“Good man. Safe travels.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Gunn, Australia
4.FEB.2283
Skyler aimed for a dried-up pond, centerpiece to a public park on the southern end of the town. Once it might have been a nice space, with families strolling along the paved walkway under the shade of irrigated trees. The pond, now bone dry, dominated the piece of land. From above it looked like a bomb crater, lined with skeletal trees for victims.
When he hit ground a sharp pain lanced up his leg. The gash from the rooftop antenna seared, and warm blood trickled down his leg into his boot.
He stumbled and rolled in the dusty bowl of the former pond. With no further need of his parachute, and no time to collect it, he let it drift away in the hot wind.
From all around, the disturbing howl of subhumans grew to a fever pitch.
Skyler put sunset at an hour away. He needed shelter, some place he could defend while bandaging his wound.
Grunting with effort, he limped to the rim of the pond, unstrapped the rifle from his chest, and scanned the town. Most of the structures were small shops in various states of decay. Farther north, toward the center, he could see the tops of small stores and a church steeple. Some distance west an office building, perhaps ten stories high, stood against the red sky.
Nearest to his position, he spotted a two-story building with some sort of shop on the bottom. A stairwell outside led up to a covered walkway that ringed the second floor. All the exterior windows were broken, so it wouldn’t be much use as shelter. But at least he could reach the second floor and get his bearings while using the stairwell as a natural choke point.
Good enough, he decided, and limped toward it.
He didn’t bother to keep low, now out in the open—a dark figure against a sandy landscape. Best to move as fast as possible. He ignored the pain in his shoulder, the wound on his calf, and jogged toward the building.
When he was still twenty meters from the stairs, three subhumans came around from the front of the building. They moved as one, protecting one another as they hunted. A typical pack, and Skyler felt glad for it. Not the collected mass like in Hawaii. He took a knee and opened fire, dropping them easily. They hadn’t even seen him yet.
Throughout the town the howls grew louder, and he knew there were far more subhumans here than he had bullets for.
At the sound of more scuffling footsteps coming from the street, Skyler sprinted the rest of the way to the stairs, grunting back the searing pain in his calf.
Reaching the stairwell, he tossed the gun’s strap over his shoulder and climbed, two steps at a time.
Halfway up, the rusted stairs collapsed under his weight. Skyler heard the bolts splitting an instant before the structure fell, and he used his last step to jump toward the walkway at the top. His arms just made it over the lip of the landing, but they immediately began to slip on the dusty concrete.
Below him the stairs crashed into the dirt, creating a calamitous sound surely heard for blocks.
He had to ignore it. Reaching to his left, he grabbed a rusted iron bar—part of the railing on the second-floor walkway. To his amazement it held. Pain bloomed anew in his shoulder as he struggled to lift himself onto the platform. Legs dangling, kicking for momentum, he groaned through clenched teeth. It took all the strength he could muster to pull his upper body onto the walkway.
Below, more subhumans arrived, hissing and growling like primates. A child led the way, perhaps ten years old, with filthy wild hair and a mangled arm. It jumped with astonishing power toward Skyler’s dangling legs, sheer savagery in its bloodshot eyes.
He felt the small hand grasp his boot, and then Skyler felt its added weight in his tenuous hold on the rusty iron bar. Without thinking, he reached down with his right hand and swatted the subhuman’s filthy fingers from his boot.
The child fell.
Only then did he realize his mistake.
The gun, slung over his right shoulder seconds before, slid down his arm. Skyler fumbled for it, but the strap slipped past his fingers, and he watched helplessly as the weapon dropped to the ground below. It landed in the wreckage of the flimsy stairwell.
Skyler flung himself over the railing and onto the walkway proper. He lay back on the platform, clutching his wounded leg with both hands, and forced his breathing into a regular rhythm.
He stayed still for a long time, staring at the sky. Around him, the cries of the formerly human receded with the setting sun. He could hear a group of them sniffing about below, grunting at one another like dingoes.
He fought against heavy eyelids, not wanting to sleep. Sleeping felt like giving up.
