Impact (11 page)

It's mid-morning before we reach the tree line.

We see it from far up the mountain, stretching into the distance, but it's only when we're close that I get a good look at the trees. They're nothing like the ones in Outer Earth's Air Lab. Those were enormous, with canopies that blocked out the light from the ceiling lamps. But these trees are no more than twenty feet high, and they're stunted, with stubby branches and wind-bent trunks.

Even so, I make myself stop for a moment, taking it in. These trees weren't supposed to exist. They were supposed to be gone. And yet here they are, fighting to survive, pushing back against the cold.

Harlan doesn't notice I've stopped until he's a few feet into the trees. He looks over his shoulder, nodding at me to follow. He's wearing a tattered canvas pack, his rifle strapped to the side. There are no bullets in the gun–Harlan says he ran out months ago–but it's reassuring to see it there anyway.

The ground is a mess of frost and brown leaves. It's eerily silent, and it takes me a moment to work out why that bothers me. On Outer Earth, whenever we were shown videos of forests, they were always noisy–bird calls, insects, wind. Here, the only sounds are our footsteps and the laboured sound of our breathing.

I pick one of the nearby leaves from a tree, rub it between my fingers. It doesn't feel like any leaf I've touched in the Air Lab. It feels crinkly, desiccated, and before long it comes apart in my hand.

Harlan sees me looking. “Most of this was frozen over five years ago,” he says. “Kind of amazing how the forest just comes back, given half a chance. Topsoil's pretty thin, but that's changing. Twenty years, this'll be green all the time.”

“How do you know it'll stay this way?” I say, dipping a hand under my jacket. Harlan gave me one of his shirts to wear under it, and the material feels scratchy against my skin.

He looks helpless suddenly, as if I've brought up something he doesn't want to think about it. “No way to tell. Better hope it does, though, or we're all done.”

He strides ahead, plunging deeper into the forest, his canvas pack bouncing.

I'm trying to ignore my fatigue. My eyes are gritty with it, my muscles leaden. Harlan wouldn't let us leave until dawn–he refused to travel in the dark, told me we needed sleep if we were going to hike down to Whitehorse. I didn't want to push the issue, but even curled up in one of his blankets I only managed a couple of hours of sleep.

It didn't take long for infection to start showing in my thigh. The wound felt hot, like some of the heat from Harlan's lantern had cooked into the flesh. I couldn't tell in the low light, but it looked a little red, too. Harlan bandaged my thigh, wrapping it in a wide strip of cloth, and sometime in the night it began to itch, sending up waves of discomfort. That would have been enough, but my mind was like an engine that wouldn't shut off. It kept going round and round, throwing up every uncomfortable scenario it could think of. Most of them involved Carver and Prakesh.

I think about them now, as we head into the forest, replaying my thoughts without really wanting to. My relationship with Prakesh was supposed to be simple. After everything we'd been through, it should have been enough. We had our little hab in Chengshi, and we had each other. I didn't need anything else.

But then I kissed Carver. And no matter how many times I tell myself that it was something I did in the heat of the moment, I know it isn't true. Even then, when we were trapped on the
Shinso
and I told Carver I was staying with Prakesh, I thought I was making the right choice. But it hurt him, badly, and it was only later that I realised that it hurt me, too. More than I care to admit.

What does that mean?

I know when I find them, I'll have to make that choice again. But what if the choice gets made for me? What if I get to Anchorage, somehow, and find that one is dead, and not the other? What am I going to do if they're both dead? I know I'll have to carry on, keep surviving, but it's like looking up at the sky, like trying to take in something bigger than I can imagine.

I bring myself back. The wound on my thigh isn't slowing me down–not yet, anyway–but I can't quite hold my balance on the uneven ground, and I keep having to use the trees to steady myself. Harlan slips between them, moving with an easy grace.

It's not long before I slip, my foot skidding on a patch of ice. I have to grab a branch to stop myself falling, the bark scraping my skin.

“Whoa,” Harlan says, turning. He skips back up the slope, and puts his hands under my arms. “There we go,” he says, pulling me upright.

“Thanks,” I say. I feel strangely embarrassed, the blood rushing to my face. I want to tell him that I'm not used to the ground, that if we were on Outer Earth, with its flat metal surfaces, I'd be the fastest person he's ever met. No point. And I don't want to think about Outer Earth right now.

“Is it always this cold?” I say instead, shaking my hands. My fingers are still numb at the tips.

“Cold?” Harlan says over his shoulder. “This ain't cold. You wait until winter.”

“Does it ever get warm?” I ask.

