Prophet's Journey, page 27
part #1 of Prophet of the Badlands Series
Lieutenant Raines
Althea ran at normal speed, not wanting to hurt herself from pushing her body too much too often. Since she didn’t hear the wheelbots yet, she hoped she had enough time to get away without extreme measures.
Four blocks later, she discovered a huge hole where the street had collapsed. A two-foot diameter concrete pipe jutted out from the left side of the pit a little more than halfway to the bottom. An uneven ramp formed from chunks of smashed paving appeared to be the last place a wheelbot would ever want to go. If they went down there, they’d never get out, and the pipe offered a perfect hiding place.
She hurried down the ramp and ducked into the pipe, crawling deep enough to feel secure that nothing outside could see her. Fear that Teal wouldn’t have much time got into a fight with her fear of wheelbots catching her. Or flying machines. Thinking of that awful thing made her hurt all over for a few seconds.
Her fear list gained a new entry: flying robots. Specifically, the big ones that threw exploding arrows at her. She definitely feared them more than being tied, but had more trouble deciding which scared her more between blowing up or being wifed. The flying machine edged out bad raiders to become her biggest fear. She could force raiders not to wife her. None of her powers worked on flying machines or exploding arrows.
She sat there tapping her foot for a while, increasingly worried about Teal. Whether that feeling came from normal anxiety or some sort of message from the clairvoy ants, she couldn’t tell. When her worry grew to the point that she couldn’t stop fidgeting, she crawled out of the pipe, jumped to the cracked paving, and ran up the other side of the sinkhole, climbing the four-foot vertical wall at the edge to the road surface outside.
A quick glance at the sky to find the sun gave her a good guess at northeast. Althea walked fast, saving her energy to run only if needed. Like Ooru and Paama taught her, she stuck close to ruins or dead cars in case she had to hide, keeping her ears open for whirring or metal feet clanking.
I’m going to the place where all those machines come from. Why am I doing that? I should be scared. Do I have a clairvoy ant or am I being stupid?
She crouched by the front end of an old truck, listened to silence for a few seconds, then dashed down to the next cross street, taking cover behind a battered metal stairway. The metal building it connected to had warped so much it resembled a giant half-melted candle someone left too close to a fire.
Still, no sign of robots appeared to be anywhere nearby, so she got up and jogged to the next corner.
There, she paused to look up at a sign that read ‘one way,’ but it pointed opposite the direction she wanted to go.
“Grr. Why?” She scowled. “I wanna go that way.”
Althea folded her arms and huffed. Stupid frozen words telling me what to do.
She started to turn around, but thought back to the stop sign. The Ancients had built it a long time ago. They had probably built this one, too. It didn’t make any sense why she could only walk south on this street… which didn’t even really look like a street anymore, only patches of exposed paving sticking out here and there wherever the dirt didn’t cover it. The Watch man had laughed at her for stopping at the sign. All the adults ignored the frozen words. Maybe she could, too.
“I don’t think you’re right.” She pointed at the sign. “Why can’t I go that way?”
The frozen speech didn’t change to answer her.
“If you don’t say why, I’m going to go that way.” She stuck out her tongue. “Teal needs help.”
She counted to ten, and when the sign didn’t change what it said, she decided to ignore it… and went the wrong way.
Hope I don’t get in trouble.
Two cross streets later, a collapsed building blocked her off from going straight. It looked far too tall and full of sharp things and holes to climb, so she turned right, following the easiest path. As soon as an opening in the ruins allowed, she veered left again, checking the sun to keep on course to the northeast.
She rounded the corner into a swarm of huge rats. Forty or so black, furry creatures milled around, chewing on the carcasses of other rats that had apparently been shot not too long ago. About half the size of the ones Paama called ‘darkbites,’ these appeared to be ordinary—albeit big—rats. A few glanced in her direction, sniffing.
“Nice rats. It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. Don’t bite me.” She crept forward into the group. “Just going to walk by, okay?”
More rats turned toward her, sniffing.