Give up, he thought to himself, darkly amused. Then, Give up what?
He thought of everything he’d lost. The Melville, Samantha and the rest of the crew—his entire world. The weight of it all brought tears to his eyes.
I haven’t got a damn thing left to give up.
Skyler put the thought out of mind. Focus on the immediate, he told himself. Survive.
As the last light of the sun faded, Skyler set to work bandaging his leg, using fabric torn from his shirt. He knew he could not stay here long. The creatures below might eventually lose interest, but clearly the town was infested with them. There would be no easy way out.
Satisfied with the wound dressing, Skyler rolled over and pushed himself to the edge of the walkway. In the darkness below, he could make out the shapes of a few subhumans. Some milled about, most crouched in the dirt, still as death. He focused on the wreckage of the stairs, and thought he could see a glint of light coming off his dropped weapon.
As he considered his options, one of the subhumans—the small one again—noticed him and began to snarl. The sound, so inhuman, paralyzed Skyler. The other creatures took up the call. As if spurred on, the small one began to leap for the platform where Skyler lay, but it fell short by half a meter. Then it started to use the wall beside it as leverage, and sent Skyler’s heart racing with a swipe that missed his face by mere centimeters.Skyler knew the next attempt might succeed; yet he lay still, frozen in place. I’m going to die here, he thought. The subhuman child leapt again, savage hunger plain on its face.
The tip of one dirty fingernail scraped Skyler’s nose. No more than a tickle. The child-creature’s mouth curled in frustration as it fell back to the ground. It landed on the stairwell debris and stumbled, its ankle folding in an unnatural way. A howl of pain erupted from the poor animal as it rolled in the dirt.
The tingle on the end of his nose coaxed Skyler from his fog. He crawled back from the edge of the walkway and sat up against the wall, intent to be silent and invisible. Let the monsters below get bored and move on.
Several hundred meters away, against the crimson sky, he saw the silhouette of the one tall office building.
High ground. The first step in figuring out where he was, and what his path back to Darwin would be.
The clouds above were thinning. From where he sat, Skyler could only see the southern sky. He decided to crawl around the walkway to the north face of the building and scan the horizon for telltale lights of climber cars on the Elevator cord. If he was close enough to Darwin, and the sky clear enough, it would give him his bearings.
His leg throbbed. The ache in his shoulder, from the melee aboard Gateway, flared whenever he lifted his right arm. He rubbed at it, coaxing out the tenderness.
The idea of crawling around the walkway suddenly seemed like an impossible journey. As far away as Gateway Station itself. He felt the energy drain from him as the surge of adrenaline wore off. His focus shifted to simply breathing in long, regular measures. His vision blurred from sheer exhaustion.
With nowhere to go, and no energy to move anyway, Skyler lay down and closed his eyes. One hand rubbing at his shoulder, the other clutching the bandaged wound on his calf.
Sleep never came.
His mind instead replayed the chaotic escape from Gateway. Guilt consumed his thoughts. No matter how he tried to justify it, he’d left his crew behind. He’d fled. Whatever sense that decision might have made at the time, he struggled to recall it now.
He tried to picture the crew, languishing in some high-tech brig aboard the space station. He could hear their conversation, wondering where he was. If he was okay. Would they assume he was being held separately? Or maybe that he’d died, in heroic fashion, trying to save them?
He lay still on the cold concrete until well after dark, imagining a heroic death. A preferable outcome to dying here, cold and alone, in God-knows-where.
The mere thought of hiking his way back to Darwin, however far it might be, exhausted him. Part of his mind kept offering the same question: Why bother?
Platz and his dubious plan to save the Aura, if it even needed saving, could go to hell, Skyler thought. What did an immune need with the Aura? If it failed and the rest of the ungrateful world perished, he could finally have some peace and quiet. No more scavenging, no more damn request lists and desperate pleas.
“Stop it,” he whispered to himself. He shut his eyes and willed the pessimism back into the corners of his mind.
His thoughts turned to Prumble. If nothing else, he should find Prumble. Tell him what happened. The big man could help, or give him a corner of his vast garage to convalesce in.
