Empathy

Their massive 4x4 rolled past the Memorial on the way out of Jericho. The massive sculpture was built dead in front of the vehicle garage, a position where anyone leaving the town was forced to pay attention. It consisted of twisted metal and rubble recovered from the smoking hole that used to be New Orleans, steel girders jutting into the ground all around it to keep the drooping mess upright. Large parts of the sculpture were marked with the names of the dead, scratched deep into the steel by the survivors. About thirty metres up the nightmarish body, two gnarled arms thrust out of it in opposite directions, completing the form of a gigantic crucifix.

  It loomed higher as they approached, a darker blotch against the grey morning sky. Dew sparkled wherever a ray of sunlight filtered through the clouds. The fat droplets looked like tears rolling down the burnt, radioactive hulk.

  Bomber sat transfixed. His eyes were glued to the sculpture, and even though his expression never changed Gina could feel the power of his emotions. Tentatively she placed a hand on his arm. He didn’t object.

  “It must be weird for you to be back here,” she whispered. He only swallowed, so she squeezed his arm to bring him out of his trance. “Wake up.”

  “Wh--” he started hoarsely, then cleared his throat. “What?”

  “You were going all funny.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He shrugged. “Just payin’ my respects, I guess. I knew people...”

  She nodded, sensing his need for privacy, then turned her attention to the computer terminal embedded in the seat in front. It had games, books, magazines, even a lasered TV uplink as long as they stayed within line of sight of Jericho. After a little browsing she decided that it offered nothing she cared to waste time on. Instead she turned her seat around and lowered the back rest, turning it into a not-wholly-uncomfortable bed substitute. A stain-proof plastic blanket rolled partway out the side of the chair but Gina left it there. She just wanted to rest her eyes for a few hours. The past few days of near-constant travelling hadn’t done her body any good, and they’d be driving for a while.

  It wasn’t long before she drifted off. Every now and again she started awake at the jarring of the car on the cracked and potholed roads. She looked around at the overcast swampland around them. Tumbledown buildings stood abandoned in the wake of the bombs, now half-sunk into the marshy ground. Husks of dead trees crumbling in the wind. It all seemed more and more eerily familiar. Sometimes she was convinced she could hear voices, shreds of conversation. She started to shiver. Soon her teeth chattered so loudly that she couldn’t go back to sleep.

  The sound of her teeth clicking dragged Bomber back from whatever personal tragedy had swallowed him up. He sat down next to her with a worried expression on his face. “Hey, hey,” he whispered. “You okay? What’s wrong, girl?”

  “It’s this p-place,” she stammered back. “D-d-dead. All dead. It’s like... Like...”

  “Your vision?” he asked, and she nodded. His brow furrowed in deep thought. “Maybe you’re seein’ here what’s gonna happen somewhere else. Christ, if he’s got nuk--” He stopped himself and pounded his fist against the bulletproof plastic screen between them and the driver. “Hey, a little privacy?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he muttered and flicked a switch. The back of the 4x4 went quiet. Even the roaring engine was deadened by a set of anti-noise generators. A complimentary bugscanner rested in a holster at the front, but Bomber didn’t bother. Anything left active would be too well-hidden for a scanner to find anyway.

  Gina’s shaking calmed a little. Bomber wrapped his warm hands around hers, which felt like numb clumps of ice. She said haltingly, “I’m getting worse, aren’t I?”

  “You’ll be fine, Gina. You’re tough.” He smiled. “‘Sides, you’re not gettin’ away from me that easy. Still owe me a story.”

  “I’ll tell it to you sometime. Promise.” She took a deep breath and, with some difficulty, pushed herself up on her elbows just high enough to look out the window. Jericho was out of sight by now, and the 4x4 made steady progress over the cracked and ancient asphalt. “We going anywhere specific or was this just to get us out of Austin?”

  “Little bit of both,” he sighed, sinking into the chair next to her. “You’ve probably guessed by now what I guessed at the end of that phone call. They shot East just as he was about to tell us those bots came from inside Radiation Alley.”

  “So, like... Gabriel came here to steal some kind of special robot from the no-entry zone after the blast? That kind of thing?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Security was pretty heavy around here until a few years ago, could be why he was so squirrely.”

  “And you want to try and track down where those bots came from,” she stated flatly.

  “Basically, yeah.”

  “Where do we start, though?” she asked, turning onto her back to look him in the eye. “We don’t even know what they’re for, much less who made them. I mean, what the hell are we supposed to look for?”

  “I ain’t got the answers, Gina,” said Bomber. “But they’re out there somewhere.”

  She bobbed a nod and sat back, then asked almost casually, “So where are we headed?”

  “New Orleans,” he answered. “I did some checkin’ before we left, seems like the logical choice. Only lab in the area that had the equipment to make nanobots before the bombs. There’s just two other possible sites inside Radiation Alley, and they’re way the hell over in Fredericksburg and New York.”

  “So we just go through each one until we find something.”

  “That’s the plan,” Bomber said, sitting back in his chair. “It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one we’ve got at the moment. Unless you pull another magic trick out your hat.”

  She worked up a smile and fluffed up her complimentary pillow. “Wake me up when we get there, okay?” she murmured and nodded right off.

  “Sure thing, little lady,” he whispered. He leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, then left her to rest.