Gabriel was still standing there, covering his chest with his crossed arms. She almost felt sorry for him. After dropping the truck into reverse, she pulled the rifle inside and closed the door. He didn’t even chase her as she pulled away.
# # # # #
The road was a nightmare. The truck was capable. Even with its high clearance, she felt the bottom of the vehicle scrape a couple of times. She saw evidence of Gabriel’s trip up the mountain. Trees had been divided and jerked out of the way. A stray rock had been rolled to the side. It was impressive work for the old man. She glanced over her shoulder at the bed of the truck. His tools were back there. Gabriel had used mechanical advantage to compensate for withering muscles.
Madelyn put the window down and let the wind blast.
It was amazing how it all came back to her. Speed was so alluring. She didn’t realize how much she had missed it. The road got better as it descended. She found a patch of pavement and smiled at how the tires sung. She dropped the transmission to take some of the strain off the brakes. This was the farthest she had been from the cabin in decades. As she imagined the distance, a light, panicky flutter passed through her chest and zipped down her legs. This was the real world that she was headed towards. Regardless of the condition of things, she was going to experience something new today. The idea was intoxicating.
Madelyn lost track of time as she drove. The sun, the wind, and the sound of the engine all conspired to hypnotize her. Her mind wanted to wander back to the cabin where Jacob would have discovered her absence. If he even existed, he would discover her absence. She still wasn’t sure. That was all in the past. She needed to allow herself to focus on the future.
She slowed as her access road joined back into the highway.
The truck seemed even harder to control as she kept it between the guardrail and the rocks. This truck wasn’t meant to be corralled by civilization. Madelyn smiled. She empathized.
She slammed on the brakes as her eyes locked on the horizon.
There was smoke.
It wasn’t haze, like from a wildfire. This was a line of dark smoke rising into the sky. This was from a bonfire.
“Hot damn,” Madelyn whispered. She smiled and slapped her leg. She stomped on the gas and the back end of the truck did a little dance as the tires caught traction. Madelyn sped downhill towards town. Her hopes grew as she descended out of the hills.
# # # # #
Madelyn slowed to a stop and shut off the truck. It was hot down in Fairbanks. The warm air blew in through her open window. She could smell the fire. The smoke was rising from over near the airfield. Madelyn stepped down from the truck and slung her rifle over her back. She began her trek down through the park. She knew a path that led from Birch Hill to the north side of the airfield.
The fire was an amazing sight, but she would still approach with caution.
Still protected by a line of trees, and at least a couple hundred meters from the fire, Madelyn stopped to listen. If it was a party, there would be music. From what she remembered, people in Fairbanks went nuts for music.
She didn’t hear a thing.
Turning her nose to the air, she smelled something under woodsmoke. They were using some sort of synthetic fuel. Maybe that’s why the smoke was so dark. She broke from the path and used a thick patch of growth as cover as she approached.
Madelyn crept forward until she found the old fence. The poles were rusted and tipped. She moved through a gap and dropped to her belly so she could get close enough to see. The foliage ran out at the cracked pavement of the airstrip. Madelyn parted leaves and looked.
Someone had rolled a big tanker truck to the middle of the runway. On the other side of the bonfire, a front loader was parked. Madelyn pieced together the evidence.
It looked like someone had uprooted a bunch of tall trees and pushed them to the center of the airstrip. Too green to burn on their own, fuel was being slowly pumped into the pile from the tanker truck. The result was a big, smoky fire that would probably burn for a week or more before it petered out. What was the point?
Under the crack and pop of the fire, Madelyn realized there was another sound.
It was a slow, rhythmic clicking.
Gabriel called them Zumbidoes. Madelyn called them Roamers.
They were invisible and impossible to kill.
They were the answer to overpopulation and to all the people who had refused to submit to the cull.
Madelyn pushed back through the leaves. The clicking began to intensify. She was already surrounded.
# # # # #
Madelyn veered right, farther away from the path that led back to the truck. If she had a chance, it would be the dried up river. There might still be a pool somewhere. She might be able to reprise her underwater act.
She broke from the trees and flew across the cracked dirt. She turned to the right and tried to keep her footing across the rocks.
The clicking grew louder.
In the distance, from up in the hills, Madelyn heard the sound of a deep airhorn. She didn’t think, she simply turned towards it and ran faster. The river was only a tiny trickle. There were no depths to dive to. She had nowhere to hide.
She climbed the opposite bank and scrambled up through the brush. She pulled at the branches as she churned her legs. The clicking was louder and faster. The Roamers were closing in.
Madelyn burst into the woods. She found a winding game trail and sprinted as fast as she could.
The airhorn sounded again.
She didn’t know what it was, but it was her only hope.
Madelyn’s legs weren’t accustomed to the effort. Even in her younger years, she hadn’t been much of a runner. With each stride, she wondered if her tired old muscles would be able to generate enough power to keep going.
The trail busted through more brush and came out to an overgrown field. There were animals grazing at the far side—a moose cow and her adolescent calf. They raised their heads and stopped chewing as they looked at Madelyn.
She ran right for them.
