Fragments (24 page)

Kira pulled her blanket tighter around her neck and shoulders.
Sometimes a vote of confidence can be the most nerve-racking thing in the world.

They packed and left at the first sign of dawn, making sure the horses were well-fed
and watered for the day’s trip. By noon the city had all but disappeared, and they
passed the afternoon in rural country, thick forests slowly but surely overrunning
the small towns that nestled in the hills. Afa’s constant babbling petered out as
well, as if the stretches of untamed wilderness made him uncomfortable. Kira occasionally
heard him mutter to himself, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Kira didn’t know what her horse’s name was, since they’d been stolen, so she passed
most of her day trying to think of something appropriate. Samm’s horse was willful,
and stubborn, so she wanted to name him Haru, but she knew none of her companions
would appreciate the joke. She reflected that she could just as easily name a stubborn
horse Xochi, or Kira for that matter. She searched for something else and settled
on Buddy, a boy she’d known in school who fought with the teachers almost on principle,
because they were in charge. Samm’s horse seemed to have the same attitude. Heron’s
horse, on the other hand, seemed almost determined to obey her, or perhaps Heron was
simply better at controlling it. Calling on the same well of acquaintances, Kira named
this one Dug, after a perennial overachiever from her intern program. Her own horse,
a bit of a goofy trickster, she named Bobo, and Afa’s poor mount she named Odd, or
Oddjob, or any number of other permutations as the mood struck her. If Heron was the
best at managing her horse, Afa was the worst, and the poor animal seemed at times
just as confused as he was, bobbing its head and shuffling sideways and sending Afa
into fits of frustrated grumbling. It was almost funny, but it kept them slow, and
Kira tried to give him riding tips when she could. It didn’t seem to help.

It was near nightfall when they heard a cry for help.

“Hold up,” said Samm, reining his horse Buddy to a stop. The others stopped with him,
listening on the wind for another sound. Oddjob stamped and snuffled, and Heron shot
Afa a dirty look. Kira tried to focus, and heard the voice again.

“Help!”

“It’s coming from over there,” Samm said, pointing down a gully by the side of the
road. There were lakes all through these hills, and tiny rivers and streams had cut
paths between them for centuries. The gully in question was thick with trees and underbrush.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Heron. “We don’t have time to stop.”

“Someone’s in trouble,” said Kira. “We can’t just leave them.”

“Yes, we can,” said Heron.

“It’s a Partial,” said Afa. “I’m the last human on the planet.”

“It’s not a Partial,” said Samm. “I’m not linking with anyone.”

“They might be too far away,” said Kira.

“Or downwind,” said Heron. “I don’t like it either way—any humans we meet would likely
love to ambush a group of Partials, and we know our faction’s not this far west.”

“I thought you didn’t have a faction anymore?” asked Kira. Heron only glared.

“Heron’s right,” said Samm. “We can’t afford the time or the risk.”

“Help!” The cry was distant and garbled, but it sounded like a young woman. Kira clenched
her teeth. She knew they were right, but . . .

“She could be dying,” she said. “I don’t want to fall asleep tonight haunted by some
lost girl’s dying call for help.”

“Do you want to fall asleep at all?” asked Heron, and it was Kira’s turn to glare.

“Let’s keep moving,” said Samm, nudging Buddy with his knees. The horse started forward,
and Kira’s Bobo followed without waiting to be asked.

“Help!”

“I’m going,” said Kira, grabbing the reins and turning Bobo’s head toward the side
of the road. “You can come if you want.”

“Why does she just say ‘help’?” asked Afa.

“Because she needs help,” said Kira, sliding out of the saddle at the edge of the
road. The slope was steep and covered with bushes, and she didn’t think the horse
could make it in the fading light. She tied his reins to a mile marker and unslung
her rifle.

“I think she’d be saying, ‘Help me,’” said Afa, “or ‘Is anybody out there?’”

“They’ve heard our hoofbeats,” said Samm, who suddenly shook his head and swore. “Kira,
I’m coming with you.”

Heron stayed on her horse. “Can I have your stuff when you’re dead?”

“You’re the spy,” said Samm, gesturing at the hills below. “Sneak around behind them
and . . . I don’t know, help.”