“It's not too bad in summer. We actually get a little green, if you can believe it. That's hunting season, though, so it means harder work. Hey, am I getting better at the conversation thing?”

I smile. “You're doing fine.”

“Good to know, good to know. Good, good, good.”

A few minutes later, we come across a pool of water, fed by a trickling stream running down from the mountain. I fill my water bottle, shivering as my hand touches the surface, then take a long drink.

“Don't fall in, whatever you do,” Harlan says. “Water that cold, it'll shut your body down in minutes. Then we'll never get you to Whitehorse. The thing you did with that man's jacket was smart, by the way.”

I blink at him, trying to follow the conversational path he's laid down. When I do it, I realise he's talking about how I tore Syria's jacket into strips, used it to mark my path while I tried to find water.

“Didn't work,” I say. “I still got lost.”

He taps his head. “Doesn't matter. You might not know how the outside works, but you think like someone who does. The tags, getting to the water, stuffing your clothes with leaves. All smart.”

“It was cold.”

“Exactly. And out here, cold'll kill you faster than almost anything. You gotta stay warm. Good clothing, good fire, good shelter. You remember that, and you'll be OK. Here, let me show you something.”

Without waiting for me to answer, he strides off into the trees. He's heading back the way we came, but before I can tell him that he's going the wrong direction he comes out again, carrying something in his hand. It looks like a clump of hair, only it's a pale green, with much thicker strands. When he passes it to me, the underside is slightly sticky.

“Old man's beard, we call it,” he says, wetting his hand in the water. “And the gunk underneath it is spruce sap. Best fire starters nature has, these two, even when they're not together. You get a spark, these'll kindle like anything.”

“How do I start a fire?” I say, stuffing the sticky bundle of fibres into my jacket pocket.

But he's off again, skipping across the boulders that ring the pool. “Come on,” he shouts. “Town ain't far. I know an old forest road we can use.”

The road, when we get there, is wider than two of Outer Earth's corridors laid side by side. The surface is overgrown, covered in a skin of wet leaves, but it's easier going than the forest itself. The stunted trees hug the road from both sides. Here and there, some of them have fallen, their tilted trunks slick with moss. Despite their lack of a canopy, their shapes cut the sky down to a thin sliver above us, which is just as well. I still can't look at it without getting a little nauseous.

Harlan keeps stopping to point things out, and soon my pockets are full of strange plants with even stranger names: burdock, cattail, lady fern, and a tart berry Harlan calls lowbush cranberry. It's bright red, and so sour that I almost spit it out.

I want to tell Harlan to hurry–I don't know how long I have left. But if I'm going to survive down here–if
we
, as in Prakesh and Carver and I, are going to survive down here–then I'll need to know about plants like this. I can't depend on Harlan forever.

“Who exactly are these people?” I ask. I'm still turning over our conversation of last night, when he asked me to tell the people in Whitehorse that he kept me safe. I still don't know what that's all about, but maybe coming at it at an angle might get me some answers.

Harlan glances at me, as if weighing up how much I need to know. Eventually, he says, “I used to be with this group. We'd try and stay one step ahead of the Nomads, but every year we lost more people to 'em. It got harder and harder to convince ourselves to keep moving.”

“Why were the Nomads chasing you?”

He shrugs. “Nomads don't have anything against us, specifically. They just take down anybody who isn't them, grab as much supplies as they can, and keep moving. Lot of different tribes around here, all with the same MO. And believe me, you don't want to run into them.”

He goes silent for a minute. I'm about to prompt him, but then he says, “We found this old hospital in Whitehorse. Place had been abandoned for decades, but it had a basement you could seal off. Plenty of space, and plenty of visibility around it.”

“And if the Nomads came?”

“If the Nomads were in the area, we could hunker down, wait them out. They never found us. Not once.” He gives me a toothy grin. “We had food, we had power, we even cooked up a water—”

I'm walking with my head down, moving carefully over a boggy patch, when I nearly bump into Harlan. He's stopped dead in the middle of the road.

“Hey—” I say, but then my voice cuts off when I see what he's looking at.

There's a wolf in front of us, mouth closed, eyes bright. Its fur is dark, matted with dirt and leaves, and its ears are pricked straight up, as if it's scanning the forest around us. My eyes go wide as I realise that it's the wolf from the night before–the first one that attacked me.

“Don't move,” Harlan says.

My first instinct is to run at the wolf, scare it off. I've come too far, been through too much, to get scared away by a single animal now. In the daylight, it looks scrawny and malnourished. I can see the bones of its ribcage through its dirt-caked fur.

