She looked into the room with the glass casket. “So, it’s not a fairy tale after all. The ancients really could clone themselves.”
“Based on personal experience, I’d say yes.”
“I understand Revenant now.” She looked at his wounds. “And the bloody footprints.”
“I don’t suppose you understand why he died?”
She looked around at me. “You don’t remember?”
I pointed at the dent in his head. “Corrupted data.”
“Maybe it will come back to you.”
I looked again at the battered, bloodied corpse that had once been me. “I don’t know if I want it to.”
Five minutes later I was sure I didn’t want to.
Oh well, too late.
In the fourth room we searched we found the remnants of another fight — a jumbled pile of dead bodies and broken robots — and I found another little chunk of my memory — a hard, black, bitter chunk.
The bodies were all Desert Rangers, and every face I looked at lit up another corner of my mind and opened another chamber in my heart. Franny, Brockleman, Spider. The names and faces hurt — like a flood of jagged knives, like salt in wounds. And the worst part was, I knew this was the second time I’d grieved over these people — these friends — because when I looked at the robots, another memory opened up, red and white and bright with the strobe of muzzle flash.
I had been here when these rangers had died. I’d fought alongside them. Stood back to back with them, blasting and hacking at that tide of relentless killing machines as they poured out from the depths of the facility.
I’d been the only one who hadn’t died.
The memory was clear, but I couldn’t place it in time. Had this just happened? Was this where my former self had been cut to pieces? No, his wounds were fresh. The blood here was dry, the bodies decaying. They had been dead for days.
Athalia had tried to comfort me, but what was there to say? I collected their stars to bring back to Ranger Center, and then we found someplace else to dump the bodies of the mutants.
And in the end, like I said, it was all pointless. All firing off that TNT did was choke us with smoke and make our ears ring.
“Okay, okay,” I said, as we surveyed the undamaged wall. “You win. I guess we go to Darwin after all. “
Athalia blinked at me and put a hand to her ear. “Huh? I can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”
– Chapter Two –
As soon as we stepped outside of Sleeper One my radio started hissing and squawking.
“—— hear me? This is ——— argas, from ra —— er — eam Alpha. ———— eperated fro —— team and —— rounded. Nee ——— ack—up.”
I got on the horn. “Vargas, is that you? This is——” I stopped. I still couldn’t remember my name. I couldn’t even remember my Team’s call sign. “This is… a friend of the rangers. We’re reading you. What’s your twenty?”
“—— ank — od! I —— ttlement of Whi —— esa. I repe ——— te Mesa. Do —— copy?”
I wasn’t sure I did. “Did you say White Mesa? Where’s that?”
“—— oger! —— ite — esa! Three ———ks due so —— I—70 — idge. Wes —— ide ——— river. — ook for a — ig white — ock!”
I looked at Athalia. “Did you catch any of that? My ears are still ringing. I don’t know if I got it.”
“Three clicks due south of the I–70–something, on the west side of the river.” She grimaced. “As for that last part, I sincerely hope he said ‘Look for a big white rock.’“
“Me too. And it’s the I–70 bridge. Okay.” I closed my eyes and pictured the map in my head. Yeah, I could remember the map, but not my name. Maybe I could only remember the important stuff. Then I clicked in again. “We copy, Vargas. We’re on the other side of the river, about five clicks southeast of you. On our way.”
“Ten—F ——— be — areful. I —— surroun —— There are mult —— stiles in —— rea. I —— peat, ——ultiple hosti —— the area.”
“We read you. We’ll keep our eyes open.” I stood and shrugged into my pack. “Come on. Let’s get going.”
My old self might have grown up in what used to be Arizona, but my new self’s pink–and–newly–minted ass wasn’t ready for the reality of the Wasteland. Seeing it for the first time, laying down fresh memories over his old and faded ones, it took my breath away.
My first impression was red, everywhere. Halfway between blood and rust — from dust to rocks to mountains to sky. In a few places it trended toward blood–clot purple or corpse grey, but overwhelmingly it was red.
Then came the heat. It wasn’t just the sun baking me, but the rocks around me shedding heat as fast as they could. There wasn’t any getting away from it. The prickle of sweat would ooze out of me, then a hot wind would come and the moisture would vanish, leaving me no cooler. The world was sucking me dry and turning my newborn skin neon pink.
I did see some green here and there, but aside from verdigris stains on rocks where water had seeped out through a copper deposit, if it was green, it had spikes. Big nasty thorns longer than my thumb, and that wasn’t even the cactuses. Even the twisted old willows that whispered over our heads when we crossed the shriveled river had thorns.
Most creatures we saw as we walked north moved as little as possible. Rattlesnakes coiled in shadows. Lizards skittered up rocks, then froze. They raised and lowered themselves as if catching their breath, then moved on in another burst. Birds — buzzards and vultures — circled lazily overhead.
Athalia turned out to be a good traveling companion. She spotted trouble before we tripped over it, and found us some hidden pools where we were able to drink and refill our canteens.
As we were taking a sip and a breather in the shade of a tilted red boulder, Athalia wiped her lips and looked over at me.
“So, how much do you remember from before you, uh….”
“Before I died?” I shrugged. “Tiny bits of things. I remember I was a ranger. I remember the robot menace you mentioned. Death machines coming out of the desert, intent on wiping out everything that lives. Don’t remember if I ever knew why they were doing it, but I’m guessin’ I was probably on a mission to stop them.”
Athalia nodded and we started walking again. “Maybe you were. Before I left Vegas, I heard rumor of rangers meeting with Faran Brygo, helping him fight the robots in the sewers. Maybe that was you and your team.”
I frowned. It sounded familiar, but I didn’t get any flashes about it like I had in the room with all my dead friends. It didn’t feel like I’d experienced it firsthand. “Maybe so. I don’t know.”
“And this Vargas you talked to on the Radio? You seemed to remember him.”
A flash of a ranger with a black beard, laughing, stumbling out of a roadhouse with a bottle in his hand. There was a woman too, a redhead, reaching for me, grinning from ear to ear. I remembered I liked that grin, but I couldn’t remember the name of the woman it belonged to.
“He… he’s another ranger. I think we were friends. Not from my squad though. My squad is….”
“Back in the base, with the robots.”
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I changed the subject.
“So, seeing as you’ve got a functioning memory, what’s your story?”
She shrugged. “Not much to it. Miner’s daughter. Grew up near Kingman. Started looking for answers and ended up finding the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud.”
“Uh–huh. And did you find any answers? Do they have an explanation for how the world got like this?”
“Uh, the bombs fell and the souls of the good were consumed by the great glow. The bad were left behind and must work to purify ourselves so that we may be worthy of being consumed by the glow when it is once again ignited. Or… something like that.”