But Raine didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile.
Welcome to the fucking future indeed…
Raine didn’t say anything for a while.
He held the gun, thinking about what just happened. Three… four dead men. In a matter of minutes. Who were they? What the hell did they want?
And… what kind of world was this?
Finally, he spoke, raising his voice to be heard over the engine roar.
“Where are we going?”
“Right. Okay. We’re going to my settlement. The Hagar Settlement. My people. Where we live, trade, work, and try to survive.”
“I have a lot of questions.”
“I bet. And we’ll get to them-I told you. But you Ark survivors… heard that you’re kind of disoriented when you get out. You best take things nice and slow. Let me start with a few questions… like, what’s your name?”
“Nicholas Raine. Lieutenant Nicholas Raine, United States Marine Corps.”
After he said the words, Raine realized that the thing he was proudest of, the brotherhood of his fellow Marines… perhaps that didn’t even exist anymore.
No.
Probably not perhaps.
Probably… definitely.
“Raine, hm? Don’t get much… rain here.”
Dan laughed.
“In fact, water is kinda scarce. Like a lot of things are scarce. In fact, if it has any goddamn value at all… it’s scarce.”
“What happened?”
“Hm?”
“Here. When the asteroid hit. I mean, are your people Ark survivors?”
Another laugh. “If Granddaddy Hagar was an Ark survivor, I’d never been born. Talk about short life span. Survivors are captured, then killed or used. That’s what the Authority does with them.”
“The Authority?”
“Like I said… Raine. Lot for you to digest. Take it in small bits. Just know this… most Ark survivors are gone. Those left, work for them. Others tried to escape, but were hunted down. Ones deemed useless-well, they’re really gone. ”
“Sounds like a nice group of people, your ‘Authority.’ ”
“The Authority runs things. Or think they do. Out here, in the Wasteland, kinda hard for them to have much control. Too many muties, bandits, groups like us.”
“Muties?”
Dan looked over at him. “Okay. You asked about the asteroid? Way before my time. Even before my father’s time. His father was here. And he said it was supposed to kill everyone. But something happened. It didn’t do that. Though might as well have, when you look at what was left. That world. Your world. Gone. Cities, even-I’ve heard-whole goddamn landmasses.”
“And time…”
“What’s that?”
“The computer said time now was different.”
“Oh you mean it’s off a few days? That sort of thing? Yeah, not the same. Days nearly an hour longer. The asteroid’s strike played with the planet’s orbit. Really messed with the weather, too. God knows what year it is according to your time. We just date things from when the asteroid hit.”
“And muties-what are they?”
“You tell me. The asteroid created pockets of radiation. Where it didn’t kill everyone, some survived, but… they changed. They became like animals. Living together like rat packs. Breeding like crazy. They feel no pain. Not too hard to kill, but there seems to be a hell of a lot of them. And oh yeah-they can eat just about anything. But they do have… their preferences.”
Dan paused as if there was something else he was about to add.
“Look, when we get to my settlement you best not ask too many questions. Not till people get to know you, at least. Get to trust you, know what I mean? They kinda connect questions… with the Authority.”
Dan spit out the side of his buggy as if the word was distasteful.
“Okay?”
Not ask questions? Raine thought. How else was he supposed to figure out what was going on? After all, if this was his future-what the hell was he supposed to do in it?
But he kept his mouth shut.
“Good, Lieutenant Raine. You’ll do just fine.” Dan sniffed the dusty dry air. “Or you won’t. And there you go, ahead.”
Dan pointed.
From out of the cover of low-lying hills ahead, Raine saw something that looked like a town. Except, as they got closer, the buildings seemed pieced together from anything and everything: container cars, metal walls, fencing, tractor trailer bodies sliced in half…
And he also saw people with guns on the side of the roadway leading into the heart of the settlement.
“The Hagar Settlement,” Dan said quietly.
He looked over at Raine.
“Home sweet home.”
He gunned the vehicle then, racing toward the settlement entrance.
ELEVEN
The vehicle flew over the pits and rocky outcrops. As Dan Hagar rolled passed the guards of the settlement, they lowered their weapons. A slight tip of the head.
Dan seemed to be the person to know, Raine could see.
As they got closer, he could see the strange buildings that made up this world of the Hagars. They had electricity-a few buildings had signs that lit up. Others gushed a stream of smoke into the blue sky.
But it was the way people dressed that had Raine staring.
No one dressed the same, as if their clothes had to be as jumbled and mismatched as the buildings. Then as he passed an old man-who knew how old?-staring at them driving through the settlement, Raine saw that whatever people wore also offered protection.
Layers against the sun, thick padding around knees, elbows, shoulders; some had head gear, a covering that reminded him of an ancient painting he saw in a kingpin general’s home in Pakistan.
Skullcaps.
To protect a key organ.
And if no one was making new clothes, did they just piece the material together, stuff handed down from generation to generation? Where did the clothes come from? The ancient material of those who didn’t survive?
In which case, were the garments on these people a daily reminder of what had happened to the once great planet Earth?
Dan looked over.
“Everyone’s checking you out, Raine. Don’t let it rattle you.”
Raine thought that he had been the one staring at everyone. Now, when he looked away, he saw that Dan was right. Everyone they passed stared at him, eyes wide.
“Because I’m not from around here?”
Dan laughed. “Right. You’re a… newbie.” Another laugh. “No. Not that, I am afraid. You see, your… suit.”
Raine looked down at what he was wearing. The smooth contours of the Ark suit. The places where the cryo pod could connect to it.
Looking brand new. Different from anything these people wore.
Except Except… he remembered someone they had passed. Bits of jacket.
Part of an Ark suit.
And Raine would have sworn that’s what one of the bandits wore.
Am I really safe here?
“The reason, Raine, why everyone is staring, is that you are an Ark survivor.”
Dan slowed the vehicle in front of a gathering of buildings-or it could have been one building, where a domelike hut meshed with a metal warehouse structure before trailing into a series of smaller buildings.
“Ark survivors-a live one, at least-are mighty rare here.”
Dan stopped his buggy and got out.
“C’mon, time you met some of the locals.”
Big grin from Dan.
And Raine wasn’t sure that meeting the locals was such a good idea.
He followed Dan down a tight alley, two walls of metal making a path between structures before turning and ending at a door.
Raine heard a crackling sound. Small pops. Explosions. Followed immediately by a loud “Damn it!”
Dan knocked on the door, but walked in without waiting for an answer.
“Hold on, Halek,” he called out. “You got company.”
Raine followed Dan into the room.
Inside, a man was sitting at a bench, his back turned to them, pieces of weapons-barrels, triggers, stocks-spread out in front of him.