Their emotion shifted from curiosity to hunger mixed with territorial aggression.
Althea radiated calm, forcing the animals’ fear aside. Some resumed nibbling on their dead, the rest watched her with mild curiosity. She hurried past the pack, trying to get away from them before her emotional manipulation faded. At the whirr of an approaching wheelbot, she stopped short. A quick look around for a hiding place left her undecided between a storm drain and a derelict van.
But… the machine would kill all the rats.
“You gotta run, too,” whispered Althea.
She thought about Father, how she loved him and knew he would protect her… and projected that emotion into the rats. They rushed at her, licking at her legs and arms. Two stood on their hind legs, trying to lick her face, but their noses only came up to her waist.
“Follow me!”
Though they couldn’t understand her words, the strong emotional sense of protective love she’d instilled in them caused the rats to follow her to the storm drain and jump in after her. All fifty or so packed the square chamber at the bottom, cuddling up to her in a giant mass of warm, furry bodies. She hid with the rats, listening to the wheelbot roll around outside. After a few minutes, she itched all over.
Ugh. Blood dot bugs.
She clenched her jaw to weather the assault of tiny insects chewing on her. Rats always seemed to have the super tiny black bugs that itched so much. Raiders, not being terribly concerned with clean, often had them too. Althea knew blood dot bugs well. An irritating twenty minutes later, she hadn’t heard a trace of wheelbot long enough that her need to get away from the itching overpowered her fear. She gave off a heavy dose of calm, no longer forcing the furry critters to love her like a parent. The rat pile fell apart, allowing her to stand up and climb out of the storm drain.
Her white (sorta) dress had so many little black dots crawling everywhere it looked as if someone had spilled a bucket of pepper on her. She dropped the backpack, took her dress off, and spent a few minutes slapping it against the road to shake it clear of fleas. Mending the thousands of tiny red spots all over her didn’t require much time or energy.
Fortunately, the recent major rain left no shortage of puddles and pools. Not far from the storm drain, she found a dumpster full of water. She climbed in and sat under the surface for a few minutes, trying to get the rest of the fleas out of her long hair. When her power reached its limit at allowing her to hold her breath, she stuck her head up for air.
The itching had stopped, and a muck of drowned fleas floated on the surface nearby. She swatted at the water to push them away, just in case they only played dead, then pulled herself out of the dumpster. After squeezing the water out of her hair as best she could, she picked her dress up, checking it over for hitchhikers. Seeing none, she put it back on despite still being wet, grabbed the backpack, and continued fast-walking to the north.
A most peculiar sight awaited her three blocks later where a char-blackened machine much bigger than a car sat in the road, mostly blocking it. Two giant tubes stuck out of the back beneath tall vertical fins. It had wings and a clear bubble near the pointy end that covered a single seat. Frozen speech on the tail where it hadn’t turned black said the unpronounceable word USAF. Whatever this machine had been, it appeared stuck there for a long time. It didn’t have wheels, and it kinda looked like a bird, so she guessed it to be another flying machine, but it didn’t look like any of the other ones.
Althea stepped up onto the left wing, which had tilted down near the pavement, and walked across it to the other side. At the front edge, she stopped, staring at a skeleton in the only seat. It seemed kinda silly to make such a big machine to carry only one person.
“I’m sorry you died,” whispered Althea.
“Ehh, kinda dumb of me to fly in so damn low,” said a man. “Thought it would make for easy pickings of the convoy, but one of the bastards got me.”
She jumped with a yelp, whirling to face a youngish guy in a bluish-grey jumpsuit and a white helmet. Frozen speech on his chest, white on a strip of black, read, ‘Raines, F.’ He gave off a strong sense of energy unlike any person she’d ever seen before. Althea looked back and forth between him and the skeleton a few times.
“Are you a ghost?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled. “Lieutenant Franklin Raines at your service. Been wondering what took you so long to get here.”
Confused, she opened her mouth to ask what he meant, then remembered the old guy from Querq who thought she had come to help him die. “I’m not what you think I am.”
