# # # # #
The fire on the runway was still burning. The sound of another minor explosion rolled towards her from the shopping center. Madelyn ran to the fuel truck. She climbed up into the cab, switched on the ignition, and dropped it into gear. She found a clipboard and a book on the passenger’s seat. She used those to put a little pressure on the accelerator and she jumped out before the thing could gather too much speed.
Madelyn stood there as the tanker rolled off. At the end of the supply hose, it dragged the burner behind it. The burner dripped little pools of burning fuel as it bumped across the concrete. The tanker was headed for a collapsed hangar. Madelyn ran for the path through the woods.
With a little luck, she was able to retrace her steps. Her pace was slower, and she wasn’t quite as panicked. Some sort of alarm began to wail from the south. Madelyn wondered if they had some sort of emergency procedure in place. Perhaps there was a third fire that could be activated, just in case. To compete with the exploded tanker at the shopping center, the third fire would have to be mammoth.
Madelyn crossed the field as something exploded from the direction of the airfield. She had intended to create a distraction. Another explosion was a nice bonus. The Roamers would be busy.
Madelyn couldn’t find the hatch to Harper’s underground hiding place. It didn’t matter. She had the general vicinity, and she could find her way back to the streets. She used Harper’s shortcut and found the neighborhood with the tomb room.
She was close to the truck now.
Madelyn dropped into a crouch when she saw movement on the street.
She saw a young man with blond hair jog up to a position near some overgrown bushes, stand there for a second, and then jog away. It was a lucky break. The blond man had given up the sentry’s location.
Madelyn moved through the tall grass of untended lawns and passed behind the houses until she was close enough to the sentry’s bush. She approached from the blind side and managed to sneak up on the sentry. Inside the bushes, someone had thrown together a post that looked down at the truck.
Harper was on her belly under there, keeping watch down the street. With their complicated process to occupy the Roamers, these people had seemingly forgotten some of the basics of surveillance. Harper had an arsenal of weapons stacked behind herself. Madelyn picked up the nearest rifle.
Harper turned at the noise. She was already whispering.
“I told you to hold your…” Harper began. She realized who she was talking to.
“Back out of there,” Madelyn said. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”
Harper extracted herself from the bush slowly while Madelyn kept the rifle pointed at the young woman’s guts. As they stood, Madelyn took the revolver from the girl’s holster and executed a pretty slick maneuver. She spun Harper, shouldered the rifle, and had the revolver to Harper’s temple before the young woman could react.
Madelyn had a hostage.
She backed out from the bushes and turned Harper towards the post of the blond man.
He revealed himself quickly, emerging from the side of the building with his own rifle to his shoulder.
Madelyn kept herself hidden behind Harper and pressed to her back.
“How many of you are here?” Madelyn asked. “How many watching the truck?”
“Just us,” Harper said.
“If you’re lying, one of you will die for no reason. Tell the truth.”
Harper didn’t say anything. Madelyn felt her stiffen a tiny bit. The flinch gave Madelyn all the information she needed.
# # # # #
“Get in,” Madelyn said. She held open the driver’s door and tossed the rifle into the bed.
“I’m not going with you.”
“You get in and tell me what you did to this truck or I’ll shoot you.”
“Go ahead,” Harper said.
Madelyn didn’t hesitate. She moved the revolver a tiny bit and fired twice. Horror spread across Harper’s face. She hadn’t shot the young woman, but they both understood the implication. Fire or not, Roamers would be on them fast.
The blond man understood. He took off at a sprint away from the gunfire.
“Get in and we’ll get this thing up to seventy. That will keep us safe, right?”
“You’ve killed us both,” Harper said. She didn’t waste any time. She dove in through the door and slid across the seat. Madelyn got in and tried to turn the key. It came off in her hand. What was stuck in the ignition was Gabriel’s fob, but only half of a key.
Harper held up the real thing.
Madelyn took it and started the truck. She pressed the accelerator as she pulled down the shift lever with her gun hand. Harper could have attacked and stripped the weapon. For the moment, the two women were on the same team.
At the end of the block, Madelyn slowed and veered to the left in preparation to turn around.
“Don’t slow down. They’ll be coming fast,” Harper said. “Take a right.”
Madelyn glanced at the young woman and decided to trust her. When she swung the truck to the right, Harper began to slide across the seat. She caught herself as Madelyn straightened out the truck.
“Slow a little. There’s debris coming up on your left.”
The road swept into a gentle turn. Harper was right. They avoided the debris and Madelyn began to pour on the speed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Harper look towards the revolver. Madelyn switched it to her left hand. She wasn’t a good shot with that hand, but Harper didn’t need to know that.
# # # # #
As the road ascended out of the city, Madelyn slowed down.
“No,” Harper said. “Keep going. We’ve got a safe house farther up the hill.”
Madelyn nodded and accelerated. They were going well more than seventy. She hoped the young woman was right about the speed. In the rearview mirror, Madelyn saw a much different picture than when she had come down out of the mountains. Instead of one neat line of smoke from the bonfire, there were three billowing clouds of black over the city. Madelyn hadn’t meant any harm, but she had destroyed their community. If her grandmother had asked, she would have answered, “No, this was not the type of person she wanted to be.”