“It’s getting dark,” said Heron, “and they’re already aware of us, and we don’t know
where they are, or how many of them there are, or how they’re armed, or what they’re
doing. You want me to sneak behind them by what, magic?”

“Just stay here and watch the horses then,” said Kira. “We’ll be back soon.” She climbed
over the railing at the side of the road with Samm close behind her, and they picked
their way carefully down the side of the hill. The brush was thick, clutching at her
boots, and the hill was steep enough that she found herself grabbing the bushes for
support, descending almost on hands and knees. The bottom was no better, with thick
scrub reaching all the way to the water line.

They heard the cry again, back in the reaches of a narrow gully, and Kira decided
they wouldn’t be hidden much longer anyway and called out. “Hang on, we’re coming!”

“I don’t know how they even got back there,” said Samm, fighting through the brush
behind her. Almost immediately Kira stumbled into a narrow path, and Samm bumped into
her from behind as he did the same.

“An animal track,” he said. “Deer?”

“Wild dogs,” said Kira, looking at the worn earth. “I’ve seen this kind of track before.”

“I figure this is an injured hunter or something, but who follows a dog trail?”

They heard the cry again, closer now, and Kira could hear that something was wrong
with the voice—it was garbled, somehow. She sped up. The gully turned into a steep
ravine, a giant wall of rock sprouting up on their right, and as they rounded the
edge of it they found a small clearing, maybe seven feet wide at the most, and in
the center of it a large tan dog. Kira stopped in surprise, the dog staring at her
calmly.

Samm stepped around the corner after her, saw the dog, and swore.

“What?” Kira whispered.

“Help!” said the dog, and gave a terrifyingly human grin. “Help!”

“Fall back,” said Samm, but in that instant the bushes around them seemed to explode
with more dogs, heavy, muscled monsters that leapt up against their chests and backs
to knock them down. Samm went down under two of them, and Kira only barely managed
to brace herself in time, keeping her feet but getting a deep bite in the arm instead.
Another dog tore at her legs, yanking one out from under her, and she fired her gun
wildly as she fell. The nearest dog retreated with a yelp, red wounds blossoming on
its shoulder, but another lunged to take its place and snapped hungrily at Kira’s
throat.

“Samm, help!” Kira cried. She felt sharp teeth clamp down on her leg, and more on
her collarbone, her heavy travel vest only barely stopping the beast’s fangs from
piercing deep into her flesh. Beside her the dogs on Samm were scrabbling and growling,
snapping wildly with their teeth, and Kira wondered why they hadn’t pinned him down
yet like they had with her. She tried to raise her rifle and saw that the dogs had
pinned that as well, a massive animal pressing it hard into the ground with his bulk.
She fired it anyway, hoping to scare it off; a flurry of dirt exploded from the ground,
and a dog on the far side of the clearing leapt aside with a howl of pain, but the
massive beast on the rifle only snarled at her, baring scythelike fangs.

The tan dog whose call they’d responded to leapt onto Kira’s chest, knocking the air
out of her, and lunged for her throat to finish her. But inches before contact he
fell aside, and Kira felt a hot gush of blood pour onto her chest. She looked up to
see Samm standing over her, his rifle gone and a gore-drenched hunting knife in his
hands. He slashed at the dog on Kira’s shoulder, but the massive dog jumped into him,
knocking him again to the ground. Kira brought her gun up and another dog leapt in
to wrestle it away from her, his jaws clamped around the barrel and his heavy paws
pressing it flat across her chest—away from the creatures menacing Samm. They were
trapped.

She heard a shot behind her, and saw the dog at her feet drop lifeless to the dirt;
another shot took the dog on her rifle right through the back, and he slumped over
her like a hairy boulder. His eyes even with hers, the life draining out of him, he
wheezed out a single word in a horrible, inhuman voice:

“Please.”

The dog died, its eyes still open barely four inches from Kira’s own. She stared back
at it in terror, her mouth working soundlessly, her hands gripping the trapped rifle
like a lifeline. She heard another shot, and suddenly the dogs were barking rather
than growling, short, clipped sounds of communication. The pack turned and fled, the
biggest pausing only to snarl “bastard” before disappearing into the trees.

Heron stepped into view, her rifle still tight against her shoulder. She nodded at
Kira and kicked the dead animal off her chest.

