace’s rules. She moved along the walls just inside the structure. Rats squeaked and scampered out of her path. In the winter, when scavenging undetected was more difficult due to the cold and snow, she and Jace dined on rats to stay alive. Tonight, she planned to eat fish. She hoped her deranged uncle’s wits had returned by then.

  She slowed as she reached the collapsed corner of the building—a casualty of one of the many Warden bombs used to capture New England decades earlier. The Echoes had attacked and captured every major city in the world, killing billions of humans in the process. They’d then declared themselves wardens over Earth. Fortunately, the Wardens occupying Boston hadn’t bothered much with the smaller cities of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, or Portland, Maine, after the initial attacks.

  The human and Echo Brigands sometimes formed alliances, but Jace had always insisted that he and Dani operate solo, just the two of them, as a team. The things he’d said—questioning their ability to continue to survive—worried her. She didn’t want him to give up.

  Food, she thought. I’ll get us some fish tonight. Real food. That should help ease his concerns.

  Four miles of avoiding MPs and other Brigands lay between her and the wharves. She left the shadows at the corner of the building, jogged across the deserted street, and slowed slightly to enjoy the sun. A dog barked in the distance, and Dani spotted another Brigand moving around another building. She increased her pace and moved back into the shadows.

  CHAPTER

  3

  The MP patrols were predictable, as usual, so Dani avoided them with ease. She nodded to a group of three Brigands as she passed them. She’d seen the trio, two men and a woman, many times before in her movements between blocks, but she never stopped to chat.

  The woman smiled in response to her nod, and Dani continued on her way. She had another mile before reaching the center of the Old Port in E Block. With the police occupied with the C Block raid, things were dead; Dani moved through the city without seeing a single MP.

  After going another eighth of a mile, she stopped in the shadow of a building and checked her surroundings. No people moved about, and the only sound was the wind stirring leaves and debris through the streets. She took a step toward the sunlight—and someone grabbed her upper arm. Startled, she spun to strike the person, but another hand caught her wrist before her fist made contact. She blinked several times, and as her eyes focused, Jace’s face sharpened into view.

  “Stay in the shadows,” he said.

  Dani jerked her arm and wrist free from his grasp. Her heartbeat thundered in her chest, and she tried to calm the effects of the adrenaline surge. She slowed her breaths and regained some control. “You’re a fucking ninja. Why the hell are you sneaking up on me, anyway?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Now? Now you want to talk? I so want to kill you.”

  “Not as much as you’ll want to when I’m done.”

  Dani’s brow creased with confusion. Her uncle stood before her, wringing his hands. He paused just long enough to gesture for her to follow him before resuming his nervous hand movements.

  Dani followed Jace without speaking until he stopped near one of the many columns of a long-deserted parking garage housing rusted heaps of abandoned vehicles. The cars and trucks were barely recognizable after decades of Brigands scavenging metal, tires, wiring, parts, and anything else that could be utilized in some way.

  “You may want to sit,” Jace said.

  Dani folded her arms across her chest—bumping her burn in the process. She flinched and shifted her posture. She had a hard time being defiant when the tiniest insult to her wounded hand sent shock waves of pain up her arm.

  “Don’t sit.” Jace took in a deep breath that made his chest rise with the effort. He expelled the breath in a controlled manner before meeting her eyes. “You’re not human. Neither of us is. And … I’m not your uncle.”

  Dani stared at him for a moment. Then a burst of laughter escaped her.

  Jace scowled. “I’m not joking.”

  “Of course you are,” Dani said, still laughing.

  Jace shook his head.

  Her smile faded and turned to a frown.

  “It’s the truth, Dani.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You think you’re twenty-five years old, but you were originally born in 2058. Linearly speaking, you’re closer to fifty-five. You’ve had a couple of resets.”

  Several seconds ticked by while Dani searched for her voice. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “I’m an Echo?”

  Jace nodded.

  “Not a human?”

  “No.”

  “Couple of resets? You mean I’ve died twice?” Dani paced as she talked.

  “Yes.”

  “So I’m fifty-five, and you’re not my uncle? What are you?”

  “Your brother. Half-brother. Same father but different mothers.”

  A nervous laugh escaped Dani’s mouth, and she ran her hand through her already tousled hair. Her pacing stopped. “Bullshit. Echoes remember their past lives. I don’t remember anything but growing up with you as my uncle. I have only lived as a Brigand, so I could not have been born before the war started.”

  Jace resumed wringing his hands. “Yeah. That’s why this is so complicated. You’re the only Echo I’ve known to forget their past when they reset. You … you forget all of it. You’re an anomaly. You seem to displace everything except your survival skills each time. I think it’s a subconscious thing.”

  Dani laughed again. “You’re killing me with this.”

