The Shadow of Alpha, page 9
The hill steepened and he began using branches and brush to pull himself upward. He cursed at the aching in his thighs and ankles, once reaching down to wrench up a rock that had tripped him and fling it as far as he could into the blackness. He found a path, too narrow to be manmade, and followed it down the opposite side, across a hollow similar to the one they had just left and up again. His hands were burning, his arms stinging from the beelike stings of whipped branches. His clothes dampened and became a second skin that chaffed and increased the sense of pain whenever he was careless.
And finally, after cresting a third and lower hill, he slumped to the ground, his back against a tree, and waited for the others.
Ike stretched out beside him, his arms hugging his chest as he gasped for larger portions of air.
Jessica folded to her knees, bent forward and retched dryly, one hand grabbing at her hair to keep it from her face.
“They didn’t look so high when the sun was up,” Ike said, rasping. “This is ridiculous, brother Parric. We’ll never make it.
“You’re soft,” Jessica said without accusing. “But there must be a better way than this.”
“It was dumb to even start,” Parric agreed, “especially at night. We’re just not the wilderness types.”
“Daylight, then,” Ike said, and when no one objected, he rolled onto his side and immediately fell asleep.
Jessica crawled to sit next to Parric, shivering as the night’s chill breezed across her sweat-soaked skin. She pressed against his side and, when he shifted his arm, pulled it across her shoulders.
“Don’t get excited,” she said. “I’m cold.”
Parric ignored her, content for the moment to feel his lungs return to their normal size, the knifelike ripping in his chest reduced to a dulling ache.
“You know, every morning,” he said, not looking to see if she were listening, “I used to walk to the clinic and watch them. Sometimes I’d invite myself to breakfast and make notes if something didn’t seem right. After a while, it got so I didn’t have to be on my guard all the time. Everything seemed so natural, it wasn’t long before I hated taking their backs off, poking around with things I barely understood. It destroyed the illusion, I guess, and I suppose it was a good thing. But I hated it just the same.”
“I wonder,” she said sleepily, “what’s going on in the real world?
“Who knows,” Parric said. “If ContiGov was moving, I’d imagine there’s a hell of a lot of deterioration in the cities. Looters, ghouls, local anarchy. The small-towns that have survived have probably set themselves up as self-sufficiently as they can. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them will even issue script.”
“But communications haven’t broken down …”
“Assuming our case was isolated, maybe not, but when all you get is a voice telling you everything is all right while, at the same time, you see your neighbors dropping on the street, the reaction should be obvious. And if you’ve been inoculated but the face on the screen won’t tell you a thing other than what you’ve been hearing for days, you either shut it off or put a boot through it. Either way, it looks like the new password is distrust, especially …”
“What?” she said when he stopped and cocked his head.
“Nothing. I thought I heard something. Told you I wasn’t the wilderness type. What I was going to say was, especially when there’s a good chance some android’s gotten out and is making things even more unsettled.”
“You don’t know any got out,” she said, stirring against his chest.
“True, but it’s bound to happen. One, two, some of the others will shut down just as Floyd told them, only they’ll go too far and cut the barriers, too. We panicked and got out before we could do anything. Who knows about the rest?”
“Who knows?” she repeated and her head slid down into his lap.
Parric arched his back away from the tree, then squirmed until the jab of bark was bearable. He didn’t want to close his eyes and admit the sleep that stung. He tried instead to find a reason for running, one that would make sense in the preservation of his life; and it was Alpha, as it had always been. Should the world not recover, should someone get mad and unleash yet another attack somewhere with fuses that would ignite everywhere, something had to be left for them to find, even if it was only a suddenly confused insurance clerk and two reporters.
You’re too pessimistic, he thought. The world will survive as it always has.
But as what? he wanted to know. The Alpha needs more than an underground government and tiny pockets of armed and frightened men. It deserves more, has to have more, and at Cam’s we’ll keep things sane and prepare for the worst.
He agreed, pleased, then felt a heavy body shifting across his legs, pinning him to the ground. He twisted, trying to shove it away, his arms flailing until his head snapped back against the tree and he opened his eyes. Jessica was pushing herself up, staring at him as she backed away.
“I …” He shook his head and gently massaged pain the tree had given him. “I thought … I think … I must have been dreaming.”
“Nice,” she said, circling in front of him to wake Ike. “I hope it wasn’t about me.”
“No, it was about—”
“Hey,” Ike said, sitting up, brushing at his hair to free the clinging bits of dirt and leaves. “Don’t tell me it’s morning already.”
Parric looked up to the sky, starless as the first light sponged away the black. The air remained chilled, but the warmth of the coming day could be felt already driving the dampness back, and a pair of drab-feathered birds squawked away from them.
“I’m hungry,” Ike said.
“Later,” said Parric. “We’ve got to get to McLeod as soon as possible. On the way we might find something to eat.”
“That sounds really great, brother. And how do we get to this magical friend of yours?”
“Walk.”
“Maybe not,” Jessica said. “Frank, do you think those hunters walked all the way from Oraton?”
