Love, Death, Robots, and Zombies Read online

  Chapter 7.

  I don’t sleep so much as roll around in a web of dark memory, and whenever I roll to my left, there’s a sharp pain from two places. When I wake, Lectric is the first thing on my mind. The way he sprawls happily in the morning sun. The fact that he whimpered and comforted me while I wept in those early days after the fire. All the times he sniffed out treasures in the ruins or alerted me to small game. For three years, my constant companion. My only companion.

  Gone. Just gone.

  The weight of his absence is immense. It brings on the rest. The Library, Farmington, my graphic novels–everything’s gone. Life is sorrow and ruin. I want to smash things. I couldn’t raise a fist. Dark thoughts have a magnetic effect. They draw in others. They reinforce each other until the darkness is all you can see. Depression crushes me like a weight from above.

  There was a church in Farmington. My grandfather never went there, but Annabel’s mom would take us. The pastor said God wanted to punish us for the way we’d lived in the World Before. But that world was alien to us. Those people were dead and gone. Punishing us for their mistakes didn’t make sense. I couldn’t figure out why everyone listened to the pastor.

  After the village burned, however, I came to understand belief. How could my grandfather be gone? He had to be somewhere. I talked to him while I walked in the desert. I felt he was watching over me. Was he? I don’t know, but it was what I needed then, and when I think of Lectric running around in some other realm, I want to believe it again. Let someone say he wasn’t really alive, that he was just a machine. We are “just” machines, in that case–organic ones. Lectric was more alive than most people, worth more than Ballard and Cabal. If they have souls, his was twice as pure.

  Echo moans, still asleep. She sounds terrified, but I don’t wake her.

  We’re in the shadow of another half-standing building down by the shore of New Sea. I buried Lectric in the night. I said some things in my head, and Echo stood and hugged me from behind, though she shook and the movement pained her.

  It’s not long after dawn. Clouds have gathered overhead. There’s an ominous rumble in the distance. We need food. I should move, but I’m paralyzed. My ear feels strange, hot and cold at the same time. When I touch it, there’s less pain. My arm still throbs, but it could be a lot worse. The shot only caught the outer layer of the muscle. I lay back down, but sleep doesn’t come. It’s a miserable morning. Finally Echo wakes, only to moan more pointedly, her face contracting in pain. She puts a hand on my good arm. When she takes a breath, her fingers dig in.

  “It hurts, Tristan. God, it hurts,” she says.

  There are two holes in her shirt around the left shoulder, where the mine hit her. The surrounding flesh is red and swollen. I tried taking the metal splinters out of her calf last night, but I don’t know if I got them all. Some were so tiny I could barely pinch them between my fingernails. Afterward, we washed her calf and wrapped it in a strip of cloth torn from her shirt–but it still looked terrible.

  Now each breath brings Echo fresh pain. Literally every one. As her lungs expand, the flesh and muscles surrounding the shoulder-wound inevitably shift. Her body is warning her to stay still, even while forcing her to move. She closes her eyes hard. Tears leak out, and she opens them and looks at me, desperate for help I can’t provide.

  “It’ll get better,” I say.

  She closes her eyes again.

  At first, I try to help. I say all kinds of things. Nothing works. I grow angry. I was injured too, after all. Her refusal to heal is frustrating. She’s not doing it on purpose, yet that’s how it starts to feel. Her constant complaining wears on my fragile nerves–can’t she just shut up for a while? If she and the others hadn’t come, I’d still be in the Library with Lectric. So yeah, maybe she deserves some of that pain. But then she’s Annabel Lee again, the girl who waits in the desert, and the anger turns to shame.

  I go into the desert, more to get away from her than to hunt. I need to do something. And of course there’s no game. Nothing whatsoever. The ruins were never well-populated, but now they’re completely destitute, devoid of even the smallest rat. Fate conspires against us on all levels. The sky rumbles and turns a slow, strange, purplish color. The warnings have been growing all day. You don’t have to be a rabbit to know something terrible is coming.

  Echo is hungry and pained, and when she sees I’m returning empty-handed, she actually weeps. I can’t take it. My fists clench and unclench on their own. Walking down the shore, I desalinate more water. Even this is a trial. It was the desalinator that leaked in my pack. The mine put a hole through it. The filter still works, thank Crom, but it won’t hold the water once it’s through, so I have to rig the canteen to catch what spills out. I’ve just finished filtering a few liters and my wrist hurts from turning the pressure-top … when the canteen slips and spills into the sand. Such a simple thing. It breaks me completely.

  My body tenses up and a sound comes out like I’m choking, and then I’m roaring and pounding the ground, smashing it with my fists, because something must be punished, because the world couldn’t spare me even this last petty cruelty. My fingers clench into claws. When they let go, I breathe heavily, hang my head and hug my knees. I’m numb for a time. Slowly, I pick up the desalinator and begin again.

