Mira grabbed her gun, moving silent as a spirit. Silk faced the fire, eyes flicking over her shoulder without moving. She was in the worst position, needing to turn and grab her weapon before she could even target the predators. Raising my gun, I drew down on the alpha, a beast that had once been magnificent, I was sure but was now just a large, hungry dog with fangs.
“Take them?” Mira asked.
“Not yet, unless you need another pillow?” I said in a low voice.
The wolves watched us; their eyes intense golden orbs as they lifted their noses in unison, and their heads turned back and forth. They glanced at us, then each other, and faded into the night without a sound.
“Why did they leave?” Silk asked after a minute. The air around us was thick with tension, dissipating only when I stoked the fire higher, adding the bundle of bleached sticks we gathered along the way.
I could only think of one reason why, especially given that I neither heard nor smelled anything, and saw only the dark sky and a wealth of stars.
“Something more dangerous than they are, and it’s just over that rise,” I said, pointing with my chin into the gloom.
Silk gripped her gun tighter, squinting into the darkness. “How close are we to the forest?”
“A lot closer than I thought,” Mira said. “The breeze is coming our way, so whatever it is, the wolves smelled it.” Her smile was an orange crescent in the firelight. “Still think you’re good enough to kill whatever waits for us in the trees?” she asked me.
“I’m going to find out. So are you, but not until just before dawn. Silk, take this watch, then wake me. We leave two hours before light. I want to be in sight of wherever we’re going before the sun comes up, so we aren’t surprised by any of their early risers,” I said, easing back on my elbows. I didn’t fear the wolves, and if predators from the Empty feared what the forest held, then the only thing to do was sleep. There was no sense in greeting mutant killers in a haunted forest without some shuteye, and there was enough rabbit left over for a full meal before we struck out.
Silk edged closer to Mira, and they leaned on each other, eyes sweeping the sky together as they pointed out stars, planets, and the brief flare of a silent meteor, streaking south in cold fury. I let my eyes close in the chase for sleep, and the skeletons of Alatus were waiting—just as I knew they would be. They waved to me, smiling with jack-o-lantern grins as their jaws tumbled to dust, always laughing and waving me forward, deeper into a dark, silent forest that smelled of decay.
I knew it was a dream, but even so, I listened, careful to mark their words, my dream-self nodding, always, as if I could understand what they were saying, but it was all a lie. There was no secret to be found in my sleep, only the memory of a dead world, dead people, and a life that was stolen from me when I crawled in a metal tube to slumber through the end of mankind.
29
“Time to get up,” I said in a low voice as Mira and Silk slept next to each other, their breathing a song of unison, dozing away the witching hour.
Mira woke first, her scavenger’s reflexes making her reach for a knife as I put a calming hand on her arm to still any violent reactions. “Fire’s up, and there’s food.”
Silk woke next, her eyes fluttering open, then locking on me. “I’m up. All quiet?” she asked, displaying a mind that came to life the moment she was awake.
“Not a sound, except something fighting in the distance. Sounded like two women in a deathmatch,” I told her.
“Foxes. They don’t play well with their own or anyone else for that matter,” Silk replied. What she seemed to think was no big deal set the skin on my neck rippling, as the two combatants yowled their way into the distance, punctuated by occasional screams of pain.
“Good to know. I thought they weren’t quite so angry,” I said, offering them both strips of rabbit. They ate quickly and without fuss, breaking camp in near silence. We became a team during our trip south, and if we could survive the next few days, things would get even better.
“Not angry. Breeding season,” Mira mumbled around a mouthful of rabbit. She bolted the strip and stood, wiping her hands free of the grease. “Not everyone is good about sharing a mate,” she said, her lips curled up at the corner.
“I do feel foxy sometimes,” Silk said, stifling a laugh. “Ready for the approach,” she said after finishing her own meal.
