Chapter 15
15
They stopped at nightfall to rest and set up camp on one of the platforms to the side of the trainway. Rutger said they were not far from his Worshipper tribe—only another half a day’s travel to reach them, but the beasters preferred to travel by night. Even though the day was not visible, the waxing and waning of the Lure ruled them. Luckily Maura showed no sign of succumbing unless Cyn drifted too far from her. It wasn’t easy restoring her wakefulness, so she stayed close to the woman.
What would happen when she had to leave her? It was a subject neither of them discussed, yet she was sure Maura was afraid to be a mindless zombie-type again.
A few clothed skeletons on the platform were quickly swept aside with a broom she found propped against a wall. No doubt the broom had been left there years ago. Cyn had wielded it. She refused to be intimidated by old bones.
A train had crashed here and slewed across the tracks, ploughing along and taking out parts of the brickwork wall. The carcasses of the last carriages lay rusting and twisted on the tracks. The front of the train had disappeared into the motorway on the other side of the wall. From the sounds, water was cascading into the building somewhere in that direction.
Same as at the museum, stalled vehicles showed through the holes. This was how the rats must have survived, at first—they’d eaten the dead in those cars and inside the train. Nothing seemed to have been cleared away. The accident would’ve been late in the invasion timeline.
Rumbling and intermittent flashes of lightning gave an instant weather report. It was storming outside. The flashes lent color to the tops of the cars and trucks and frightened the rats caught in the light into freezing.
That mess beyond the wall gave Orm’s Toother a hunting ground. With Orm on his back, the nanodog scrambled through, leaving bits of fur caught on the jagged edges of the hole.
Two of the foot-soldiers climbed through after them to investigate. They came back with a report of a waterfall pouring past the building’s edge where the train engine had rammed its nose through. Rainwater from the storm. The beasters had washed up in a pool of the run-off.
The thought of getting a bath vied with a fear that something might pounce and shove her into space. What was life without risk? Risk was the spice of life nowadays. Maybe she’d try it out, if others went too.
They lit a campfire using splinters of wood, cotton clothes, and other unknown objects as tinder. She wasn’t asking what they were. Bone didn’t burn well, thank god. Was it immoral to use it if it did? Philosophy wasn’t her area of expertise. She figured not. With all the plastic and synthetic about, no one was judging what campfires were made of.
Besides… she held out her hands to the warmth, inhaled the scented smoke… it felt good to sit and watch the flames. Cyn grinned to herself. Maybe civilization was burning things? The right things.
Rutger rested a boot on a sturdy brown suitcase and overlooked the lounging group. Only Orm and one winged guard were missing.
He looked more like the leader than what he truly was—the outnumbered representative of another tribe. His horns were twice as wide as his head, and as grand as a twirling ballerina. Seen this close, the blueness on the horns seemed to vibrate the air about them. Specks drifted outward, only to be extinguished as if they were embers dying in the cool air.
She wanted to reach out and touch them, to see if her eyes lied.
God-monster they called him. She could understand why. He had the look of a ruler or a god and, when seen from the right angle, the look of something beyond reality.
“My tribe is gathered beside an edge of a scraper where our quarter looks over an old game reserve. They should remain there for a month. Nature refreshes the spirit, and the view is spectacular.”
That had resembled a tour guide’s summary, though he possessed a deep, sexy, and cultured voice. Listening to him was as potent as swigging whiskey, with the molten glow sinking through you like radioactive rain. Falling in love with a beaster’s voice seemed wrong. At Vargr’s enquiring quirk of brow, she only raised her own. According to him, she couldn’t or wouldn’t fuck another.
And really, Rutger seemed a dangerous man to be lusting after.
There were other priorities, such as making sure she was tested and found to be something beasters liked and did not want to kill. Being dead was not good. Her red nanites had better behave themselves for this biotechie with the blood skills… or whatever it was he did. If he was a he? Maybe there were more women among the Worshippers?
She’d had aspirations to go searching the bottom stories of the scrapers for evidence of her previous life, but everything was conspiring to say, hey, that’s fuckin’ dumb .
Maura, for starters, who’d said she knew Cyn. Even said only once, even if her name did not register, it was a potential clue. And the monsters out there were more real now she’d seen Toother. She’d need an elephant gun to take one of him out.
The Lure was also a problem she was not sure she could beat.
Yup. Her brain kept serving up roadblocks.
Maybe she’d been a bit crazier after fleeing the Ghoul Lords than she had thought? As long as these guys did not want to cast her out, she’d stick with them. Plus, Maura needed her, had sort of adopted her. Cyn blinked into the campfire. Correction, she herself was human. Really.
Never forget that. A little bit of nanomachine did not make her non-human.
A few screeches made everyone look up.
“Rats,” one of the guards muttered. “Toother.”
The squealing came from the other side of the partly demolished wall. It was so dark there that she could see nothing except some debris from the train and the tops of cars.
“How does a nanodog that size get enough food from rats?” She nodded toward the wall.
Vargr bit off a chunk of whatever meat they were frying, chewed, and swallowed. “Not sure. Not just cans of soup though. Toother might be feeding but Orm went scouting too. He heard something, sensed something. The man may not be a biotechie, but he has that weird biotechie sense.”
“What weird sense?” Cyn hunched forward to spear a piece of meat from the frypan with a fork. If it was rat, she was determined not going to think about it… much. She bit down. Tasted meaty. Tough, but it was certainly food. Her stomach grumbled, reminding her of the lack of anything healthy and green it’d been given for ages.