I step forward, a shout forming on my lips, but Harlan whacks me in the chest with his arm.

“I said don't move,” he says, enunciating each word.

I'm about to tell him to let me past, but then I see the others.

They're on both sides of the road, silent among the trees. Dozens of them, low to the ground. Some are no more than pups, but others are huge adults, with ears the size of my palms. All of them are thin, hungry-looking.

The smaller wolf opens its mouth, letting its tongue roll out. Saliva drips from huge, gently curved teeth, and it gives a long, low growl.

The boat scythes across the bay, winding its way around the submerged buildings. Every time they hit a wave, or when Iluk turns the rudder a little too sharply, Okwembu feels a lurch in the pit of her stomach. The top half of her body is freezing, drenched in sea spray.

The only place to sit is on the side of the boat, on the stiff rubber pontoons. Ray and Nessa sit on one side, their feet braced against the centre stanchion. Okwembu and the rest of them sit on the other. Prakesh Kumar is staring up at the buildings, and the low clouds beyond them. Clay looks shell-shocked, his eyes flicking between their captors. His fingers grip the short lengths of rope on the side of the boat that serve as handholds, holding them tight.

Aaron Carver is different. He looks as if he wants to reach across the boat, grab Ray by the neck and launch him into the surf. He doesn't dare. Nessa still has the rifle, and she's pointing it squarely at his chest.

Nobody's said a word since they took off from the beach. But as they come around one of the buildings, Iluk eases off the throttle a little, compensating for a sudden swell, and Carver speaks.

“I don't get it,” he says, talking to Ray but keeping his eyes on Nessa's rifle.

“Get what?” Ray is jovial again, like they're out for a pleasure trip.

“The whole act. Like we were safe, like you were going to welcome us into your
society
.” He spits out the last word, like it has a bad taste.

“You
are
welcome,” Ray says. “So long as you can earn your keep.” He knots his hands between his knees, leaning back slightly as the boat crests a rolling wave. “There are only two kinds of people. Those who can serve the Engine, and those who can't. Some people find it hard to accept their place. They need a little encouragement. But it's a lot easier if they come of their own free will.”

Iluk accelerates, powering over a wave. A second later the throttle drops and Ray says, “Nessa jumped the gun a little, so to speak. You know, when your friend started getting antsy?”

Prakesh raises his head, the expression on his face just as murderous as Carver's.

There's a haze over the water, soft and damp. Their visibility drops to a few yards. Iluk slows the boat, the motor puttering. The last of the buildings passes by on their right: a black shape in the fog, torn and twisted. Okwembu looks over her shoulder, taking it in. At some point in the past, moss began to grow up the walls. It's blossomed over the years, turning the first three levels a dark, almost luminescent green.

Aaron's thigh is just touching Okwembu's, and she can feel it twitching. All his energy and anger is bottled up, kept in one place by Nessa's rifle. At some point–maybe in a few moments, maybe in a few minutes–he'll make a play, go for the gun. It's inevitable. And if he doesn't, Prakesh Kumar will. Neither of them can see past the current situation, see the need to do nothing until they know what they're dealing with. If Ray and Nessa had any intelligence, they'd shoot them and be done with it.

Should she say something? Try to calm him down? No. He wouldn't listen anyway.

But Prophet might.

Society.
That's the word Ray used. And judging by what she's seen so far, from the vehicles and weapons and the radio message, this isn't a disorganised group. It's what she's been looking for: a community, a collective of people away from the insanity of Outer Earth. It's this, more than anything else, that keeps Janice Okwembu calm, that keeps her compliant. For now.

She felt a spark of worry when the woman, Nessa, attacked Prakesh. When these people, whoever they are, showed their real faces. But it hardly matters.
They
hardly matter. They're foot soldiers, advance scouts. Prophet, whoever he is, is where the real power lies. What can she offer him? Everybody has something they want, and if she can understand his she can survive this.

First, she will make herself indispensable. Then, she will make herself powerful.

Clay's shocked intake of breath rips her out of her thoughts, and she looks up.

It's as if there's a hole in the fog: a huge, looming, black void. Not a building. It's something much bigger, rising a hundred feet above the water's surface, curving inwards like a giant wave.

“Holy shit,” Carver says. He actually scoots back a little, bumping into Okwembu. For a second, she has the crazy idea that they've hit the horizon–that this
thing
stretches hundreds, maybe thousands of miles. She tells herself not to be so stupid. She can see the metal surface now, see the openings in it. But this isn't a building. It's not part of Anchorage. They're out into the bay, which means—

A ship.

