Raine didn’t waste any time watching the thing tumbling to the street. He raced past it, taking care to watch which way the tree-sized monster would fall. He ran fast, knowing that the mutant horde couldn’t be far behind. He reached the piles of cars and scurried over.
He heard the crash of the mutant falling behind him but didn’t stop to look back.
Jack had his beanstalk… I have a pile of burnt-out cars.
As he came down the other side, he half expected his buggy to be smashed. But when he reached the ground, it sat there.
Looking perfectly fine.
One of the best damn things he had ever seen in his life.
Raine jumped in, taking care to stow the backpack securely in the rear.
He started it up and then hit the accelerator with a near maniacal fury as he raced away from the hospital. The buggy barreled down streets, past the eerie remnants of this place, this now dead city.
And when he was finally out of the city, he thought…
Dead City.
Yes… but I’m still alive.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The first hint Raine got that something was wrong was when he stopped at the entrance to the rickety bridge to Kvasir’s place.
The gate was up-and considering how paranoid Kvasir was about keeping his place safe, it triggered an immediate alarm.
He pulled up to the order-box intercom.
“Kvasir?” Then again louder. “Kvasir. You there?”
But the automated response failed to come on. Was Kvasir’s security system down? No booby traps ready to explode?
He looked at the squat building on the hill ahead, just across the bridge.
Couldn’t see anything wrong.
Raine ached from his time in the Dead City. Some quiet and some security for the night would be good.
In fact-he wasn’t even sure he could do anything more than get into Kvasir’s place and collapse.
Now-he was immediately on guard.
He started across the bridge, traveling slowly, waiting for something to stop him…
But nothing did.
He stopped, and saw what now girded the building. Surrounding the building, overlapping, covering the doors and window, were banner-sized bills.
NO ENTRANCE PERMITTED BY THE ORDER OF THE AUTHORITY, UNDER PAIN OF IMPRISONMENT.
They’d been here.
Looking for me?
And where was Kvasir?
He grabbed his pack, the guns, and walked up to the forbidden door.
A board had been nailed across it.
Raine grabbed the wooden board and started pulling. The nails were driven in deep, but he yanked hard at one end and it finally sprang away. He then twisted the board back and forth until it popped free.
He took the stock of the shotgun, slammed it down on the handle, and the door kicked free of the jamb.
He paused a second, then walked in.
The place had been ransacked. The shelves, once filled with vials and containers and trays… now all empty.
The old-school microscopes-also gone. Nothing here at all.
But one sense told him that wasn’t exactly true, and for a moment his intense fatigue was dispelled.
Something smelled wrong.
He walked back to where Kvasir slept, the dark room behind the lab. The smell stronger.
And he saw the old man.
Tied to a chair, head down. Blood spatters around the room. He saw… what had to be a terminal wound in the man’s chest. Kvasir looked down at the floor as if wondering: How did this happen?
The pigs-they didn’t even take time to bury him.
Just took everything, and left the body there to rot.
Raine could imagine the scene. The Authority blasting their way up here, past Kvasir’s gate. Was there a firefight with the old man, or did Kvasir somehow hope he could talk to them?
He had been able to do his work and deal with them and the Resistance, for years.
What changed?
Raine guessed the answer.
They wanted me. They followed me here.
Did they then go to the Dead City? Did Kvasir tell them anything?
He hadn’t seen them on the return trip. That, and the scene in the room, seemed to say no.
Kvasir said nothing and paid the ultimate price for it.
Raine walked around to see if there was anything left in this room. But aside from the man’s clothes, it had been picked clean, too.
He turned and walked out to the lab area again, now as empty as the examination room in the Dead City’s hospital.
Soon it would be dark.
The bridge was still there, but the gate wasn’t functional.
He knew he couldn’t go anywhere, not with night close. And besides, before he left-there was something he had to do. • • •
He found a spot behind the building, flat dirt that ran flush to a sheer wall of rock.
Dirt that he could dig.
A small shed behind the house contained a few tools: a hand rake, clunky sheers. And a small shovel. Not really up to the job, but it would have to do.
So Raine dug, occasionally hitting stones that he had to pull out with his bare hands.
Until he had a hole he felt could hold the old man’s body.
He went back into the house, the light fading more each minute, and cut Kvasir’s body free. He picked him up. Some of Kvasir’s blood stained Raine’s clothes as he carried the body. It seemed a small price compared to the old man’s.
Outside, he lowered the body down.
A different person might have said something more, Raine knew. But all he said was, “Rest in peace, Kvasir.”
And he started covering the body with the dirt, eventually filling the hole, pounding the dirt mound flat with the back end of the shovel.
Then he went back inside.
Night was beginning.
And so, too-Raine guessed-his problems.
He sat on the porch, the generator-still some fuel inside, thankfully-humming away. Lighting the place up. He sat on the makeshift bench on the porch, the rifle across his lap.
Would anything come? Bandits, mutants, or maybe… for some reason… Authority Enforcers?
His eyes would shut and he’d quickly force them open.
And so, like that, eyes locked on the entrance to the bridge, he passed the next few hours.
Until he woke with a start and realized he had fallen asleep. He was still sitting out in the now cool desert night air.
Not good, he thought. Easy pickings to be out on the porch, exposed.
The generator still hummed away.
He got up and walked inside the building, the smell of death still in the air.
Raine shut the door, wedging a chair under the knob. He knew it wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted to get in, but at least he’d hear if someone tried.
He walked over to the cot Kvasir had put out for him only days before.
He lay down.
For a few seconds he cocked his head, listening to the sounds of the place, as if making an imprint of what the sound of safe and quiet was… so he’d know the difference.
If things changed.
Then he allowed himself, gun still in hand, to fall asleep.
He woke with a start. Light outside. Morning. He felt immediately that he held nothing in his hands. He turned to the side and saw the gun on the floor. He sat up, taking a breath.
He had been-as the expression went-dead to the world.
In a way, I am kind of dead to the world. Does anybody know that I’m here?
He stood up. He knew a few things. Staying here wasn’t an option. There was no future in hiding at Kvasir’s hut until something came for him.
No, Wellspring, and whatever surprises it held, was where he had to go. He had something the Resistance could use, if Kvasir had been able to tell them.
Otherwise, he would be on his own, having to find them somehow.