That game reserve Rutger mentioned would have land you could grow crops on—once the Ghoul Lords were gone. If they ever did leave. Apples, oranges, lettuce, broccoli. She’d never thought she’d fantasize about eating broccoli.
“Orm can feel electronics and shit. The biotechies do too, only better. It’s how they see the nanomachines in our blood. Or so I was told. He’s been helping Thadd figure out the weapons the ghoul guards use.”
“Oh?” She turned the bone in her hand, squinted. Rather big for rat. The damn things must be growing. Was it evolutionary or something else? “You mean the thing we were shot at with the day you found me?” She recalled the bolts sizzling past.
“Yep. Those. Fuckin’ evil. The few we’ve captured have Chinese writing on them. Not alien. Those came from us.”
“That’s startling news.” Voice dripping cultured honey, Rutger turned from where he’d been staring toward the source of the noises. He stepped over the suitcase and sat beside her on a cement block, gingerly, as if worried it’d crack under his weight.
Curiously, she heard and saw part of it crumble, the dust and pieces rolling out from under him. Dayum. Weightwatchers would love to sign him up.
He was on one side of her, and she had Vargr on the other. Sandwiched between them, she really felt tiny. It was strangely delicious. Her breath was sucked away. Whoah.
A little trapped, squeezed between two men, two beasters, she swiveled her gaze left, then right.
Breathing optional. With her eyes stuck wide, she waited for him to speak.
“Do you think their weapons are ours then?”
Rutger had spoken, again.
She looked down. His boots had skulls on them too. A match with hers.
“That’s the general thought.” Vargr waved his food toward Rutger as punctuation. “Gotta admire those GLs for taking up our stuff and using it against us. The Chinese must’ve brought those out as a last hope in the war.”
“Yeah.” Rutger frowned. “So we can adapt them too? Use them?”
“That’s the notion. Fucking good if we can. The battery packs run on something like lithium, but they go forever.”
“Huh. Has anyone tried drones since the war petered out?”
“No. You mean stick them together? Fire on them without us being there? Missiles would be better.” Vargr sounded wistful. “Drones and guns though, we could do that if the weight to power ratio was?—”
Vargr was cut off by a crack and rumble as Toother burst through a gap with Orm still riding him and ducking as he leaped. More of the wall crumbled. After a quick wriggly shake, the nanodog leaped over the new rubble, landing on his forepaws and trotting toward them. In his mouth he carried some multi-legged creature that wriggled.
Not a spider or a roach, this was the same size and rusted gray of the frypan, only squeezed in from the sides and fatter from top to bottom.
Cyn stood, along with everyone else. Wary, she was wondering if she should go help kick this creature or run.
“Kill that fucking thing!” a foot-soldier sang out. He yanked up his rifle, halfway, ready to fire.
Orm rode Toother closer then whistled, and the nanodog halted. The critter in his mouth was definitely metal, therefore not exactly alive. It just looked like a big fat bug.
Curious, Cyn sauntered forward, amused that no one else followed her until Vargr finally did. Then Rutger followed him. She’d faced Ghoul Lords. This was littler than them, and possibly cuter?
A row of dim red lights sprang to life across the front where bumps ran in a double line like hip sunglasses on an aging terminator. She counted six legs, three to each side, and two sections to its torso, similar to some insects. The skin was rusted steel or a similar colored metal.
If it kept still, she imagined it would be difficult to spot among the garbage littering the corridors.
She cocked her head. “What is it?”
Orm leaned forward, arms resting on Toother’s neck, and said quietly, “It says it knows you.”
“It speaks?” What the hell?
“It does.”
“How can it know me?”
“That’s one of the doctor’s later autonomous creations.” Maura arrived beside Cyn. “He called them mild AI, as in they can think independently, but only a little. Think of it as a children’s version of an AI. What’s your name, your designation?” she asked it.
From somewhere inside the critter, speakers crackled to life. “Little Mo. This nomenclature derives from Baby Monitor.”
“Ah.” Maura smiled. “One of upper management’s jokes. I bet it was designed to watch employees. You’re not armed? Run a system check and report back.”
A series of beeps sounded, and the eye nodules ran through a spectrum from red to green from left to right.
“What the bloody fucking hell?” So many swear words from Vargr said he was really perplexed.
“System check complete. Memory has corrupted and suffered lost files due to overloading and physical degeneration, but my motor, logic, sensory, and power systems are functioning between ninety-five to ninety-seven percent efficiency. I am not armed. Though I must warn that my limb pincers can damage human skin.”
“And who is authorized to instruct you and alter your directives?” Maura showed a concentrated determination Cyn had not seen before.
“Cyn and one other who is not present. This one called Cyn that I detect before me, now that I am not in hiding.”
“Fine. There you are. Tell it to stick around, and you can let it go.” Maura beamed at her. “Go on.”
“Ask it what the fuck it’s doing here too.” The soldier with the raised rifle finally lowered his weapon.
“Yeah that,” Vargr agreed. “What the fuck are you doing here? Hey? Wait on.” He held up the hand holding the meat and jiggled it while eyeing Cyn. “This proves you’re on our side? Doesn’t it?”
No one answered, and since the critter also remained silent, Cyn decided to speak.
“We’re going to let you go, Little Mo. You are to stay with me. Okay?”
“Yes!” it sang.
“Orm?”
He jiggled the reins and Toother opened his large, lethally toothed mouth and dropped Little Mo.
The thing landed on its small legs, springily.
She felt as if she’d been handed a golden ticket to a candy shop. This Little Mo must know her, and so it must be able to help her with her past.
Surely?
“Why are you following me?”