Lieutenant Raines leaned closer, looking at her for a moment while rubbing his chin. “Hmm. Maybe you’re right. But you’re kinda close. What are you doing out here?”
“I’m looking for the Great Forge. I have to help my friend before they kill her.”
“Oh, hell no, kid. You gotta get the heck out of here before those crazy machines catch you.”
She shrank in on herself, fully aware of the danger in what she wanted to do. “I know. But I can’t leave Teal to die. They’re gonna kill her.”
Lieutenant Raines squinted into the distance, hands on his hips. “Hmm. How much Seraph are you?”
“Umm, what?”
“I can feel the energy in ya. Seen other things running around on this side. Harbingers. They come after the bad guys. Guess they might have been interested in me after all. Used to be, I told myself I only followed orders. Did what my commanders told me, thinking I protected people, fought for my country. Soon as I ended up dead, those buggers came looking for me. S’pose I must not have been all that tasty to them ’cause they didn’t chase me too hard. Anyway, couple times I caught glimpses of other critters. They look more like us, only they’ve got these bright wings made out of light. Tried to get their attention, but they only ever smiled at me and disappeared. Like I ain’t ready or some such thing.”
“Oh. Umm. I dunno. Sometimes I have wings.”
He smiled and tried to take her hand. His fingers passed through her like a cold breeze. “But you’re alive.”
“Yes.”
“Can you help me cross over? I help you find your friend, and you help me move on?”
Althea nodded. “Yes. I think so. You don’t need to do stuff for me first. I’ll help you.” She closed her eyes.
“Aww, wait, kid. Not yet. Sure as hell I wanna get out of here, but it’s been damn near four hundred years. I can’t leave you here all alone.”
She looked up at him. “But you’re a ghost.”
“I am. An old one, too. Got a few tricks that could help ya.” He brushed a hand over her head. “Like killin’ them fleas.”
Althea cringed, gasping at a sensation like icy water pouring over her head and running down her back. “Eep!”
He laughed.
Shivering, she peered up at him. “B-but I a-already d-drowned them.”
“Missed a few.” He waved for her to follow and walked down the street. “Come on. Let’s go find that friend of yours.”
29
The Great Forge
Lieutenant Raines rambled as they walked, telling her about being a pilot in the Air Force at the time when some corporations rebelled against the government. He’d been sent here to protect fleeing citizens from corporate armed forces that had been dressing up like US Military to attack civilians in an effort to make them hostile to the government.
Just about everything he said made her squirm as it involved a whole bunch of people hurting each other with a whole bunch of explodey things.
Over the course of the next hour, they walked past smaller and smaller ruins. Eventually, no standing buildings remained, only piles of grey dust and concrete bits, the mounds suspiciously neat in their arrangement. It had been a while since she’d seen a car or anything not made out of dirt. She looked around, then peered back over her shoulder at a wide field of open ground. Still-standing ruins stopped at an obvious line a good ways behind them. She’d been so distracted by listening to the ghost talk she’d stopped paying attention to keeping cover nearby in case a machine man attacked.
“Eep! What happened to all the buildings? There’s nowhere to hide.”
“The crazy robots have been taking them down to scavenge the metal. Nothing left between here and there but dirt.”
She dug her toes into the silt, biting her lip in worry. Maybe some tasks were too big for a kid, even the Prophet. If Teal had been abducted by raiders, she’d have thought nothing of storming in there to help. But, the CRP… those robots would kill her as soon as look at her, and none of her powers would do a damn thing.
Silent tears rolled down her face at the thought she might have no choice but to turn back. It didn’t seem likely she would survive to even reach the Great Forge, much less get Teal out of there. She couldn’t make the robots sad or calm or trusting, and she couldn’t give them commands.
Leaving felt as bad as shooting Teal in the face, but going on amounted to shooting herself in the face.
“Loo Temant?” She looked up at him. “Am I doing—?”