Even when she was free, Kira couldn’t move.

“Did that dog just call me a bastard?” asked Samm.

“We need to get out before they regroup,” said Heron. “Come on.”

Kira finally managed to speak. “What?”

“We need to go now,” said Samm, reaching down with a muddy, bloody hand. “If they
get the drop on us, we’re dead.”

Kira took his hand, struggling to her feet. “What on earth is going on?”

“Watchdogs,” said Heron, leading them back out around the wall of rock. “We used them
in the war.”

“Hyperintelligent dogs bred for battlefield assistance,” said Samm. He retrieved his
rifle and fell into line behind Kira, walking backward to keep his gun aimed at the
dog pack’s path of retreat. “They’re bigger and tougher and capable of basic speech.
We used them for everything over there. I should have recognized, the moment I heard
it’s voice, but it’s been too long.”

“You had talking monster dogs?”

“ParaGen made them,” said Samm. “Apparently they’ve gone feral.”

Kira remembered the brochure she’d seen at the ParaGen office: It had mentioned both
a Watchdog and a dragon. She looked to the sky, but nothing swooped down to tear her
apart with angry talons.

She’d seen the word elsewhere as well, “Watchdog,” in some of the battlefield reports
she’d read in Afa’s library. She shook her head, still numb, stumbling through the
dog path. It wasn’t just the word—she remembered now another thing, a scene in her
mind, one of her only memories of her father. She had been attacked by a dog, a giant
one, and he had stepped in the way to save her. Had that been a Watchdog, or something
else?

Worse was the realization that this thing—this inhuman, unnatural beast—had come from
the same place she had. She looked more human, but her origins were closer to those
Watchdogs than to any human she’d ever known.

“You’ve been on Long Island for twelve years,” said Samm. “It’s a closed environment.
The rest of the world’s changed.”

“They’re circling around,” said Heron. “Go!”

Please,
the dying dog had said, its face burned into Kira’s memory. She shook her head and
climbed.

A
riel McAdams had run away from Nandita’s house years ago, living by herself on the
south side of East Meadow, but after her infant died—almost every woman on Long Island
had a dead infant or two, thanks to the Hope Act—she’d left East Meadow altogether.
Marcus had found a vague address in the hospital records, and hanging around to look
for it had very nearly cost him his freedom. He kept a portable radio to listen in
on military reports and to talk to Kira if she ever called him again, and the news
as he left East Meadow was grim. The Partial army moved in barely an hour after he
left. He had nowhere to go but away. He checked again the address on his small piece
of paper: “An island in Islip.” It wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than nothing.

He learned from his radio that the Partials had set up a perimeter around East Meadow,
catching much of the population before they were able to leave, and sending out search
teams to comb the island for stragglers and bring them all back to that central location.
Still, the island was very big, and a hundred thousand Partials couldn’t look everywhere
at once. Marcus stayed low, never lighting fires or walking through open spaces, and
managed to avoid them for the first few days.
It won’t last,
he thought,
but if I can find Ariel and just hunker down instead of traveling, I can last a lot
longer.

On the evening of the second day, his radio chirped to life; his heart sped up, but
he quickly realized it was not Kira, nor was it another guerrilla report from the
Grid. It was Dr. Morgan.

“This is a general message to the residents of Long Island,” said Morgan. “We did
not want to invade, but circumstances forced our hand. We are looking for a girl named
Kira Walker, sixteen years old, five feet ten inches tall, approximately one hundred
eighteen pounds. Indian descent, light-skinned, with jet-black hair, though she may
have cut or dyed it to help disguise her identity. Bring us this girl and the occupation
ends; continue to hide her, and we will execute one of you every day. Please don’t
force us to do this any longer than is necessary. This message will cycle through
all frequencies and repeat until our instructions have been complied with. Thank you.”

The message ended, and Marcus listened in shock to the static that hung in the air.

After a moment of stunned silence, Marcus twisted the tuning knob, searching for the
next frequency up. The message was playing there, just like she’d said it would, and
Marcus listened to it again with disbelieving ears. He followed it up the dial four
more times, as if he was certain it was all a dream, that it wasn’t actually real,
but every time it was the same: They wanted Kira. They would kill innocent people
to find her. They would stop at nothing.