  “Please, just listen. You were eleven when the Wardens attacked and orphaned a few days later. Your mother and our father were Echoes, but the Wardens killed them again while they were regenerating. Their deaths became permanent. I was seventeen and took care of you, but you were killed when you were twenty-five. As long as Echoes don’t suffer a catastrophic injury, like a beheading, or get killed mid-regen, they heal their damaged bodies and return to a younger point in life—usually somewhere in their late teens or in early adulthood. But you returned as a ten-year-old. I cared for you in your second life, but you died at twenty-five again. You’re caught in a cycle and I don’t know how to break it and keep you alive. What I do know is that you always get a dog, the dog dies, and you die a few weeks later.”

  She remembered his words from earlier that morning: “It all starts with the dog.”

 
; He shifted his messenger bag from his back to his side, pulled the flap up, and removed a tattered book from inside. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I started writing everything down, trying to figure out how to break your loop. I’m old, Dani. I haven’t died yet, so I don’t know what age I will return to, or even if I will. I’m only half Echo. How do I take care of you again as an old man?”

  Dani opened the book and flipped through several pages of notes. They blurred before her eyes. She turned to the beginning of the book and found a photograph of a family standing together: a man, woman, teenage boy, young girl, and dog in front of a tall, stone wall.

  “I was the result from a relationship our father had with a human woman before he married your Echo mother,” Jace said.

  “Her?” Dani asked with a nod at the photo in her hand. “This is my mother?”

  “Yes. Flip it over; read the back. Dad always liked having photos in his hand. He hated the digital shit.”

  “Jason, Dani, and Br—” Dani’s hand shook, and she closed her eyes.

  “Brody. You adopt a dog, and name him Brody. The one you lost two weeks ago, he’s your third.”

  “Jason,” Dani muttered. “Jace.”

  “Yes. See the year?”

  Dani forced her eyes open. Her voice shook when she spoke. “2068.” The child in the photo could easily be her. She placed the picture back in the book and turned more pages, glancing over the years and notes. She pulled out another photo of a young woman with a dog. The woman was her, no question; the dog wasn’t her Brody, but it was similar-looking to him.

  “I don’t have any other pictures of you. Photographs and printing are luxuries we’ll never have again.”

  She replaced the photo inside the book and closed it before passing the journal back to Jace. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

  “You’re safer on this planet as a human, believing you’re human. I’m telling you now because I am desperate to keep you from dying again. I’m old, older than I should be. Hardly anyone survives past fifty now with this war, and I’m well past that age. An elderly man can’t care for a child.”

  “So this is about what you need?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I thought this life, your life, would be different, but I see the same events happening again.”

  Dani’s anger flared, and she tightened her hands into fists, ignoring the throb it produced in her right hand. “You should have told me sooner.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have, but I didn’t know how without making you panic.”

  “I’m not panicking! I’m fucking livid,” she growled.

  “I am sorry. Please, let’s just go back home.”

  “I need time to think through this, and I don’t want to be around you.”

  “I must stay close in case something happens to you, Dani.”

  “What will happen is I’ll strangle you. Leave me alone, Jace. Give me time.”

  “I’ll give you space. Go home, I’ll scavenge our food today, and we can talk more when you’re ready.”

  Her mind was too distracted for scavenging. Stealing from MPs required her full attention. “Fine. I’ll head back to our block. But don’t expect me to be home.”

  “If you die alone, you will be vulnerable until you recover from regenerating. If you’re killed during that time, it’s permanent. You don’t get another chance.”

  “I’ve seen Echoes die; I know how it works.”

  “When you recover, you’ll still be a child, without any memories other than your name. You’ll be an incapacitated ten-year-old girl.”

  “I get it,” she said, though she didn’t truly comprehend anything he’d told her.

  “I don’t want you to be alone.”

  “Do I die the same way each time?”

  Jace nodded. “Friendly fire.”

  “Oh, that’s perfect.”

  “You die with a gun in your hand.”

  “This is why you’ve been so uptight and making me leave mine behind lately?”

  Jace nodded again.

  “I promise I won’t get in any gunfights today,” Dani said. She turned to leave the garage.

  “Dani.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  When she didn’t hear him follow after her, she glanced back. He remained where she’d left him.

  Dani kept walking. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess, and she was desperate to find a place to sit and think. Everything she’d ever believed had just been upended. Jace was right. Shit had just gone sideways.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Dani’s mind wandered, shuffling the various pieces of information Jace had just given her. She had more questions for him, but she also didn’t want to speak to him again for a while.

  Maybe he’s just fucking with me. Some sick joke. She shook her head.

  The family photograph was old; that could have been any girl in the picture. There were plenty of reasons to doubt its authenticity. But the second picture she couldn’t deny. That was her in that photo.

