“Since last year, I think. I don’t know. I had one injection of the singing blood, then woke up in the Black Room. We were in a different place, and I don’t know how long I slept. We have been moving east since then, beyond Kassos and sweeping south.” He looked at me with eyes that were going glassy. Somewhere in that gaze was the man he had once been. “Kill me. Please.”
“You’re dying,” I told him.
He gave a small nod. “Finally.”
“Do you have a family?” I asked him.
“Dead—all dead in the Black Room. She took us all. She...does things. You can’t imagine—” he died, his breath leaving him in a slow hiss, and his body going still.
I stared at him for some time before speaking. “How long have we got?”
“Two days, which is a lot more than I thought,” Mira said.
Lasser and Natif shook their heads in agreement, but it was Lasser who confirmed the estimate. “The Black Room moves slowly, but I think that’s by design,” he said.
“To let fear build ahead of the column?” I asked.
“Yes. Fear, terror, and a lack of hope. Taksa will send word, asking for sacrifices. If the village gives him what he wants, he might keep moving without tearing the place apart. He’s been doing it for years, but I never knew what singing blood was until now. It’s Hightec?” Lasser asked.
“It’s what makes me the man to kill these fucks and use the Black Room for kindling,” I said, looking at Carrier’s body. “Millions of tiny machines in my blood. They change a person into something else, but not like the ogres. I’m not even sure what the ‘bots can do for me, and I won’t learn until I try them out.”
“I think I know one thing they do for you,” Silk said with a purr. Lasser coughed and looked away, while Natif just stared in confusion.
“You’re not alone there, sister,” Mira replied with a wintry smile.
“As I was saying,” I broke in, before Natif could start asking awkward questions, “Taksa and Senet have been playing with technology they don’t understand. I know this because I was a Soldier, and a computer expert, and even I don’t fully understand what happened to me. But if would-be gods can find the nanobots intact, then it seems sensible that there’s data around for me to read. We have access to Silk’s drives and the facilities where the ‘bots were injected. We can’t manufacture things—not yet, maybe not ever—but with so few people, understanding the technology will let us use it safely.”
“You mean to make other people like you?” Lasser asked in alarm.
“Maybe. If I find a way to administer the treatments safely, why not? I’m going to live a long, healthy life thanks to the ‘bots. I’ll need good people at my side,” I said.
“Long life if you can stop Taksa,” Natif said quietly.
“True enough, but I’m not some scared villager who believes their cult bullshit. I see them for what they are, and I know what we have to do,” I said with conviction.
“You started with traps?” Lasser asked, his keen eyes taking in our equipment. He knew things. He would be a good person to have on the ground floor of whatever it was we built.
“Snares, but scaled up,” I told him.
“What will you do with the slaves?” Lasser asked. I sensed something hanging in the balance of his question, then realized it was nothing less than his loyalty.
“Try not to hurt them, if I can. I want Taksa and Senet. I want them as examples, and if I have to put their heads on poles to signal that the southern reaches of the Empty are free, so be it. How many soldiers are with them?” I asked.
“Few, if any. They run a caravan of fear, with the slaves paralyzed by the presence of the Black Room,” Lasser said.
“I saw the slaves,” Natif said. We all turned to listen, and he blushed, unused to being the center of attention. “There were many dozens, some in chains, and some hooked to the wagons. There are two guards with guns and swords. The biggest men I’ve ever seen,” he added in an awestruck voice.
“A rifle can even those odds real quick,” Mira said.
“Then do it as soon as you have a clear shot when they arrive. We take guards first, leave the slaves, and let me handle Taksa,” I said.
“What do we do about Senet?” Mira asked.
“If she’s in the Black Room, nothing until she shows her face. Then, I’ll take her alive. I have questions, and I think she’s the brains of the outfit. I get the impression Taksa is all hat, no cattle,” I said.
“What’s that mean?” Natif asked.
“He’s only for show. He’s like Wetterick in a way. Vicious and cruel, but not really in charge. Some people are just bullies. They don’t have much to say after they get punched in the face a few times. I’m counting on his cowardice, and I think that Senet will, with proper encouragement, be a fountain of information we need,” I said with a grim smile.
“Where will you question her? In the garden?” Silk asked.
“The Black Room. I think she’ll be real chatty once we give her a taste of her own medicine,” I said.
“Fitting. I’d like to be present when that happens,” Lasser said.
“You don’t strike me as the kind of man who likes the rough stuff,” I told him.
“Oh, I’m not. But Senet and Taksa aren’t just murderers. They’re thieves. I have questions about some rumored hiding places in the Empty. Places where there are caches of Hightec, goods, and even an underground river that could help build a city. I’ve listened through the years, and all of the stories end at Taksa and Senet,” Lasser said. His lips in a set line, determined and curled upward at the corners. He wanted answers. I would get him answers.
“I like the way you’re thinking,” I told him. “We’ve got two days, and I’ve got a few ideas, but most of this is going to come down to their pride and me.”
“Pride?” Silk asked.