Madelyn thought there was a chance that the Roamers might be confused by the new heat signatures. Maybe they would chase the moose instead of her.
The mother moose turned towards her as Madelyn ran across the field. It stomped the ground and chuffed air through its nose. It was warning Madelyn not to come any closer to its offspring. Madelyn raised her arms up over her head and tried to make herself look bigger.
The clicking was fast on her heels.
The tall grass tangled around her legs, sapping the last of her energy. She heard the airhorn again from the other side of the moose. The animal swiveled its ears at the sound.
The cow moose gave up its bluff and turned before bolting off to the side. The adolescent calf turned after its mother and ran. If anything, the clicking intensified. The Roamers weren’t fooled by the large animals.
Madelyn reached the far side of the field with the last of her energy. She turned at the edge of the woods and pulled the rifle from her back. She faced the empty field. The grass was matted down where she had run through the center of the field. The moose hadn’t left any sign of their presence.
As the clicking increased in frequency, Madelyn swung her rifle from side to side. They had a physical presence. Technically, it was possible that she might be able to shoot at least one of them. But there was nothing to aim at.
The only sign she had was the clicking, which had sped up so much now that it was actually a low tone.
Madelyn backed up a step and fired.
For a second, the sound of the gun blotted out the Roamers. It faded back to her ears.
She barked out a defiant scream as she chambered another round. She swept the gun to her left and fired again.
Something grabbed her collar and jerked her backwards.
Madelyn screamed as she fell into darkness.
Chapter 14
{Reason}
A hand closed over her mo
uth.
She couldn’t see thing. Madelyn’s hands operated automatically—they chambered another round. The noise of the gun sounded muffled in the dark.
“Don’t,” a voice whispered in her ear.
Madelyn held perfectly still. After a second, the hand moved from her mouth and the body behind her shifted. The knee moved from her back. She was grateful. Madelyn didn’t know how long they stayed there in the dark. It seemed like forever.
The person behind her exhaled.
A light clicked on.
They were in a dirty hole lined with canvas. The trapdoor above them was puffy with padding.
The woman whispered again. Madelyn turned to see her face as she spoke.
“They’ll go back to the fire in a second. It draws them in pretty quick. You must have gotten pretty damn close to it to pull them away.”
Madelyn nodded. Her rifle was pointing right at the woman. Madelyn thumbed the safety and turned the barrel to the side. Madelyn shifted her weight. She was still sitting on the woman’s ankle.
“Sorry,” she said.
“That’s okay. I’ve had worse,” the woman said with a little laugh. She was young—older than Jacob, but young. “I’m Harper,” the woman said.
Madelyn cleared her throat. “Madelyn.” She pushed back until she was against the canvas wall. Dirt shook loose and tumbled down the back of her shirt.
“We can go in a minute. I just want to make sure.”
The woman pulled something from her shirt pocket. When she hit the button, a little orange light glowed from the top. The woman swept the thing through a wide arc and watched as the light flickered.
“Just give them one more minute.”
“What is that?” Madelyn asked, pointing at the thing.
“I saved you,” Harper said with a smile. “I get to ask questions. What are you doing here?”
Madelyn blinked as the smile disappeared from Harper’s face. The woman was young, but she knew how to be assertive. She reminded Madelyn of herself at that age. More accurately, she reminded Madelyn of who she had become after leaving Austin. She had been assertive, but the confidence was a mask that she wore to disguise her fear of the world.
“I live up in the mountains,” Madelyn said. “Some jerk tricked me into coming down here. He said that the Roamers were all gone.”
The young woman used her device again. The light was green as she swept it through its arc.
“They nearly are,” Harper said.
Madelyn raised her eyebrows.
“Gone from this field, I mean. They’ll be at the fire.”
Harper stood up and pressed against the trapdoor. It flopped open, letting the sun in. Harper climbed the edge with the help of rungs protruding from the wall. She put her hand down to help, but Madelyn was already boosting herself up the other side. She adjusted her rifle on her back and turned a slow circle to get her bearings.
Harper put the device away and tucked her shirt in. Madelyn assessed the young woman quickly. She was dressed too casually to be far from home. Her shorts would be completely impractical overnight or if they got any rain. She wasn’t wearing a pack and didn’t seem to have any guns. Clipped to her belt she had the electronic thing with the lights and a multitool that Madelyn’s grandmother would have called a “Leatherman.”
“Your truck is that way,” Harper said. She pointed off through the woods. “I wouldn’t recommend using it though. Not this time of day. Not after the evening horns.”
“Oh?”
“They’ll go after you. Wait until tomorrow when the sun is high. You could get away with running a truck in full sun.”
Madelyn looked up. If she had known the Roamers were around, she never would have considered running a truck at all. She wouldn’t take that chance again.
“I can show you a place where you can stay the night if you want. It’s not very comfortable, but it’s safe.”
“Thank you, but no,” Madelyn said. She pulled out a map and a compass. Once she got to higher ground, she could pinpoint her location and track the best way home. It would take a while to do safely, but if Jacob and Noah could hike all the way from Oslo, she would be okay. Madelyn shook her head at the thought. She reminded herself that Jacob wasn’t real. He was a figment of her lonely imagination.