  She stopped walking and closed her eyes, trying to remember the images better. Surely there was something in the second photo to prove Jace wrong.

  The dog in both photos looked so much like the dog she’d recently lost. Brody, her Brody, had been a thick-built ninety pounds of muscle. Like the dogs in the pictures, he’d been dark-colored with a splash of white on his chest. When scavenging at night with him, Dani had smeared grease on his chest to cover the white fur. She absentmindedly rubbed her fingertips against her thumb, remembering the feel of his soft coat.

  According to Jace, Dani made the same mistakes before dying. But Brody hadn’t been a mistake; she’d adored that damn dog. I miss you, B.

  Her thoughts shifted again. Do Echoes have Echo dogs that can return from the dead too?

  She didn’t have the answer. She hadn’t heard of this before with animals, but maybe that explained why she’d ended up with the same, or almost the same, dog in her last two lives plus this one.

  Jace must be fucking with me. I can’t be an Echo. This is madness.

  “Sssss.”

  Dani’s eyes flew open, and she turned her head toward the source of the noise.

  The woman she’d seen earlier in the day slipped her head out beyond the shadow of a building. “Do you want to get caught?” the woman asked.

  Dani blinked in response and used her hand to shield her eyes from the bright sun. She realized she was standing in an uncovered parking area overgrown with grass and weeds, completely in the open. “Shit.”

  “Yeah,” the woman said.

  Lost in her meandering thoughts, she hadn’t paid enough attention to her surroundings. Dani sprinted to the nearest shadows, which happened to be where the woman was hiding.

  The stranger stepped back, a wary look on her face, as Dani approached.

  Dani held her hands up to show they were empty. “I’m not here to cause trouble. You’ve seen me around before.”

  “Why are you standing out in the open?”

  “I, uh, got distracted. Wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

  “That’ll get you killed, y’know.”

  “I know.” Dani moved to leave, then realized she had no idea which direction to go in. “I’m a bit turned around. I’m in C Block, but where?”

  The woman pointed. “Fore River is that way.”

  Dani winced. She’d been so deep in her mental fog that she’d missed her turn to go back to B Block. She didn’t remember crossing the bridge, but she was now deep inside C Block. “MPs are doing a raid here today.”

  The woman’s face paled with the news. “Today? My brothers are scavenging inside the block. Help me find them, please.”

  Dani’s middle rumbled with hunger. C Block had the best food with the fewest guards. Her plethora of questions for Jace still clouded her thoughts, and she physically shook her head to rid herself of them.

  The woman tilted her head and stared at her.

/>   “Sorry. A little dizzy,” Dani said with a shrug.

  The woman didn’t seem to notice the lie, and if she did, she didn’t care enough to make a comment.

  “I need to get my bearings before I go anywhere,” Dani said. She stepped out of the shadows with her eyes cast upward and turned in a circle. She found a building she liked and nodded before moving back into the darkness. “Come with me or stay here, but I’m going to the top of that building. If the MPs haven’t moved in yet, I’ll help you.”

  “Your sightseeing will take too long. I’ll go without you.”

  Dani nodded. “Thank you for catching my attention to bring me out of the sun. I hope you find your brothers.”

  The woman gave her a quick nod and was gone. Dani wished she’d thought to ask her name, but Brigands tended to have short life spans and even shorter friendships with others. Even Brody had outlived many Brigands she’d met—until one killed him. Her chest tightened and she focused her attention on the task ahead. She refused to rehash the details of the night her dog died.

  Remembering Jace’s warning, Dani decided to pass on stealing MP food today and just leave C Block. She jogged through the streets, hugging the seams where buildings met the ground, until she reached the tallest building in the immediate area. She climbed into the lower level of the structure through a broken window and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Only fragments of wooden furniture remained; the rest had clearly been dismantled for firewood or crude weapons long ago. Walls had been ripped out at some point, too, and several studs were splintered or missing. She didn’t loiter in the lower level long enough to figure out what kind of place the building might have been before the war. It didn’t matter.

  After finding a set of stairs, she crept her way up them one step at a time, pausing when the structure groaned under her movement. Not all Brigands were friendly. Squatters guarded their homes, even if they were nothing more than a closet. She stepped over piles of debris, noting as she did that the trash was a mix of old and more recent refuse. A decomposing rat lay among one of the piles she passed.

  Part of the stairs were missing, so she couldn’t go any higher. She slipped through an open door and tiptoed across the torn carpet and broken planks to reach a window. She used the sleeve of her jacket to wipe at the haze covering the glass and looked out over the block. She’d never know how she’d managed to wander so deeply into C Block. At least now she knew exactly where she was and how to go home.