Apocalypse Machine (35 page)

37

Abraham

“Does any of this look familiar?” Graham stops in the center of what used to be a paved street. It’s still mostly clear, but foliage, both Old World and New World, rises through the cracks. Broken down homes still line both sides of the road, slanted, crumbling and rotting. Some have trees growing from their roofs. Some appear to have been hollowed out and turned into nests for creatures that are either gone, hiding or hunting us. I’m impressed that the buildings are still here at all, but they won’t be much longer. Scionic life has what’s left of human civilization in a sleeper hold and is tightening its grip.

“Some,” I admit. “We’re just a few blocks away now.”

The neighborhood is nearly unrecognizable, but some distinct features remain. The hot pink mailbox. The arching tunnel formed by old oak trees growing on both sides of the road, untrimmed for fifteen years. The blue mailbox the boys dumped their sodas in.

“You’re on point,” Graham says. “Lead the way.”

I head down the street, maintaining the even pace that got us here in two days. Once upon a time, I would have had nothing but complaints after walking back-to-back marathons, but now it’s just another day. We’ve gone further, and faster, in the past. And nothing has tried to eat us in 48 hours, which is always a bonus.

I keep my now clean AK-47 in my hand, the barrel pointed at the ground to my left, safe, but ready to snap up and fire, the way Graham taught me. Despite my even pace, I find myself breathing faster, each inhalation bringing back familiar smells. Igniting memories. There is new growth all around, but so much smells the same.
Lilacs
, I think, and then I spot the purple flower. Their distinct, flowery scent used to fill the neighborhood. I listen for the sounds of children, but I hear only the forest and its denizens. Bird calls. Chattering squirrels. And things I can’t identify.

I stop at an intersection, looking at the canted-over, vine-covered, green sign reading ‘Desert Spring St.’

“This is it.”

My voice cracks around the lump in my throat, and I flinch when Graham pats my shoulder.

“We’re doing this togeth—”

I glance at Graham and see concern in his eyes, as he looks down my street, something I have yet to do.

I raise my eyes and take a step back, lifting the AK-47 a bit.

“I’m assuming it didn’t always look like this?” Mayer asks.

The street is littered with flowing tan sheets that ruffle in the breeze, like living things. Some are tangled in the trees, dangling cut ropes. Others are wrapped around the remains of crates, strewn about the street.

“What are they?”

“Supply drops,” Graham says. “Military.”

I point into what once was a neighbor’s yard, but is now a forest of sapling oaks and faster growing Scionic trees. Resting atop a few crushed limbs is a supply crate, still in one piece. Smaller boxes are spilled out around it. The parachute was stuck in the trees above, ropes cut. Someone went to a lot of trouble to free the crate, but they haven’t taken the supplies.

A growl turns Graham and me around to Mayer. “Stomach,” she says. “I’m thinking about MREs.”

MREs were the U.S. military’s prepackaged food for soldiers in the field. They contain everything needed for a hot meal, reminiscent of what we once enjoyed. Main courses, side dishes, desserts. My favorite part is the moist towelette. The lemon scent—like the Pledge furniture polish my mother used to use—brings back memories, and I enjoy how clean my hands feel after rubbing the gunk off. It has been years since we found an MRE, and that one had spoiled.

“I’ll check it out,” Graham says. Hunting for food is how we survive, but all of us would much rather scavenge it. And the promise of Old World food, real food with all its glorious spices and preservatives, would be a welcome change, perhaps even a feast to say goodbye, once and for all, to my past.

Mayer and I take up positions, weapons shouldered, ready to fire, our backs to Graham. We call this the ‘triangular watch,’ providing a broad defense for the person whose back is turned and whose guard is down. We use it while hunting, scavenging and sometimes while going to the bathroom in a particularly unfriendly environment.

I scan back and forth, looking over the barrel of my weapon, searching for movement and listening for aberrant sounds. Behind me, Graham pushes through the flexible, young trees. He grunts and shoves, slipping further into the new forest. Then I hear him cutting through plastic, shifting things about.

“What is it?” Mayer asks. “What did you find?”

I grin. She really is hoping for an MRE.

“Mother-lode,” Graham says. “Food, water, survival gear. There’s no ammunition, but…arrows.”

“What?” Mayer asks.

“There are arrows. Metal ones. The kind hunters use.”

“Is there a bow?” Mayer asks.

“No, but—ach!”

Mayer and I turn back toward Graham, lowering our defenses. He sounded like he was stung by a bee, but I’ve seen him stung before. He doesn’t even flinch. He moves through the woods with a swiftness I recognize, the kind that means trouble is behind him, but I’m still caught off guard when he emerges from the woods with an arrow sticking out of his triceps, in one side and out the other.

Did he stab himself with an arrow? Did he trip and fall on it?

I quickly dispel these ideas. He would never do either. And that meant he was shot.