Harper turned in her seat and sighed when she saw the smoke. She flopped back around.
“You’re still young,” Madelyn said. “You’ll figure something out.”
“We were close to homeostasis,” Harper said. “We had the density figured out. All the results were coming in. We could have isolated them by the end of the year.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t involve blowing anything up. You wouldn’t understand.”
Madelyn laughed.
“How do you folks communicate? As soon as I broke out, you must have taken up watch on this truck. How did you know?”
“We have a radio,” Harper said. “It operates below the noise floor of the Hunters. They don’t even know it exists.”
“They’re smarter than you think.”
“No,” Harper said, “they’re not. They’re exactly as smart as we think because we have studied them. That’s how we came up with the isolation plan. They just need to be herded and then isolated and the whole area will be clean. We’re the reason why you’ve been so safe up in your mountains. You can kiss that goodbye.”
“We haven’t exactly been safe,” Madelyn said. “I just ran into Roamers a few days ago out at Coffin Pond.”
She felt Harper’s eyes on her.
“It’s true.”
“The safe house is right up here,” Harper said. “Just pull over and I can walk there.”
Madelyn nodded.
She pulled to the side of the road. Madelyn held the gun across her body as Harper opened the door.
“I didn’t come here to hurt you,” Madelyn said. “I just don’t do well with jail cells or societies, I guess.”
The young woman frowned, nodded,
and slammed the door.
Madelyn kept her eye on the rifle in the back while she pulled away. She didn’t want Harper to grab it and start firing after her. When she was a few feet away, she started to think about those people and their inventions. She wondered if maybe they had rigged the truck with some kind of tracking device. Maybe it would communicate below the noise threshold or whatever. It probably didn’t matter. She would be ditching the truck at Circle Poke anyway.
Madelyn took one more look at the smoke in the mirrors as she eased the truck back up to speed.
She slammed on the brakes.
Harper was in the road, waving her arms over her head.
Madelyn didn’t allow herself a single instant of hesitation. She jerked the wheel to the side and mashed down the accelerator. The truck’s back tires spun and whipped the old vehicle around. Madelyn bore down on Harper’s position and hoped the young woman had the sense to get out of the way.
# # # # #
Harper ran towards the truck. Madelyn was going too fast to make a tight turn, but that’s exactly what she had to do. She needed the old truck to pull off a miracle on its bald tires. She needed the springs to keep the thing upright despite the forces that would try to roll it. What she really needed was for Harper to get the hell out of the way so she could keep the bald tires on the pavement.
The young woman was sprinting right up the middle of the road.
Madelyn cranked down her window as she veered onto the grass.
“Keep running,” she yelled as she passed Harper. She had no hope that Harper had heard the message. Madelyn used the slick grass to start her skid. The back end of the truck hit the pavement at precisely the wrong angle. Madelyn turned into the slid, but the whole truck began to tip. Her left-hand wheels began to come off the road. She was going over.
The back right wheel skipped across the road surface, chirping her position to the world. The truck slammed back down. Madelyn goosed the accelerator to help the truck collect itself.
The clicking sound of the Roamers flooded in through the window like a tsunami of sound. They were close. Madelyn could feel their evil intent. She banged on the wheel and then gripped it tight, pulling it towards herself. The sound of the Roamers filled her head with their bugling roar. In the simulation Madelyn had witnessed, this was the sound a victim heard as their cells were being dissected and analyzed by the Roamers. After a second of identification, the machines would begin to tear her apart.
It would feel like a burning at first. That’s what Madelyn had read. As the first of her skin cells were taken apart, the nerves would tell her brain that she was on fire. The natural reaction was to flinch. Those muscle contractions would draw the machines in even faster.
Madelyn held still and focused on the speedometer. As the tires picked up friction, atom by atom, her speed increased to five and then ten.
She felt tiny knives slicing into the flesh of her back, and up the back of her head. She felt pins pierce her arms. Instinct told her to run from the pain. She wanted to sprint away and dive headfirst into water, as if wasps were stinging her. Water wouldn’t drive away this pain. Once the Roamers had a grip, they wouldn’t let go.
Her speed crept up through the twenties. The truck was going to burst right by Harper.
Madelyn disobeyed her instincts again and let her foot ease off the gas as she drew even with the young woman. The girl had equal parts sense and dexterity. Instead of trying to fumble with the door, Harper grabbed the side of the truck and vaulted into the truck bed.
As soon as she heard Harper land, Madelyn stomped on the accelerator again and the truck jumped into action.
She knew she wasn’t going to make it, and now she had drawn the Roamers right to Harper. Madelyn realized her mistake. She should have steered the truck to the side and led the Roamers away from Harper. At least one of them could have survived. It didn’t matter now.
The damage was done.
The truck climbed through the forties as the fiery blades worked their way up over her scalp and began to take her eye. Even when her vision swam and clouded, she kept her face still. Movement would only accelerate the excruciating process.