Harper was still looking at her.
“Yeah. Maybe you can show me where I could stay.”
“Good,” Harper said. “Follow me.”
# # # # #
The young woman walked at a furious pace. She was fast and quiet. It was like the path was a racecourse and Harper was trying to beat a personal record. Madelyn’s knees clicked as she worked to keep up.
The woods had encroached on the neighborhood. Trees and tall grass had grown up around and through the suburban houses. A squirrel chattered at them from a busted kitchen window. An oak tree had grown up through the center of a solar panel.
Harper led the way up a narrow path and across the joists of a rotted deck. She slid open the door and waited for Madelyn to close it before she moved on. The walls were stained from water and mold. The ceiling and floor looked to be in pretty good shape.
“Prepper,” Harper said.
The word didn’t have any meaning to Madelyn. Harper put her shoulder against a bookcase and shoved it to the side. It rolled on squeaky wheels and revealed a steel door. Harper pushed it inwards. Lights came on.
The space reminded Madelyn of her own basement.
It had a screen, a control panel, and a couch big enough to sleep on.
Madelyn stopped in the doorway and looked at the metal frame. It might as well have been a tomb.
“If I wanted you dead, I would have left you to them,” Harper said. She was smiling.
Madelyn stepped into the room.
“Where do you live?” Madelyn asked.
“Nowhere,” Harper said. “I move around. We all do. Permanent encampments are bad news.”
Madelyn glanced around the tomb.
Harper laughed. “You’ll be fine here for one night. Between the runway and the center, we keep a constant flame. The Hunters will circle the runway for the next two days while we’re fixing everything up at the center, and then we’ll switch them over at midnight on 7305. Then the whole process starts again at the runway. As long as you don’t get too close to the burn, it’s a good system.”
“Until you run out of tanker trucks.”
Harper tilted her head and considered Madelyn for a second. “We’ve got another five or ten years of fuel left. It’s not impossible without manufactured fuel. We’ve run one or two experiments with dried wood. It can work. It’s just a lot more effort to collect.”
“How many is we?” Madelyn asked.
“How many are you?” Harper asked with another smile.
“Just me. Maybe,” Madelyn said. “I mean, technically, there’s a chance that there’s an old liar up at my place right now. My nephew might be there as well. I’m not sure.”
“And you came down because?”
“I was tricked,” Madelyn said.
Harper nodded. “By the old limping liar?”
Madelyn kept her expression neutral. “If he has a limp, I never noticed it.”
“You just said he did.”
Madelyn shook her head. “Must have misspoke.”
Harper checked her watch and moved for the door. “I’ll tell everyone you’re here for the night. Listen close tomorrow and you’ll hear the klaxon sound when it’s safe to use your engine. Get up that hill fast though. Lingering might draw in some Hunters from the hills. In fact, don’t let your speed drop much below seventy until you’re ready to run. You don’t want to trail anything you can’t outrun.”
“Good advice,” Madelyn said. “Thanks for everything.”
Harper smiled again and began to leave. She came back and offered a hand for Madelyn to grasp briefly.
“Oh,” Madelyn said. “Do you know where I can find fuel for my truck?”
>
“It’s filled already,” Harper said. “You’re good to go. Stay here tonight. When you hear the klaxon, go find your truck.”
Madelyn nodded.
Harper waved and then left.
# # # # #
Madelyn waited for the young woman to cross the yard before she raced to the window. Through the dirty, cracked glass, she watched Harper slip back into the woods. Madelyn believed roughly nothing of what the young woman had said.
She moved to the counter and pulled out her map again.
Harper had said the flame was kept at the runway and the “center.” It wouldn’t be the center of town—according to Madelyn’s old map, the town didn’t have a real center. Besides, a collection of old buildings would be a bad place to stage a big fire.
The college might have a center that worked. She kept a finger there while she scanned the rest of the map. The shopping center had a big parking lot. A wide expanse of asphalt would be a good match for the runway, and it wasn’t too far between. Perhaps Harper bounced the Roamers back and forth between the two areas. If that was the case, it might be a good place for Madelyn to learn more about the people who lived in the area. Now that they knew about Madelyn, she wanted to have a better sense of her neighbors.
Madelyn decided to wait until morning. She left the door to the tomb open and spent an uneasy night on the couch.
# # # # #
She exited through a front window and headed in the opposite direction from Harper.
Madelyn jogged across the street and ducked between two houses. She studied the neighborhood for several minutes, waiting for any sign of movement. Everything remained quiet. Madelyn slipped through the back yards and made her way from block to block. The locals weren’t crafty about hiding their tracks. She counted four different shoe prints when she stumbled on one of their trails. The two larger ones were probably men. The smaller could have been women or maybe children. None of them matched the tread of the boots that Harper had been wearing.
Madelyn walked along the edge of the dirt path. She broke from it when it descended down a bank and followed a dried up creek. Madelyn wanted high ground. She worked her way up to a rocky ridge.