Parric considered the terrain he’d seen when they had flown him in, then shook his head. “I doubt it. They must have had some kind of vehicle. The Town is too tucked away.”
Ike looked back the way they had come during the night. “For once, Parric, I agree with you. And even if they are in better shape than us, they were probably too anxious to get their dirty work done.”
“Right. Look,” Parric said, pointing toward the west, “that’s the way we have to go. I remember a map on Floyd’s office, the Towns on it being in the shape of sort of a question mark. I was near the bottom, Cam about halfway up. I know from coming in that there’s a road nearby. We ought to hike down there and see what we can come up with.”
“You think they just left it there for us to find?”
“I don’t think anything,” Parric said, angry at the sneer not restricted to Lupozny’s voice. “But they may not have left the area of the Town yet, waiting for full dawn so they can check. Now there might also be some already following, and I think we’d be better off moving.”
He watched as Ike scratched through his white hair, then turned to head down the slope. Jessica followed immediately, both paying little attention to Lupozny’s protests, most of which centered around waiting until he had worked out the stiffness he had inherited from sleeping on the ground.
“Is he always like that?” Parric said.
“Funny, he wonders the same about you.“
Then why, he asked himself, do they bother to stay with him? It certainly wasn’t because of his leadership abilities, nor was it for the strength to see them through a crisis that persisted in behaving like a dream; it could have been that they were frightened by his cynical estimates of the disaster’s extent and had succumbed to the instinct of safety in numbers. Whatever, he thought, but it would be a lot easier if Lupozny would only stop carping.
Progress in the sunlight was almost too rapid for adjustment. The hill’s outergrowth had lost its lurking sinister cast, and had become instead a fascinating collection of tall and stunted trees that had long since adapted to the once poisonous air and were now in the process of reversing themselves. Parric grinned to himself, thinking of their confusion, then stumbled down a grassy bank to the shoulder of the road almost before he knew it was there.
Quickly, he scrambled back into the woods and leaned against a trunk. When Ike caught up, he shook his head in evident surprise that Parric actually found what they were looking for. Remembering the cameraman’s previous reluctant compliments, Parric wished he would make up his mind so they would know where they stood and could behave accordingly.
“Right or left?” Jessica asked when she saw no one was going to make a decision.
“Right, I should think,” Parric said before Ike could answer. “They wouldn’t want to get too close in case we had some kind of supersecret, deadly warning system ready to fry them if they stepped on the wrong rock.”
“They were that scared of you?” Ike said.
“You saw them,” Jessica said. “What do you think?”
Ike shrugged. “Do we split up?”
“Don’t know,” Parric said. “It would probably be wiser to, but if one of us gets caught, considering our stealthy travels thus far, the others won’t be far behind. We might as well all go.”
“You’re the boss,” Jessica said.
“Why not?” Ike said, stepping out from the trees.
The road was not a major route, being comprised mostly of crushed rock heavily embedded in hardened dirt. Its brushed look suggested it was mainly used by hovercats, but it wasn’t so rough that landcars could be entirely ruled out.
With Jessica in the middle and Ike behind, they strung out along the irregular slash in the hills and walked as fast as their rapidly numbing legs would allow. Frequent curves, rises, and dips prevented them from seeing too far ahead, but Parric thought they should easily be able to hear anyone approaching now that they were not thrashing through the forest like blind men. He looked down at his feet, watching them appear and vanish as he walked, almost immediately yielding to an illusion of floating when he could no longer feel the road beneath him. He was grateful that the sun was still climbing over the mountains beyond the hills, keeping the area in shadow and holding the temperature down to a level he could tolerate. He had been spoiled, he knew, by the Town’s recycled and cooled system, and a low wash of envy for Jessica and Ike momentarily covered him. They, at least, would not feel the heat as sensitively as he.
“Here,” Jessica said suddenly, pointing to something on the side under an overhanging bank.
Parric turned, squinting, and saw a small brown creature lying in a viciously contorted position beneath a bush. He didn’t know what the animal was, but he knew what it had died of from the obscenely ugly welts that had been torn open wherever the creature’s claws could reach. Its head was buried in deeper shadow, but he knew without looking that it had most likely torn out its own throat scratching at the plague.
“It’s come and gone,” Jessica said, mainly for his benefit. Then she hugged herself and hurried away while Ike bent for a closer examination.
“Beautiful,” he said, straightening after a second to rejoin Parric. “Now I can imagine what people look like.” Again his face paled and, as dark eyes stared into light, his head ducked in as close to an apology as his temperament would allow. “Let’s go, doc,” he said.
“For once, I don’t think I want to—”
A shout, and they broke into a sprint, suddenly aware that Jessica had left them alone. Another call, and the recognition of their names lashed them into a headlong run that nearly brought them unchecked against the battered hulk of a landcar. Jessica was walking slowly around it, leaning over to look inside. It was an ancient, narrow, two-seater, scooped low in front and back, its gray windows streaked with grime. Only its large thick tires so obviously new hinted it had not been merely abandoned.