High-pitched whirring scared her mute.
A wheelbot zipped over the top of a rubble mound up ahead, coming straight at her. She sprinted away from it, racing for the flimsy safety of another dirt pile. It could, of course, come right around it after her, but as long as she kept running, it couldn’t shoot her through the hill.
The whirring electric motor rushed up behind her so rapidly that she screamed in anticipation of certain death. Seconds later, she glanced to her right at the wheelbot keeping pace with her, its head rotated toward her.
“Althea,” said the wheelbot in its usual toneless electronic voice. “It’s me. Lieutenant Raines.”
Confused, she slowed to a stop. That thing could catch her with ease on open ground, so there didn’t seem to be a point to running anyway. It hadn’t shot her when it clearly could have.
“Umm… What?”
The wheelbot stopped beside her and wobbled back and forth. “I jumped in and took it over. It’s only a machine.”
Sure enough, the wheelbot did give off a strong feeling of paranormal energy.
“I didn’t know ghosts could do that.”
“You don’t know much about ghosts, do you?”
She shrugged. “No. Not really. I’m still not sure how I can even see you. I have to want to see ghosts and I didn’t do that yet.”
“I wanted you to see me. And not all ghosts can inhabit machines. I’m really damn old. The longer we stick around, the more stuff we learn how to do. Of course, I’ve run into a bunch of spirits too confused, lazy, or sad to care much about anything. They just sit around being miserable. I happen to be highly motivated.”
“Umm. Okay. So…”
“Climb on this thing’s back. Other robots won’t notice you if you’re riding on one. The metal interferes with their sensors. But… they might see you on thermal. Depends on how close they get.”
She walked around behind the robot. Its upper body roughly matched the size and shape of a muscular man, though with only a single fat wheel for legs, it ended up only a little taller than her. Althea climbed onto its back, placing her feet on flat spots at the bottom of its torso shell and grabbing metal loops on its shoulders, just like the ones that Ell-Gee had used to hang the broken ones.
“You good?”
“I try to be,” said Althea.
“Ugh. I mean do you have a good grip?”
She bounced and rocked side to side. “Yeah.”
“Okay. Hold on.”
The wheelbot tilted forward, accelerating up to a scary speed quite a bit faster than she could run. Her hair whipped around behind her, the wind in her face so strong she squinted.
“Heh, this little guy is pretty agile. Reminds me of my pilot days, only can’t go up off the ground. No idea what caliber this thing’s loading though. Only 600 rounds per cannon. That’s gonna run out of ammo real fast.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good if they’re shooting at us. Bad if I need to make this thing light some bad guys up.”
They hit a dip in the ground that tossed them airborne for a few seconds. Althea’s left foot slipped off the small platform. She yelped, squeezing her hands tighter to hold on. The wheelbot landed softer than expected and continued to bob up and down for a few seconds. She planted her foot back on the step and tried to grip the flat metal with her toes, but it didn’t help much.
“Please don’t jump again. I almost fell off.”
“Copy.”
“What?”
“That means I understand.”
“Why do people keep saying stuff that doesn’t mean what they say?”
Lieutenant Raines chuckled.
Althea clung to the back of the wheelbot, riding for about twenty minutes. The ground darkened from concrete grey to charcoal grey, and eventually black. She peered around the wheelbot’s head at the scorched ground, still burning in places where flying machines had crashed. None of the wreckage remained, likely taken by the robots to make more robots.
A dozen or more black spheres flew around in a slow, methodical pattern like eyeballs torn from a giant’s skull and set to wander. The closest ones appeared about a hundred meters away, some as far off as a half mile. Whenever one rotated toward them, a glint of sunlight shone from a big lens on the front.
“They can see us,” said Althea, only loud enough to be heard over the whirring wheelbot motor.
“There’s a ton of sensors all over the place here, but I’m keeping you hidden. No way anyone’s gonna walk in here without being noticed unless they hack into the CRP communication network and take over the sensors… or have a little help of the paranormal kind.”