We walked fifty meters, slow and steady before stopping at the edge of a low rise. In the distance, a smudge huddled against the dark, more a suggestion than a shape. “It’s just there, and we’re going to follow a simple plan.”
“Which is?” Mira asked.
“I’m going to kill everything that moves. We don’t know what happened to the people in that forest, but based on the letter from our dead friend, I’m assuming it isn’t good. They’re corrupted by the ‘bots, and they don’t know what they’re playing with. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the ‘bots were turning them into some kind of forest creature, compelled to plant trees and haul water, but there’s no way of knowing. Also, it’s too dangerous to give them a chance to explain. Not after what happened to the Harlings.”
Inhaling, I let my lungs drain slowly because what I had to say next was more than just a death sentence, it was my first true decision as a leader. Due to the ugly nature of the Empty, my first judgment was going to seem brutal, and I needed Mira and Silk to understand I wasn’t going forward without some serious thought.
“I can’t let anyone have this technology without understanding it. Doing that would be like giving a sword to a baby, except the baby can hurt a lot of people. We end this here, as quickly as we can and get ready for the arrival of Taksa, Senet, and whatever crazies they bring with them. You need to believe me when I say that whatever happens over in that forest is going to seem childish compared to what’s coming,” I said.
“We know,” Silk said. “We’ve seen cultists before. They have fire in their eyes and poison in their hearts.”
“I suspect these cultists are different from anything you’ve ever seen. They’re superhuman, but not in a good way. We end them and the Black Room as soon as we secure this forest. Now, when we go in, eyes up, ears open, and no matter what happens, we stay together. Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” Silk replied, but Mira just lifted her gun. So much of her life had changed, I felt a surge of pride to see her square her shoulders and head into the fight without a second thought.
Above, the stars were still pulsing bright as dawn was a solid hour or more away. It was the witching hour, when mankind finds the deepest sleep and sentries have a hard time keeping watch, their instincts telling them to rest.
We stalked across the sands, low and silent. In the light breeze, something smelled entirely new.
Life. That was the scent, green, wild, and rich, tinged with moss and water droplets. It was a smell so different from the Empty it could be another planet, which it was to Mira and Silk. To me, it smelled like the mountains of Carolina after a summer rain, bursting with living secrets and shadowed places where water could pool. Birdcalls, the hum of insects, and even the chittering of an angry squirrel, filled the air the closer we got.
We paused at the edge of the growth, and I took stock of what was happening. It was easy to see from the height of the trees, the closest to us no more than saplings, thin and wiry, reaching up to the stars with few leaves and fewer branches. I don’t know a lot about trees, but what I saw seemed impossible. There were live oak and ash, cedar and desert willow, all growing tall and wide, getting higher as they receded toward the center of the garden. I couldn’t think of it as anything else. It was a garden of trees, cared for and planted to carve out an island of green in a searing expanse of sand.
I was reaching to touch the leaf of a small black cherry when I heard the sound of breathing, low and steady. Animal, I mouthed in the dark, but I didn’t need to because it was loud enough that Silk and Mira heard it too.
I drew a blade in complete
silence, moving forward into the space between saplings. The garden was a wheel, each spoke a small irrigation ditch with a sandy white bottom. Someone—or something—was lining each canal with rocks, keeping the precious water in line to reach out under the shaded protection before vanishing into the soil. It was primitive but effective, and the garden grew to heights over fifteen meters in the middle. The builders had been here for some time.
In the midst of all that life, another smell was present as we advanced. Blood was in the air, and not new, living blood. This was the stench of death; the reek of a predator too lazy to clean up after a kill.
Predators are only careless when they feel secure. That meant we were in a place where people weren’t welcome, and the last fleeting moment of guilt left my mind as I clenched my teeth. The decision was made, and I felt no uncertainty.
I moved ahead, blade at the ready and had a moment of déjà vu as the creature was revealed by the light of a desert sky. I knew where Hardhead came from and so much more.