And then Skyler remembered that Prumble had a sat-comm. A direct link to Platz. At the very least, Skyler could find out what had happened to the crew. That, he thought, would dictate what he would do next.
It was a first step, a tangible goal.
Hours passed. A crescent moon offered poor light, augmented every few minutes by lighting that rippled in clouds to the east like a distant war. A poor way to navigate unfamiliar territory, but the subs should at least be dormant now. Sleeping, conserving heat and calories like any wild animal.
Skyler sat up with a grunt. He checked the bandage on his leg and found that only a little blood had soaked through. The wound looked minor despite the pain. He could only hope that infection would not occur.
Time to get moving.
With care not to make noise, he crawled to the edge of the walkway where the stairway had collapsed, and studied the ground below.
The subhumans had indeed wandered away. Either that or they were well hidden in the pitch-black shadows below. He held his breath and listened for a time. No sounds of their ragged breathing.
Skyler gently lowered himself over the edge, hanging on by his fingertips. The ache in his shoulder returned as he began to swing his legs. When the pain became unbearable he let go, swinging his fall to land away from the pile of metal and concrete.
He took the impact on his good leg, rolling as he landed, vaguely proud of the nimble move. Standing, he pushed himself back against the wall of the building and waited. No cries arose from the surrounding buildings. Satisfied, he knelt before the remains of the stairway and retrieved his weapon.
The weight of a gun in his hands bolstered his confidence. He crouched and did a half-walk, half-run along the wall, gun pointed at the ground a few meters ahead. He peered around the corner into the wider road beyond. Dusty and trash strewn, and blessedly empty. The building he stood next to had once been an art supply store, so the faded sign told him. The windows were empty, and he didn’t need to see inside to know the place was a ruin. He tried to think of anything useful to scavenge from an art store but came up blank. Not worth the time to look.
More shops lined the rest of the street, all in similar states of disrepair. None was more than three stories tall. Skyler suspected that nothing in this poor town remained unscathed by the ravages of rioting, abandonment, and plague. He’d seen a hundred just like it. In his mind he pictured his beloved Amsterdam, languishing in a similar state.
All the great cities of man, left to rot. All except Darwin—and Darwin would be along soon enough.
He looked for the office building to get his bearings. At least four hundred meters west, and perhaps a hundred south. He knew from experience that subhumans were drawn to sound and movement. Most had lost their ability for higher thought, but their primal senses remained. Indeed, the curse of SUBS was that one primal emotion would intensify to the point it drowned out all other thoughts, a phenomenon made all the more unpredictable by the fact that one never knew which emotion would take over. Anger, fear, lust … even humor. He’d seen a few in the early days who laughed hysterically at everything around them. They tended not to survive for long.
Gun held low, safety off, Skyler set out. Many of these buildings likely served as shelter for the subhumans, and they all looked straight out onto the road. He needed a path that kept him out of view.
He crossed the street to the building directly opposite, formerly a bookstore, and stopped to listen. He heard only the barest whisper of wind, and pressed on past the broken shop windows to an alley just beyond. The narrow space, barely the width of a car, was pitch black.
This he followed one careful step at a time until it met the next junction. The street beyond appeared to be simply a wider alley, something the shop owners could use for deliveries. To the west Skyler could see the brick and glass office tower, looming black against the starry western sky.
Another three hundred meters, and now straight ahead.
He stepped up his pace and moved to the end of the backstreet. A wide avenue crossed his path, dotted by the husks of abandoned cars and a commuter bus that had burned. Charred passengers still sat in some of the seats, dry and black. A sculptor’s demons set against a nightmare background.
The alley’s end marked the edge of the business district. Adjacent was a residential section of town, with evenly spaced homes nestled in weed-infested yards. One section had succumbed to fire, years earlier. He ran along the road between businesses and burned-out homes.
A soda bottle ruined his silent passage. In the near blackness, he kicked the old thing, sending it rolling and hopping along the cracked asphalt. The clicky-clack sound went on and on, calamitous in its volume after so much silence.