This was no road. Barely a path through the hills ahead.
The buggy chewed up miles. Surprisingly, the odometer worked. Had they built it or simply ripped it out of some century-old vehicle? The last working item from an infamous Pinto that didn’t explode into flames?
A Mercedes?
It was old school-nondigital.
Just like this bizarre future.
The landscape changed, turning flat, endless. But Raine still had to keep his eyes ahead for any deep pits and large rocks. How much abuse could this vehicle take?
The hills that surrounded the settlement area gave way to a broad empty plain. Could be called a desert but for the fact that it was dotted… not with the stone monoliths like you’d see in Monument Valley… but man-made monoliths.
Pieces of buildings.
Stray, curled chunks of rusted and burnt metal that could have been anything a hundred years ago. At one point he swore he saw what looked like the forward half of an oil tanker. It reminded him of videos he had seen way-back-when, of Robert Ballard diving down to the Titanic in a minisub to find just half a prow, looking like it had been sliced like so much cheese.
Could have been.
Who knew?
Looked like hell had taken place here. Or, perhaps more accurately, as if hell had simply been dumped here.
Thrown to this spot by… Apophis? By whatever Apophis did. Or was it all here already and this was merely what was left?
Eyes forward again, he narrowly missed a foot-tall boulder right in his path, a path that grew increasingly more vague.
He looked at the odometer as the number to the right kept rolling-too slowly by he thought.
Twenty miles so far.
Halfway.
He didn’t think he ever felt so alone in his whole life.
And Raine thought that considering what he’d seen, what he’d done… that was saying something.
The handset of the radio clipped to the dash crackled.
He picked it up, amazingly grateful for its sound.
At first it was nothing intelligible-just the hiss. Some squawking noise. Until he heard words.
“-this? Come in, Raine.”
He pressed the button. There must still be some towers out there to get that much range. Amazing how good a bit of old-fashioned tech could feel.
A goddamn two-way radio.
“Yeah. I’m here.”
More hisses. Not the most reliable form of communication, apparently. He looked around to see if the signal might be getting cut off by a nearby hill.
“-mileage? See anything?”
Raine pressed the Talk button again.
“I’m at about mile twenty… twenty-one.” He looked around again. “And seen nothing yet.”
“-again? Couldn’t get-”
Raine repeated the message.
He thought it sounded like Dan Hagar-but he couldn’t be sure.
“Good. Halfway there. Got a-”
The word dropped out. Then:
“-for you when you get back. Good-”
Raine waited. Then responded. “Thanks.” And, remembering two-way radio protocol. “Over.”
He had another thought then, one that actually came from his training, his background, his experience: Are these people in over their head?
Did he happen to get picked up by people whose days-out here, at least-were numbered?
One didn’t get to choose his rescuers, that was for sure.
But he was starting to grow increasingly curious about the world beyond the Hagar Settlement. About the city. About the Authority.
Realizing that this was no tour of duty.
This was it.
This was life. • • •
Driving became increasingly a matter of swerving left and right to avoid the boulders, still catching the stray rock that would send one half of the buggy flying up before it landed. Then it was apparently the other side’s turn.
Another glance at the odometer: 34… 35.
Five miles. At this speed… maybe twenty minutes.
With nothing seen. Nothing to report. He remembered the relief he felt as a young lieutenant leading his squad in the Pakistan mountains, hoping-without letting the men know-that they’d find absolutely nothing.
Except they often did. And he grew to squelch that thought. It jinxed the whole deal. Almost became a guarantee that you would see action.
Once you start wishing.
But that thought came now. It was natural.
And naturally, the jinx still worked.
Because ahead he saw… smoke.
Smoke. Fire. Humans.
He slowed his buggy.
Could be they had heard him already, this piece of chugging metal, kicking up its own cloud of dust and sand. But there was nothing he could do about that.
He threw the switch to kill the engine. He reached out and grabbed the handset again.
“Dan? Halek?”
He took his finger off the button. Nothing, not even the semi-reassuring hiss of static.
Could be… nothing and no one was ahead.
Maybe there could still be spontaneous brushfires in this world.
Except he hadn’t seen much in the way of brush.
He looked at where the smoky plumes rose and then got carried away by a steady wind. He took another look around at the terrain, and suddenly, surprisingly, he was in reconnaissance mode.
It felt good to be thinking in a way that was familiar.
After all these years.
He grinned at that.
Something familiar.
Okay-he could get closer, see what was happening.
It occurred to him he could just turn around, too. After all, he had nearly reached the forty-mile mark. Say he saw nothing. At least retreat until he could radio back to the settlement.
But that wasn’t how he was wired.
Slippery slope, he thought. Lying to those depending on you. Then lying to yourself.
Raine took the rifle and the handgun. When he got out, he put the knife at his back.
You never know.
And only then did he start moving toward the smoke, hugging close to the massive boulders, crouching as low as he could.
It didn’t take long. Soon he was close enough to hear voices. Bits of English, though with an accent that years of living out here had shaped into a strange kind of Creole, a bandit patois. But the words-understandable.
“I got ’er. I decide.”
Then laughter. Then a scream. Must be the prisoner’s voice. High-pitched. Female. The voices sounded drunk-unless too much sun and throat-slitting made you sound that way.
“ We’s decide. Together. Our clan, our property.”
Grunts. The sound of others agreeing. The word “property” sounding way too complicated for the bandits in whatever state they were in.
Raine looked for a way to get closer. He’d have to climb, work his way through a jumble of rocks, where any pathway could easily turn into a dead end, and any false step easily turn into a signal.
But he needed to know how many were there. He needed to see what was what.
Then get back. Try the radio again, or get to a spot where he could use the radio.
He wasn’t trying for any goddamn heroics here. Not his first day in futureland.
But he would do his duty.
He squeezed through a V-shaped opening in the rocks, moving sideways. Slowly, taking care not to trigger any scraping noises. He heard the scream again. They had a woman up there, and it sounded like party time in the Wasteland.
Then someone yelled after one loud shriek: “Maybe’s we gonna eat you? You like that? We get hungry out-”
The bandit couldn’t finish the rest of his threat since they all became convulsed with a mixture of laughing and coughing. It made Raine apprehensive. How many of them are there? Still, if he was going to report back, he’d have to see how many there were.
Doing his duty.
His goddamn duty.
He pressed on. The vee made by the boulders opened up, and he could see he was only meters away from the smoky plume, a bonfire. He paused. Slid out his handgun. Finger clenched on the rifle.