I nodded slowly, thinking through the obvious. “Taksa and Senet are vulnerable because they’re proud. We can exploit that to free their slaves, taking them out all in one action.”
Mira and Silk both looked at me expectantly. Mira spoke first, her voice simmering with anger. “Tell us what to do.”
32
“That’s good enough for snares,” I said to my assembled crew. We were under the trees, near one of the springs that chugged away, filling the inner ring channel before it was carried away.
“What’s next?” Lasser asked. He was a man used to order, and it showed with how he approached things.
“This is the part of the prep that gets dangerous, because I have to ask Natif for a favor,” I said.
“You do?” Natif squeaked. His eyes went round while we all looked at him.
“How old are you?” I asked.
Lasser spoke up, putting a kind hand on Natif’s arm, but he had a pained expression. “Twelve or so.” He offered no further explanation, and I didn’t ask.
Nodding with what I hoped was grave importance, I addressed Natif in a more formal tone. “Do you want to be a part of this place?”
Natif answered instantly. “Yes.”
“Good,” I told him. “Your first job is perimeter security. You’re going to keep eyes on the trail for the Black Room, and when you see the first sign it’s critical that you yell down the passages and let us know. I don’t think they can arrive any sooner than a day and a half, but still, we need to be ready. Can you do that?”
“What passages?” Natif asked. I pointed to the underground access, and he nodded as if he’d known all along. I liked his confidence, plus, he was tough and smart.
“We’re going back under?” Mira asked.
“We all are, unless you’d like to stay up top with Natif?” I asked Lasser. He was an older man, but still in good shape. The option was his.
“Natif is well capable of alerting us. He knows what to look for, but my question is what will we be looking for?” Lasser asked.
“Everything,” I said. “We’ve only just started looking down there, an
d everything we find might help us stop Taksa without losing any blood. Velarus was a beast, and no matter how long he was in control of this place, he can’t know the things I do. This is my tech, my culture, and now, it’s our place. We should know every part of it. Since we have a day or more, it makes sense to go back under and see.”
“I’ll prep torches,” Mira said, rising. She moved away under the canopy, eyes out for danger.
“What was here? Before?” Lasser asked.
“Another military facility. They were hidden in plain sight during my time, and they held out after the end of it all. I don’t know what we’ll find, but I think we can build something here with what was left over,” I said.
“Build what?” Lasser asked, his brow lifted.
I thought it over, then answered with the beginning of an idea. “The Free Oasis.”
“A good name,” Lasser said. “You’ll need more than just things. You’ll need people, trade goods, and food. Have you considered the Harlings?”
“I have. Their invitation stands. They would make an excellent addition to our core,” I said.
Lasser shook his head. “Not just the Harlings as traders. Their wagons. Have you found them?”
“Their wagons? You think they’re intact?” Silk asked.
“Who would raid them down here, other than animals? At the very least, it could offer raw materials for building a shelter,” Lasser said.
“How many were they missing?” I asked.
“At least four, but given their success as traders, if any of them are closed to the weather, you stand to gain things that will help immediately,” Lasser said.
“Would you consider locating them with Natif, while we go under? We could start right now, with full water skins, and meet at this very spot when night falls. That would give you several hours to look,” I said.
“I can find them faster than that,” Natif protested, but Lasser only smiled. “Well, I can.”
“I know you will. You have a nose for, ah, free things,” Lasser said with a laugh.
“Then it’s settled,” I said, smiling at the boy. “You find the wagons and mark them for liberation, and we’ll go under to scope out the rest of our new home. Between the two of us, we’ll be ready for anything.”
“What about food?” Silk asked. She had a point.
“We don’t have time to hunt, and I don’t want to eat anything the creatures left behind. That leaves us with finding the Harling’s wagons for rations, unless someone has a better idea?” I said.
“I can get dinner in less than ten minutes,” Natif said with supreme confidence.
“You can? Really?” I asked, but my smile faded when I saw Lasser nod. “How?”
“Follow me, and bring the rifle. Who is the fastest shot?” Natif asked.
“I am,” I said.
“Then get ready, Jack. Right this way,” Natif said, pulling his shirt off to reveal a skinny chest with various scars. “I’ll be just past the edge of your garden. I hope you like blood chicken.”
“What the hell is blood chicken?” I asked, but he was already running, Lasser and Silk walking alongside me. I checked the rifle rounds and shrugged, watching in mild confusion as Natif went into the open sand and fell over, twitching dramatically and then going still, his arms and legs spread out like a corpse. “Well I’ll be damned. The kid’s a fucking genius.”
“He is that,” Lasser said. “Watch for the shadow.”
I didn’t watch long. In two minutes, the first shadow appeared, then the second, and then a third.
“Never thought of doing that, and I’ve heard of a lot of people dying of starvation,” Mira said as she walked up to us, shaking her head in amazement. “Can you get all three?”
She inclined her head to the source of the shadows which descended from high above with hesitant circles, getting smaller as they gained confidence at Natif’s small size and lack of motion. They were buzzards, and big ones, but far from bald. These had huge crests of golden feathers, leaving them somewhere between a carrion bird and a huge pheasant with an attitude problem. The first landed, shrieked at his cousins, and walked with purpose to launch a razor-sharp beak at Natif’s toe.