Whoever this drop was meant for is still here.

And then, the person who shot Graham, is among us.

A black blur springs from the forest behind Graham, slamming into his back and sending him sprawling into Mayer. The pair fall to the ground, Mayer unleashing a string of curses in her native tongue.

I raise my AK-47, finger already on the trigger, already squeezing. But the attacker is too fast. A whirling, spinning kick strikes my rifle, twisting the barrel away from my target, sending four rounds shooting into the sky. I reach for my P229, while thinking I should have gone for my knife instead—Graham always said a knife beat a gun in close quarters—but neither choice would have helped. The stranger is too fast, moving with a kind of primal elegance, fueled by rage. The best word to describe the attack is ‘wild,’ but also coordinated and practiced.

“Wait,” I say, before two feet slam into my chest, knocking me flat on my back and driving the air from my lungs.

Gasping for air, I get my first good look at the attacker, whose shape reveals we’re dealing with a woman. She’s covered in mud and plants, perfectly camouflaged. Had we not stopped to pilfer her supplies, we might have continued on past without ever knowing she was here. Her hair is coiled into muddy, inch-thick strands embedded with leaves, which make the tendrils look more like tree branches or some kind of new Scionic life. For a moment, I wonder if that’s what she is, but her distinctly human shape, lack of bulging sacks and the fact that she is wearing clothing, albeit dirty rags, mark her as a fellow human.

Someone who can be reasoned with, if I can catch my breath and find my voice.

Mayer frees herself from Graham’s sprawled form and raises her assault rifle too late. The woman leaps to the side, landing on her hands like an animal, and then she springs further around Graham, using his body to shield herself. Then she hurls a stone. I don’t know if she picked it up while leaping around, or if she had it in one of the many pouches hanging from her waist, but she whips the stone like an expert, striking Mayer’s head. She follows that up by leaping on Graham’s back like an ape, gripping the arrow in his arm and tearing it free. Then she punches him in the back of the head, sending him into a near unconscious state that matches Mayer’s.

She’s not trying to kill us
, I think. But she’s definitely delivering a message. This is her territory. And we are not welcome.

“We’ll leave,” I say, between gasps.

Her face snaps toward me. Covered in dry mud and leaves, she looks inhuman.

But her eyes, dark brown and wide, they’re...

She leaps at me using Graham’s back as a springboard.

I lift my hands, disarmed. “Wait.
Wait.
”

She draws a knife from behind her back, closing in on me. Her eyes lock on mine. I see anger and ferocity, desperation and loneliness.

And then confusion.

She sees what I’m seeing. Familiarity. Some sense of something nearly forgotten.

It can’t be...

It’s not.

I’m seeing what I want to see, because of where we are, conjuring the distant past, jogged by fresh memories.

And she proves it by pouncing, knife gripped to strike.

Catch her striking arm
, I think.
Twist it. Free the knife. Punch her in the side of the head. End this before she ends you.

I have killed before, animal, Scion and even human. I loathe the latter of the three. It makes me sick. But sometimes, people remove the choice, and you do what you have to. Survival depends on it. And not just mine. As much as I need Graham and Mayer, they need me. Without me, they’d be pincushions back on the polka-dotted shoreline, not to mention a hundred other deaths avoided, thanks to not brawn, but brain.

But this time, those big black eyes disarm me.

The woman, built like one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s jungle Queens, wielding a blade and dressed like a cave woman, has a kind of power over me.

I can’t kill her.

I can’t even fight her.

On the off chance that there is something to those eyes, I manage to shout just two words before she lands on me. “It’s me!”

Then her thighs are wrapped around my chest, pinning my arms to my sides.

I could lift my legs up, wrap them around her head and pull her off. I’ve practiced the move with Graham. But I don’t. Instead, I watch as she takes a fistful of my thick beard, lifts my chin and swipes down with the knife. I feel a tug and a sting, and I hear the knife cut.

Is that it?

Am I dying?

I wait for the pain. For the warmth of blood oozing from my neck. But I feel nothing until she grabs another handful of hair and cuts it away.

“No,” she says, her voice deep and gravelly—practiced—but not her own.

She cuts and grabs, cuts and grabs.

“No!” Her voice is full of anguish now.

The sneer revealing bright white teeth loses its power, her lower lip quivering.

“No! No!” She takes a handful of shaggy hair on my head, cutting it away with a swipe of the blade, repeating the process around my head, weeping now, the warm tears weakening the mud on her face, chipping it away as new expressions break through.

Pain.

Disbelief.

And then joy.

She’s trembling all over as she makes the final cut, revealing a face that I haven’t seen in over a decade. The mask of dirt covering her face crumbles away, falling on my chest. I see her for the first time in fifteen years, older, a little wrinkled, gray creeping into her brown hair. But her eyes. Her lips. Her cheeks.

“Are you real?” I ask.