A distant memory jogs her. A history lesson from far in the past, their teacher talking about the war, about different armies ranged against one another. Their ancestors used these ships to transport fighter planes across oceans, between theatres of conflict. They were nuclear-powered mobile command centres, symbols of military might.

Ray is beaming. “Welcome to the USS
Ramona
,” he says.

They turn, tracking alongside the aircraft carrier's hull. Awe overrides her fear. She never thought she'd see one, not in a million years. And yet, somehow, one of them is here, parked in the waters off Alaska. Okwembu sees the same moss that was on the buildings climbing up the curved metal, its tendrils burrowing into the seams between the plates. How long has this ship been here?

And right then Okwembu notices two things simultaneously.

Ray and Nessa are both looking up at the
Ramona
, their heads tilted back.

And Aaron Carver is looking at the rifle.

He moves before Okwembu can, exploding off the side of the boat. He wraps his hands around the rifle–one on the barrel, another halfway down the stock. Nessa comes alive instantly and the gun goes off.

But Carver's move knocks the barrel upwards, and the bullet passes over their heads. Clay screams, and Prakesh rockets to his feet. Only Okwembu stays seated, her heart hammering, as Carver wrestles Nessa for the gun. The boat rocks back and forth, threatening to upend them into the icy water.

Ray and Iluk react, trying to shove Carver away. But he's ferociously strong, and in the next instant he's got the gun away from Nessa. He smashes Nessa right in the chest with the butt of the gun. She grunts, tumbles over the side, splashing into the water.

Iluk reaches for Carver, but the tracer dodges back, out of range. He's up on the front of the little boat, his foot on the edge, and he brings the gun around, seating it against his stomach.

Okwembu doesn't dare move–he'll shoot her just as easily as he'd shoot the others, without a second thought. Nessa is splashing somewhere out of sight, trying to pull her way back into the boat.

“Aaron,” Prakesh says. “Just—”

“OK,” says Carver, almost shouting. “I have had it up to
here
with this
bullshit
. You and you—” He swivels the gun between Ray and Iluk. “In the water. Now.”

But Ray is laughing. He's sniggering to himself, shaking his head, as if Carver has played a prank on him.

“Something funny?” Carver says, stepping off the prow, lifting the gun towards Ray's face.

Ray grins. “Look up, son.”

Carver gives a laugh of his own. He jerks the gun at Nessa, who has somehow managed to get both arms over the edge of the boat. “Go for a swim. Take her with you.”

Okwembu looks up, and smiles.

“Aaron,” says Prakesh.

“You got three seconds,” Carver says.

“
Aaron
.”

Finally, Carver looks up. Okwembu gets the sense that he intends it to be a quick glance, a little upward flick of the eyes, but when he sees what's above them he can't look away.

There's an opening in the side of the ship–huge and rectangular, lit from within by a yellow glow. There are faces in the opening. A dozen of them, men and women, as ragged as Ray is. Okwembu can just make out their military camouflage. Each of them is holding a rifle, just like Nessa's, and each rifle is pointed right at the boat.

Ray sniggers as Carver lowers his gun. “That's not even the best part.”

He points at the edge of the deck, far above them. There's something else there–a large metal cylinder, tilted off the end of the deck. There's a long, black tube at right angles to the cylinder–a gun barrel, Okwembu realises. It's pointing right at them.

“See, even if they missed,” Ray says, pointing at the faces in the opening, “Curtis wouldn't.”

“Curtis?” Prakesh Kumar's voice sounds flat and featureless.

“Took us a hell of a long time to get the Phalanx gun up and running,” Ray says conversationally, folding his arms. “But Curtis kept at it. That's his baby. Hardly ever leaves. He did a test-fire the other day, and he got off a thousand rounds in one pull of the trigger. He shoots now, and you'll be in heaven before you can spit.”

“So will you,” Carver says. Clay is quaking behind him.

“That may be. But I doubt Curtis'd hesitate. He's always been a little bit too…
enthusiastic
, if you get my meaning.”

It's everything Okwembu can do not to yell at Carver. She doesn't dare. One wrong move and they'll be shot to pieces.

That's when the idea comes to her. It arrives fully formed, blazing hot. Her bargaining chip. The thing she can offer Prophet. It's right there, but if Aaron Carver doesn't see reason she'll never get a chance to act on it.

Ray puts out his hand, looking Carver in the eye. “Now give me the gun.”

Iluk pulls Nessa out of the surf. She collapses in the boat, the centre of a pool of icy water, staring daggers at Carver. For a moment, he does nothing. Then his shoulders slump and he hands over the rifle.

“Good boy,” Ray says.