As the truck reached fifty and then sixty kilometers per hour, the wind coming through her window washed away a little of the burning pain. Madelyn moaned as she took in another breath. She felt tears streaming back from her cloudy eye. Her hand moved automatically. She brushed away the liquid and saw blood on her hand.
Madelyn looked in the mirror. The blood was running from the corner of her eye.
When the face appeared in her window, Madelyn nearly screamed.
“Roll down the passenger’s window, would you?” Harper yelled through the wind.
Madelyn blinked. She realized that she was going to live.
The truck reached the magic speed of seventy kilometers per hour. She put the passenger’s window down and held the truck still as Harper climbed from the back of the truck through the window. The young woman flopped down in her seat.
“What happened to your eye?” Harper asked.
Madelyn opened her mouth to answer. The first thing that tumbled from between her lips was one of her teeth.
Chapter 16
{Home}
She kept the speed of the truck for as long as she could. They bounced over the potholes and skidded around corners that demanded much more care than Madelyn had time for. Harper gripped her armrest and braced herself against the dashboard, but kept her opinions unvoiced. Night fell as they drove. They had no guarantee that they wouldn’t be swarmed as soon as the truck stopped, but neither woman had any better ideas. They would take the truck as close as they could and then continue on foot to the cabin.
Madelyn locked up the tires and the truck ground to a halt in the middle of Circle Poke.
“Let’s go,” Madelyn said.
She wiped her eye again. Most of the vision had come back, but it was still leaking blood everywhere. She spilled from the vehicle, half expecting her body to fall into pieces. The pain still pumped through her, like her blood had been replaced with ground glass and smoldering embers.
“This is where you live?” Harper asked. She looked around at the ramshackle buildings that surrounded them.
“No,” Madelyn said. “This was a mining camp. Grab that rifle.”
Madelyn’s left leg wouldn’t hold her weight. It was the place where she had stomped the door into her own shin in order to break the man’s grip. That escape from the shopping center felt like it had happened a lifetime ago, but the injury was just now catching up with her. She knew why—it was the Roamers. They had attacked that damaged part of her shin and made the injury worse.
Harper came around the truck and grabbed her shoulder.
“I can manage,” Madelyn said.
“No, you can’t,” Harper said.
Madelyn looked at the young woman as they walked together. It was amazing to her how their relationship had changed over the course of the day. In the truck, speeding away from the unsafe “safe house,” Harper had adjusted quickly to the new reality. They were a team until they got to safety.
Madelyn was lucky. Her shin warmed to the task quickly and she was able to hike without assistance before long. Harper followed her patiently as Madelyn hiked the trail back to her grandmother’s cabin. She kept her eyes towards the ground to pick out the trail.
“You said your nephew is at the cabin?” Harper whispered.
“Maybe. What of it?”
“How do we signal him that we’re approaching? Do we have to announce ourselves so he doesn’t kill us?”
Madelyn barked out a laugh. “He’s not going to shoot at every sound in the dark.”
Harper was silent.
“We’re not like that,” Madelyn said. “We don’t just shoot at everyone we see.”
“And the old liar?”
“He might be there too. I don’t know. There’s sign on this trail, but it could be from the last tim
e he came to the cabin. I’ll admit it—I was ready to shoot him that time. You’ll note that I didn’t shoot him.”
“Were those his clothes in the back of the truck?” Harper asked.
“Yes. Taking his clothes isn’t the same as shooting.”
“Okay,” Harper said.
As they got to the edge of the clearing, Madelyn stopped and peered into the darkness. Harper had gotten inside of her head—the place looked dangerous to her. She had only been away for a brief time, but her grandmother’s cabin looked foreign in the moonlight.
“Is that it?” Harper asked.
“It’s bigger than it looks.”
They crossed the clearing. Madelyn kept her eyes away from the patch of turned soil that marked her incinerator. She didn’t want Harper to catch sight of it and jump to another quick judgement.
Madelyn stopped when she heard the catch on the door. That was her lock. She wasn’t accustomed to hearing someone else move the mechanism.
They waited.
No light came through the doorway as the door creaked inward. They heard a shuffling step. The man moved out into the moonlight of the porch. It was the old liar, Gabriel. He was dressed in David’s clothes.
Harper ran around Madelyn and closed the distance fast.
She took the old man into a hug.
“Grandpa!” Harper said. She buried her face in the shirt that had belonged to David.
# # # # #
Madelyn joined the two hugging relatives on her own porch.
“I’ve been thinking,” Madelyn said. “Maybe we’re all even.”
Harper and Gabriel turned to her.
“You saved my life and I saved yours. You lied to me and I stole your truck. Come morning, I suppose maybe you two should just be on your way.”
“Suits me,” Gabriel said.
“No, Grandpa, we have to wait for the reset. You don’t know what’s been happening.”
“I picked up some videos at random,” he said.
Madelyn slid by Gabriel and went inside. “Don’t tell me you’ve been…” She moved to the stairway and saw that the hatch to the to lift was still open down there. “You mind not messing with my control panel when I let you stay in my cabin?”
Gabriel appeared behind her. Harper came through last and closed the door. The young woman folded her arms as she looked at the wall of skulls.