  When I get back to Echo, she drinks gratefully, but it’s not a lasting comfort. Thunder booms. Distant but getting closer.

  “We have to start walking,” I say.

  “Why?” Echo asks.

  I have no answer. The storm? Food? Medicine? Where could we possibly find medicine? The weight of our needs is overwhelming, and her only question is “why?” I suppress my anger.

  “We can’t stay here,” I say.

  Finally, Echo nods.

  I help her up. Yet it’s immediately clear that progress is impossible. She simply can’t walk. Any pressure on her calf pains her, and every shift in movement lights up the nerves in her shoulder. The wounds are mostly cauterized so maybe she’ll avoid infection, but she’s suffering from some kind of nerve damage. It’s possible the mine used a particle pump instead of a pulse laser. My grandfather taught me the difference. Both will put holes in you, but particle pumps use packets of molecular material instead of focused light. The material will penetrate your flesh before breaking up inside, sending miniature shockwaves through the tissue, like microscopic shotgun blasts. My arm is swollen heavily around my own wound, yet it’s not giving me nearly as much pain as Echo's wounds are giving her.

  We have to keep moving regardless. There’s no shelter here, and the sky is clear about its intentions. We make it half a mile–the longest half-mile of Echo’s life. She’s shaking and close to collapse. Then the sky breaks, and walls of water hit us all at once. They come in rippling, diagonal sheets, so thick I can almost distinguish solid shapes. It’s as though some ancient, otherworldly elementals have come to frolic beneath the desert clouds, phasing in and out of their watery forms. The physical force of the rain is astounding. It falls with such noise that I can barely hear the thunder. A watery hell has opened up around us. A river grows around our boots.

  There’s a house ahead–the only one in sight with most of its roof intact. It looked so close a moment ago. Suddenly I fear we won’t make it. I have to pick up Echo and sprint the last hundred meters. My bicep screams at me. It’s like being on fire. I block everything but the sight of that doorway. Ten steps away, I lose my balance and send us both crashing to the ground. Echo cries out. Her eyes roll back in her head. The force of the flood tugs at my body. I haul her up again, yelling crazily, and we stumble through the open doorway.

  The house has holes in the roof and one of the walls. The windows are broken and the doors are missing. Water is pouring in, running across the floor, but it’s still better than being outside. A rotting staircase leads to a second floor, but we do
n’t dare risk it. In the kitchen sits a heavy oak table. I push it into the driest corner and take off my pack. The pack is soaked, but my old blanket inside is mostly dry.

  “Help me,” Echo says. I look at her–and stare, baffled, because she’s leaning against a wall, shivering badly, with her pants down to her calves.

  “I can’t do it …” she says vaguely. She intends to take off her clothes, and I’m still staring stupidly because I can’t comprehend her purpose. She has to explain. I’ve been living alone in the desert, and the only body warmth I’ve ever known is my own. Yet she’s right. We can’t light a fire, and with the way things are going, we’re probably going to die of hypothermia before the night is through.

  I help her out of her clothes and onto the table. She winces, eyes closed, with each movement. Only her necklace remains to her, and she clasps it tightly, her fingers molesting the tawdry heart-shaped jewel. Lightning illuminates her pale body, the curve of her thighs, the smallness of her breasts, the braille of her nipples. Each flash divides the world into light and shadow, into black and white.

  When I was younger–not long before the fire, in fact–Berkley came to me and Crispin one day and insisted we follow him to an oasis a few miles from Farmington. There was a pond hidden away in the curve of the land beneath a small cliff. We’d often gone in on sweltering summer days. That day, however, we approached by stealth until we could espy what lay ahead. Crispin’s older sister, Isabel, and her friend, Amelia Day, had been swimming naked in the pond. They’d laughed and frolicked before returning to the shore.

  Instantly, I’d understood the value of the secret there uncovered, what seemed a treasure of immense worth. Isabel’s long, lithe body emerging from that pond–plastered with golden hair, shedding glorious rivulets like jewels shimmering in the summer sun–was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The moment possessed a magic that went beyond the girl herself, beyond desire, to touch something pure and powerful, something hidden, something divine. Isabel had been transformed into an ethereal being, and I’d gaped at her in abject awe … until Crispin had made too much noise, and the girls had grabbed clothes and come running after us.

  In the dark ruins of the storm-racked house, Echo is something different. She lacks the full, curving, sunlit glory of that distant day. The necessity of the situation is a blunt fact, and she’s huddled on the table like some starving, wretched animal in the wild. Yet despite all the pain and misery, despite any lingering anger, there’s something sacred in this moment too, a fragility I want to hold and protect, and for an instant it drives away the cold and hunger and earthly troubles–even grief over Lectric. The dark feelings drop away, and she’s Annabel Lee again. Things have gone terribly wrong, and my friend needs me.