My bullet splattered the bird’s head, then I snapped off two more rounds, each taking another flying pair of drumsticks with ease.
“I sort of thought that would be harder,” I said, looking at the huge birds as Natif leapt up and grinned.
“Easy, told you!” Natif piped from his former grave. He brushed sand away, grabbing the first bird with a grunt. The blood chickens were huge, and I walked toward the downed creatures to help bring them back. Mira grabbed one, I took the other, and we gave Natif the honor of bringing in the third since it had been his superb acting that baited the creatures into our trap. “They’re dumb that way. All you have to do it be still.”
“Brilliant,” I told Natif, who beamed. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think we can eat feathers.”
“I’ll pluck,” Natif said. “I did it a lot before Lasser took me in.”
He was good as his word. In less than an hour, the birds were plucked, skinned, gutted and roasting over a small hot fire on three sticks leaned together for support. “We’ll move them every few minutes so one side doesn’t burn,” Mira said. She was a post-apocalyptic barbecue expert, fussing with the birds to get each side crisp and sizzling. We would have well more than five kilos of meat from each bird, which meant we wouldn’t starve before locating something more nutritious than exceptionally stupid birds.
“Time is an issue, so we’re going under,” I said when the birds were cooked. We filled our skins, checked weapons, and eyed the sun. There was still plenty of daylight left, but I wanted to avoid the surprise of a night attack, even though I thought it unlikely.
“I’ll watch the fire and venture out with Natif,” Lasser said.
“Sounds good. This is going to work,” I told everyone. Tension was building in the air, and I wanted to get ahead of it. If we were going to crush Taksa and Senet, it would come down to many factors, but the one thing we wouldn’t do was be hesitant. I would take the fight right to their doorstep, and I would do it with a smile.
“Ready?” Mira asked. She stood with Silk, guns and torches at the ready.
“Ready. Natif, Lasser, I only have one order before we go into the ruins,” I said.
“What’s that?” Lasser asked.
I pointed at Natif with a mock frown. “Save me a drumstick.”
33
“We go left this time,” I said, turning to hold my torch ahead. The facility was bigger than I imagined, and the floors looked intact in the second wing. “So far, so good. The buildings up top must be for show.”
“Why for show? They’re made from concrete,” Mira said.
“Yes, but I think they were just a distraction. Like Alatus, this is where the real work got done.” I leaned around a corner, but like the other halls, it was empty. A dead place, filled only with ghosts and the leftovers of my world.
“If there are seeds on the other side, then what will this place be?” Silk asked. “Seems like less—what did you call them? Offices?”
“It does. That’s good. We like stuff, not paperwork and cubicles,” I said, moving forward at a steady pace. There were a lot of doors. It would take weeks to explore and find everything useful, but something stood out at first glance. “Look at this,” I said, kneeling.
“This was animal skin,” Mira said, probing a circle of fragments and dust.
I lifted my torch high, peering into the darkness. A flicker caught my eye, and I stepped toward it. “Plexiglass. A wall between labs.” The wall was ten meters long. It was an open area, filled with machines and lab equipment of all kinds. A gold mine in the right hands, and I knew we had found something to secure our future.
Then I saw the writing.
“Can you read it?” Silk asked.
The plexiglass was covered in script, beginning at the left and crawling down th
e wall in small, neat blocks. “Scratched in with a point of some kind,” Silk said, running her fingertip over the lettering.
The breath left my body in a rush as I began to read. “They were here for a long time,” I said.
“Who were they?” Mira asked. “Are they still here?” She began looking around, but there were no skeletons. No evidence of anyone other than us.
“Let me—okay, I get it,” I said. Reading quickly, I scanned the first four panels of writing; all were the same person using brief, professional language. Probably an officer or commander, I thought. “They went into lockdown after the virus hit a tipping point, but this place was never meant to be a fort. It was a working lab in plant and medical tech. There were thirty-one people here when they closed the door up top.”
“What happened to them?” Silk asked.
“They died off. Four suicides, a few were wounded and couldn’t be saved,” I said, reading the report of utter chaos across the entire world. “There were doctors, but some of the wounds were beyond help. They were down to twenty people in a month, and then some of them left, trying to get to Altus. Alatus, I mean. Two went northwest to another base. They never came back, but the rest tried to organize a communication network.”
“Is that what this is?” Silk asked. She pointed to a diagram of lines two panels down.
“Good eye. Six in all. So there were more of them,” I said. “Six bases. A local defense network set up by the Air Force. No wonder I never knew about it. I doubt anyone did.”
“Jack, what’s this?” Mira asked. She tapped a huge double door just beyond the glow of my torch. “It’s been oiled and used. There’s no dust.”
“Something Velarus was doing, I bet,” I said. “Step back. We might not be the only ones who understand traps.” I put my hand against the door, feeling a low vibration. “Something is still working in there. Machines.”
“A thing that works for two thousand years?” Silk asked in a stunned voice.
Future Reborn Page 20