“Hurk?” it asked, hand poised as it stripped the flesh from a child-sized human skull. It was dark and huge; its muzzle smeared with gore as it reclined like a drunken sailor, legs splayed out and leaning on an elbow. My blade whispered forward, severing the neck with a flashing cut as the monster slumped over before it even knew it was dead.
I knelt near the spurting body, rolling the head to one side for a closer look. The creature was big but not as distorted as Hardhead, with ivory fangs clotted with bits of congealed blood, likely from one of the missing Harling family. It was a small blessing to know that we’d avenged one death. That left twelve or more to go, and nothing but opportunity before us in the quiet grove.
“Was it a man?” Silk asked quietly.
“Once,” I said. I lifted one of the enormous arms, parting the thin fur. Lurid scars ran up and down the muscles in a network of lines. “Needles, and lots of them. Seems like someone knew just enough to get the ‘bots in, but not the dosage or treatment. It made them into monsters.”
“Maneaters,” Mira said with disgust. Even two thousand years in the future, certain things are still considered wrong. She spat on the twitching corpse, then smiled in apology. “Sorry.”
“Understood,” I said. “Know what we’re looking for now?”
“Can smell ‘em first. Yeah,” Mira said, gun at the ready. “Blades or guns?”
“Blades until we’re blown, then guns. Stay quiet for as long as possible,” I told her. Conserving ammunition was a good idea, especially when I had a body strapped with muscles and two long blades at the ready.
“Got one,” Silk said. She pointed to the left, under a taller oak, its branches spreading wide over two water channels. A hammock hung between the oak and its sister tree, swinging lightly from the user’s motion. “Yours,” Silk said to Mira, who obliged by sliding away and under the swinging hammock. Her knife entered the creature’s neck at the top of the spine, making the entire body shake like a leaf in the wind before falling still. A patter of blood fell freely to splash on the stony ground, and her smile was bright in the starlight.
“Done,” Mira whispered when she arrived back.
“Nice cutting,” I told her.
“Easy when they’re sleeping. Keep on?” she asked.
“Onward,” I said. We stayed close, winding our way to the left. We would cover the grove in concentric rings, growing closer to the center where the most intelligent creatures would be, if my suspicions were correct. Since there was greater safety in the middle, the most bestial creatures would be shoved out to fend for themselves, like ugly cousins no one wanted at a picnic.
For the next thirty minutes, we killed until blood filled the air with the stench of copper and pain. We left more than twenty hulking corpses behind us, catching almost all of them sleeping or unaware. Only when we reached the inner ring did the beasts begin to change, and that’s when I knew my feelings would have to be put away in favor of cold reason.
“Got him,” I said, sliding my blade out of a monster, his hands flopping like a huge, furred puppet.
“Different,” Mira whispered, and she was right.
Turning the monster’s face up, I had a moment of sickness before I could fight back the wave of emotion. It was a monster, but far more human than anything else we’d seen before. There was precious little fur on him, and unlike any of the others, he wore a primitive pair of pants made from patched cloth, a belt of uncured leather holding them up in a desperate show of modesty.
“It’s a man,” I said, knowing I was only half right.
“Look at his hands,” Silk said. She reacted to my tone of alarm, lifting one of the creature’s fingers to reveal a horn-like nail, sticky with blood. “This is no man,” she said.
Ahead, a thump revealed a man leaping from a tree to land in a crouch, his voice carrying to us with ease. “His name was Okrin, and he was family to me.”
The snick of guns being aimed at the new threat gave me time to consider my own options. This was the leader, and though his voice had an element of the wild in it, he was no beast. Not entirely, and that meant I had questions.
“Before I kill you, will you speak?” I asked him.
His laugh was rich and mellow, like a teacher mocking a student who has just challenged their authority in class. “What would you like to know of me, scavenger? How I built this island of life? Why we find your kind so...satisfying on the plate? Perhaps you would like to know how we became so powerful, though your blades have put most of my people to death tonight. An impressive feat, given their tendency to eat small ones like you.”
