Chapter 20 #2
He activated night-vision as he entered town.
The overgrown streets were empty, save for scattered vehicles that had been stripped down to their frames long ago.
A surprising number of buildings were standing, though many had holes in their walls and roofs.
Waist-high chunks of wall and jutting steel supports were all that remained upright in some places.
Ronin compared the place to its state during his last visit, which had been 5,023 days before. Several more walls had collapsed, particularly on the brick buildings, and the encroaching vegetation had spread, resulting in more damage to the structures and roadways.
Rifle at the ready, he entered one of the buildings. He moved slowly, silently, listening through the howling wind for any sound betraying the presence of another person. Though the search remained his primary function, his background processes turned toward Lara.
Should he have taken her along? He hadn’t lied about the danger, but at least he would’ve been nearby to defend her, were the need to arise. If something happened in Cheyenne while Ronin was gone, she would be all but helpless.
He froze, a piece of rotting plywood forgotten in his hand. He’d left Lara vulnerable. How could he have abandoned her, knowing the history of that city, knowing what had happened to the people who’d lived in those houses?
One of the journal entries surged up from his memory. Its words had been written in a shaky scrawl, and a bloody fingerprint had marred the bottom right corner.
I was going to head down to the bar again tonight.
Don’t know why. The booze is sour and the company is bleak, but something’s been brewing there, and I ain’t talking about beer.
People really worked themselves up these last few days, and I can’t blame them.
I know it was stupid. Hell, I knew it long before tonight. But I can’t blame them at all.
I saw them from down 19th, filling up the street.
God, it was almost like those old movies, when all the villagers take up pitchforks and torches, only here it was shotguns and hunting rifles, crowbars and baseball bats.
They were gathered up on the corner, shouting, and those bots…
they just lined up across the street from the bar, shoulder to shoulder, and stood there. Didn’t move, didn’t say a goddamn word.
Shit escalated. Shit fucking escalated.
The bot that leads them stepped up. Told everyone to get their shit and go home. Someone threw a rock at it.
Those things didn’t even bother wasting bullets.
Didn’t need to. Most of them look human, but fuck…
the bots tore through those people like they were made of paper.
Crowd fought for less than a minute, and then their nerve broke.
They took off in every direction, a lot of them coming towards me.
I helped Julio Ortega get around the corner.
He wasn’t with his family when they got taken. When he let go of his stomach, his…
God, his blood is all over me. I can’t. Can’t write this anymore.
I don’t think they’re searching houses yet. Guess they’re content to slaughter people like cattle in the street, and that’s enough tonight. Like it was nothing…
Ronin’s urge to return to his residence was more powerful than ever, but it wouldn’t do any good.
It would take hours to get back to Cheyenne, and even if he was quick, it would mean the energy put into this journey had been expended in waste.
He’d come all the way out here. He had to do what he’d intended.
Ronin searched the smaller buildings as the night progressed.
Occasionally, lightning illuminated their interiors, followed several seconds later by wall-rumbling thunder.
Bits of scrap metal and plastic accumulated in his rucksack.
It would only be worth a fraction of what his last haul had earned.
The gold ring would up his return significantly, but it couldn’t be counted; it was Lara’s. She would choose what to do with it.
As dawn neared, the storm cleared out. Ronin moved into the larger structures near the town center. These had sustained more damage than many of the others, probably due to their size, but they were navigable.
In the first building, he discovered the remains of three humans—skeletons in faded, ragged clothing. The fingers of the largest were wrapped around the grip of a rusted revolver. Ronin knelt, brushing away the dirt on the floor to reveal the message painted there.
Saw their faces
Heard their screams
No one left to absolve us of our sins
He contemplated those words as minutes passed and the sun crept higher over the eastern horizon. Would they hold significance to Lara? Ronin could almost piece the meaning together, could almost understand.
Weren’t there images in his memory he couldn’t erase? Screams echoing from his otherwise forgotten past? Explosions and charging armies, gunshots and blood and oil…
Ronin forced himself to stand and leave the bodies behind. It would do him no good to pursue the fragments of another life.
He went into the building with MNICIL written over the entrance.
It had probably been MUNICIPAL, before the Blackout.
Sections of the ceiling had collapsed, likely due to decades of water damage, and most of the interior furnishings had been reduced to useless scraps.
He worked his way deeper inside, clearing some of the rubble from a hallway to access another section.
Rotted bits of plaster, shards of glass, shreds of dingy carpet, dirty rubble, and pieces of unidentifiable furniture blanketed the floor. A padlocked door stood at the end of the hall.
The heavy lock broke with a single blow from the butt of his rifle, and the door came off its hinges when Ronin pulled it open. Inside stood three service bots, one with a broom in hand, their casings dulled with age and dust.
The ceiling was reinforced, showing no signs of rot. Ronin had encountered similar rooms in other places. Had there been rules in the old world concerning where bots were allowed to rest?
Stepping inside, he searched the shelves lining the walls, adding six long-dead power cells and several specialized tools to his bag.
A small box held miscellaneous parts, unidentifiable because of the built-up dust and lint inside.
He placed the entire thing in his bag, atop the other items, but he left the bots alone.
Once, they’d moved and worked, they’d spoken and thought. Even if their functions were simple, they’d been alive.
Returning to the hallway, Ronin crouched and rummaged through his bag, rearranging his haul. The tools and parts would undoubtedly bring in a stack of credit, but the power cells were the real treasure. Even uncharged, they were worth at least as much as his last haul.