“Lovely,” Ike said, trying to lift the side doors, cursing when he found them locked. “Still lovely, though.”
“You shouldn’t have yelled like that,” Parric said. “They might have heard you.”
She waved away the scolding and shaded her eyes with her hands as she searched the road to its bend. “It was hidden in that clump of bushes over there,” she said, pointing. “You can see where the branches are flattened, and the grass. Someone pushed it out here.”
“Nice,” Ike said.
“Well, you’d better get in somehow,” she said. “This place isn’t going to stay lonely forever.”
“No easier said than done,” Ike boasted. He snapped a narrow branch from a sapling and stripped it before poking it through a strip of insulation between glass and door frame. “They’ve been making these things for hundreds of years and still haven’t figured out a way to keep thieves like me from opening them.” With an unnecessary flourish, he tossed away the branch and lifted the door, swinging it up and locking it like a bird’s broken wing.
“Genius,” Parric said, slipping into the driver’s seat. “The trouble is, I can’t drive one of these things, and even if I could, there isn’t a key.”
“You drive hover, right?” Ike said as Parric climbed out again and nodded. “Then no problem. Practically the same, only you don’t have to worry so much about drift as you do staying on the damned road. Now this little deathtrap.” he continued as he lay on the front floor and lifted a panel under the dash, “has, if I remember correctly, three alternate wiring systems. One is for the regular ignition, one for emergencies that starts with a tiny key propped inside here—damn, it’s gone! Oh, well, there’s a third the manufacturer sticks in in case the owner wants—damn, this is tight!—to add a few dozen extras. Did you know for a while there you could actually mount machine guns in here, back during the Ghetto War?”
Parric could only make noises of interest. He was getting nervous, standing out in broad daylight waiting for someone unseen to shoot him down without first discovering how harmless he was. He asked Ike to hurry, was brusquely assured that everything would be fine if he were only left in peace to make a few illegal cross connections. Parric backed away, then, to look at the landcar, seeing beneath the country patina of rusted age and thousands of kilometers of abusive driving a once-green shine that would have reflected the trees it passed under in a deep-forest hue. He told himself, under Ike’s muffled swearing, that he should feel guilty about taking it, was not entirely unpleasantly surprised that he wasn’t, and decided it was because its owner was out to cut short his suddenly interesting life. He thought of McLeod and the hoarse rough laughter that had brightened the training sessions and exasperated the instructors. He had laughed at Parric’s hopes for the Alpha, but only skeptically, not derisively. He had not withdrawn into the Town as Parric had done, and his constant badgering of the Central, Parric reasoned, probably made him the best informed about what had really happened and how to proceed.
Cam, he thought, you damn well better hold on until I get there.
“Frank!” Jessica had run back to the landcar, was tugging at his arm. “There’s someone coming!”
“Ike,” he said, bending, “hurry it up. Jess hears someone.”
There was a muttering he couldn’t understand, but the sense was clear: Ike was close, but not close enough.
“Keep at it, then, damn it,” he said, pulling the door down until it rested unlatched against the frame. Then he pulled Jessica with him to crouch in front of the vehicle, his head raised to peer through the windshield to the road beyond. He listened, and heard the footsteps stumbling over the worn rock, running.
“I don’t think—” he started to say, then stood in amazement as a woman in a shredded white uniform dashed around the curve, saw him, and tried to twist away. But her momentum caused her to spin and she fell instead, was not able to regain her feet before Jessica and Parric could reach her.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Parric said, grabbing her bare thin arms, trying to be gentle yet not wanting her to get away from him. “Hold on, we’re not going to hurt you.”
The woman cringed, her dirt-smudged face wincing as if expecting a blow. Then she saw Jessica and allowed herself to lessen the struggle, though Parric could feel her muscles still taut and ready to fight. Cautiously they lifted her to her feet, held her between them as they walked back to the car. Parric quickly sketched who they were; why they were trying to start the car, but he knew much of it was missing, still less reaching the still fearful woman in her panic to escape.
At that moment the car shuddered and the engine sparked into a muffled whine. As they approached, Ike grunted and sat up, lifting the side door and climbing out shaking his left hand.
“Damn near electrocuted myself, doc. I think it’ll—”
“Close your mouth,” Jessica said, pushing him aside and guiding the woman into the cramped storage area in the back.
“Who—”
“Later,” Parric said, sliding over to the passenger side. Ike hesitated, then jumped in, closed the door, and released the brake.
“Who is she?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” Parric said, “and right now, I don’t care.”
Chapter 8
Though Lupozny insisted they were traveling as fast as the road and the condition of the landcar permitted, Parric continually twisted around to look behind them, trying to see through the raised boiling dust, convinced the men from Oraton would soon come striding up and casually cut them all down without a qualm. It seemed impossible to him that luck was two-sided.
Jessica, meanwhile, had calmed the woman enough to reassure her they were not going to do her harm, but it was a full hour before she sat up as best she could in the inhospitable back space and look at them without being afraid.