I stepped forward as the first rays of dawn broke free, lighting the garden in the colors of a distant fire. The sun revealed him to be a man, tall and muscled like me but with teeth that were far too big for his mouth. He grinned, and the incisors gleamed in the rising sun. In his hands, he had a pistol and a short sword, both pointed toward me in a steady grip.
“I have many questions for you, but the first is the most important of all,” I said.
“I listen,” he replied, his dark eyes flat with interest.
“Do you want to die here or in the Black Room of your mistress?” I asked. His answer was a muzzle flash as he fired the pistol, diving away with the speed of a jaguar.
The bullet went high, cutting leaves from a black cherry. “Wrong call,” I said, plunging ahead in hot pursuit. “Get the edge. Kill him if he tries to break from cover,” I told Mira and Silk. They withdrew, guns drawn and scanning, and the small forest flew past me in a smear of green as I ran. There was no need for stealth, and the beast couldn’t be cornered.
That meant I had to run him down like a wild dog.
The garden was big but not so large that I couldn’t hear him tearing through the gravel paths in powerful stride. He was staying outside the central area where the structures would be. That meant he didn’t want to face me in a confined area, and I preferred not chasing him through the trees. We were in a whirlwind stalemate, running in circles until I slowed and did the only thing that could bring our chase to a close.
I slowed, went silent and stalked through the central path toward some obscured shapes that turned out to be the partially reconstructed ruins making up the heart of the garden. There were a half dozen buildings—low, concrete structures in various states of repair. The creatures had been busy. Sliding through the forested shadows, I took a position counterclockwise, listening with my whole body as the monster realized I was no longer in pursuit.
I pulled hard on my ‘bots, willing them to slow my breathing. They obliged, and I chalked their ability up to the growing list of things my new body could do during battle, be it the kind in the field or the bedroom. In stoic silence, I waited, but the beast kept walking, slow but steady, his footsteps louder than gunshots as my senses slipped into overdrive. He was fifty meters away, skulking from tree to tree, his great head turning to sniff the wind with huge, snuffling draughts of air like a coursing hound.
&
nbsp; I knew his own heart would be roaring in his ears after our chase, and his chest heaved up and down as he fought to regain his own wind. Tough break for you, buddy. You should have done more cardio.
My knife took him in the leg, a glancing blow but enough to spin him outward, arms rising in defense as he shot again, the round going low and sending a spray of grit up in the growing light. I rushed in, my feet a blur, hand reaching out to snap down on his meaty wrist, twisting, crushing, pulling—all until he dropped the gun with a howl of rage. His short sword whistled through my hair, passing in a flash of dangerous silver as I raised my left hand and punched him in the elbow with a sickening crack.
His arm hung limp as he continued the spin, eyes wide with shock, not pain. This was a beast who was used to winning, but he’d never met me before.
“You cannot—” he said, but I cut his bullshit off with a short blow to the chest, then followed with a kick to the knee and a crushing right hand that fractured his collarbone. I wanted the bastard alive and tame. If it took fifty punches, I had time enough and energy for everyone.
In his black eyes, I saw something he had probably not felt for a long time. Fear.
“One piece at a time,” I told him, dropping under his clumsy swing to unleash a flurry of blows that hammered his ribs. He folded forward, then back again as I used a sweet uppercut that sent two fangs flying in a spray of snot and blood. His roar was an inhuman thing, free of words or meaning except the note of defeat. He was going to die, and he knew it.
I hit him again with the flat of my hand, stunning him as he slumped to the ground, his huge frame going limp. Unlike the other beasts he called family, there was no stench of death on him. This was the closest they had come to success with the nanobots, and I felt a flash of sympathy until I thought of the Harlings and the skulls we’d seen on our way in to the garden center. There could be no mercy for cannibals, not in this world and not in what I hoped to build, but information was key.
Future Reborn Page 18