When Ronin emerged from the building, the sun was at its zenith, shrouded by that perpetual gray haze.
The Dust wasn’t just beneath his boots. It was everywhere, above and below, outside and in.
Even with his skin replaced, it was only a matter of time before dust built up in his internal mechanisms, before it caused failures and breakdowns.
No one, whether bot or human, escaped the Dust.
Not even within the walls of Cheyenne.
And Lara was still alone. Was she frightened, upset?
Lonely?
Perhaps she was brimming with anger because Ronin had departed while she slept without saying goodbye.
He didn’t want to dwell on regrets. And though everything within him railed against the possibility, if he was never to see Lara again, he wanted to remember her saying she would wait for him. Wanted to remember smile on her lips and the look in her eyes, which had conveyed the truth.
She would actually miss him.
His plan had been to scavenge until just before dawn on the third day to maximize his time here. He knew there was more to find, knew treasures lay hidden in the hundreds of thousands of square feet he’d not yet searched within these buildings.
Lara is alone.
But traveling during midday, especially at known scavenging spots like this, was dangerous.
It would leave him exposed. In the open Dust, effective hiding places were difficult to come by.
The decaying buildings of Fort Collins, however, provided ample cover for would-be ambushers.
And there was no guarantee that Ronin hadn’t been spotted by the hill dwellers.
The safest course of action would’ve been to shelter in one of the buildings, wait out the daylight, and leave under cover of darkness.
Sensors pulsed on his cheek, and he scratched it absently. Would six or seven more hours make a difference? Undoubtedly. But what was more important—the effect on his haul, or the effect on Lara?
For all the years he’d been awake, this was a new experience, an unexplored dilemma.
He’d never had anyone waiting for him, had never had companionship.
His interactions had been limited to passing conversation, negotiations over trades, the rare peaceful encounter in the wastes, and the even rarer night with a female.
He cinched the top of his bag, closed the flap, and slung it over his shoulders.
As he stood, he slipped his right arm through the strap of his rifle.
His hand settled on the grip, thumb sliding to the indentation worn over decades of use.
Glancing down, he performed an inventory of his hand tools, ensuring they were all in place.
The trees would provide some cover while he made his way out of town. Once he was clear of them, he’d be back in the Dust, visible from kilometers away.
But at least he’d have the same field of view.
With dusk drawing near, the lights of Cheyenne were already on as Ronin approached from the eastern railway, which crossed the path connecting the bot district and the human slums. He’d followed the north road out of Fort Collins.
Varying his route helped reduce the chance of ambushes on the return trip.
The railyard had only been partially cleared in all its years of disuse. Hulking train cars, many of which had been stripped down to their frames, lay silent amidst the dunes that had gathered around them. A few were jumbled heaps of twisted, scorched metal, covered in rust and grime.
Movement from just off the path ahead caught his attention. He enhanced his optics, zooming in on the source—a murder of crows picking at a carcass. Their ragged caws drifted to him on the westward wind.
The birds’ meal became more apparent as Ronin neared. His steps slowed. The crows continued their calls, jerking their heads aside to stare at him with black eyes and bits of flesh dangling from their beaks.
He surged forward, startling the creatures into scattering. They regrouped on a nearby train car to watch him.
Time lost meaning as he stared at what the birds had been feeding upon. Ronin was so still that some of the crows returned, warily hopping closer until he waved his arm to scare them off again.
It was the corpse of a human woman. She was naked, and where her skin hadn’t been torn apart by hungry corvids, it was dark with bruises. His first thought was that Warlord had found Lara, but he rejected it immediately. This woman’s skin was a darker shade, and her blood-matted hair was black.
A synth lay on the ground near her, his head face-down over her crotch. His detached arms and legs were strewn around him with tendrils of wire and tubing jutting from the jagged openings. Warlord’s symbol was upon his back in red paint that had run before drying.
The synth’s penis had been removed and shoved into the woman’s mouth. Crows had pecked out her eyes, but her collapsed cheekbone, dislocated jaw, and extensive bruising indicated that she’d been severely beaten before she was dumped here.
She was a little taller than Lara, with full hips and breasts. Dark hair, tan skin…
Ronin’s processors slowed as realization hit him, stronger than any storm winds he’d endured in the wastes.
The woman’s arms were spread to either side, palms up. Slowly, he knelt beside her, gently took hold of her left wrist, and turned her hand over.
A jagged scar ran from the first knuckle of her pinky to the base of her thumb.
As delicately as he could, he set her hand back down. His processors kicked into overdrive, moving fast enough that anyone nearby might have heard them whirring.
He’d fulfilled one of Lara’s conditions. That meant one less thing for him to ask about around town, one less thing to draw Warlord’s attention.
He stood and looked over his shoulder at the crows. They remained close, cawing and flapping their wings as they fought over whatever bits of meat they still possessed.
They’d desecrated the body of Lara’s sister. Damaged it beyond what it had already suffered.
Ronin looked down again. No…not it. Her. This was Tabitha.
The synth’s facial skin was gone, exposing dull, dented metal and shattered optics. Ronin moved the bot aside, placing the detached parts on the ground near the torso. That done, he removed the final insult from Tabitha’s mouth and gathered her in his arms.
He’d see to her first to keep the scavengers at bay.
He walked west, searching for a resting place outside of Warlord’s shadow.