  She’s also shivering violently while I stand staring like an idiot. I strip quickly, keeping only my ragged under-shorts out of an awkward sense of embarrassment, and huddle on the table beside her. The dry blanket is a blessing. We press close beneath it, lying on the table, using my pack as a pillow. Her skin is cold and clammy but grows slowly less so. She can only lean on her uninjured shoulder. I spoon her, and one of her hands remains cradling her old necklace between us.

  A river gushes over the floor beneath the table, carrying bits of debris. The lightning screams. A tree splits and dies out in the wastes, but we are secreted away in this hidden sanctuary, and I can’t exactly call it good–because actually we’re in deep shit here, and the Library is still gone, and Lectric is still dead–yet I’ll keep this moment for all the days that are left to me. I’m very conscious of the position of my hands and the rise and fall of her chest, and if I wasn’t so exhausted my heart would be pounding for an entirely different reason … but things are what they are, and eventually we drift off to the waning fury of the storm.

  When I come to, my body is stiff and achy, my right arm numb beneath her. Echo inhales sharply when I shift. The rain still comes, only gently now, with a friendly patter, as if in apology. I don’t want to face the world just yet, so I doze off a second time.

  Around noon I’m up again, weak and hungry. Mercifully, the rain has stopped. Echo still sleeps. I extract myself and find our waterlogged clothes pushed to one wall with the rest of the flotsam.

  Outside, the sun is shockingly bright. I drape our wet clothes over a broken fence and load up my crossbow. I catch myself looking for Lectric. He always comes with me. But he’s not there, and there’s nothing to do but set off into the desert alone.

  Right from the start, the day is a drastic reversal of the last. It’s as if the universe is making reparations. An hour in, I put a bolt through a vulture who’s picking at a recently dead fox, and both corpses come with me for the fire. It pains me to aim, as it’s necessary to use both arms, but the pain’s not overly inhibitive and it fades when I can relax the injured bicep. Soon the vulture, I find a patch of wild melons and edible cacti. But the real find comes on the way back, entirely unlooked-for.

  I’m heading back toward the house when I stop in my tracks. A heavy-duty wheelbarrow sits by the back door of a half-standing abode. It’s made of a black alloy from the World Before, and it doesn’t have a speck of rust. I throw the game and the fruit inside, and I’m commenting about our luck to Lectric before I realize again that he’s not at my heels. That part’s sobering, but it’s like the tenth time I’ve done it, which makes it slightly easier to bear. I never realized before how much I talk to Lectric while ranging into the wastes.

  “Hell, why stop now, right boy?” I say, thinking of him listening from some vague, ineffable realm. Which is probably insane, but oh well.

  The wheelbarrow is a prize, not because it’ll carry food and supplies, but because it’ll carry Echo. I have no idea how long it will take her to heal. I’m not even sure she will heal. Our bodies are ill-equipped to deal with such unnatural wounds. The cauterization and saltwater-cleansing have prevented infection, and my arm is doing reasonably well, but the mine has struck a deeper nerve in Echo. The pain is utterly debilitating. I’ve been wondering all morning if we were simply destined to live out our lives here, scavenging for food and braving the occasional storm.

  In truth, if we found the right building, such a life wouldn’t be all that different from my old one. Yet it’s not what we’re meant for. Even if Cabal never comes back, we need to be on the move. We’re going somewhere, and I may not know where exactly, but I don’t want to stop until we get there.

  When the house comes into view, Echo is standing outside with the blanket wrapped around her, leaning against the wall to keep the weight off her leg. Our clothes are still drying on the fence. It’s not until I’m close that I realize she’s in some kind of duress. Her hand is over her mouth and her eyes are wide, tearful.

  “What?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “I’ve got food–and look!” I say, showcasing the wheelbarrow.

  “I’m just an idiot,” she whispers.

  Turns out, she was afraid I wouldn’t come back. I’d left while she was asleep. All morning she’d been telling herself I’d be back, that I’d just gone hunting, but personal fears had overcome the logic. Fear had assured her I’d abandoned her, that I was gone forever. I’m not used to living with people. It didn’t even occur to me to tell her where I was going.

  “I know you hate me, Tristan, but please, please, don’t leave me again,” she says.

  “I … I don’t,” I try to explain, but she doesn’t believe me. It’s more than that though. Her injuries make her entirely dependent on me. She has no chance of gathering enough food or water to survive on her own. She can’t endure significant movement. If something happened to me, what would she do? Hobble around in the desert until she laid down to die. The responsibility is unnerving. Do I really want someone else’s life in my hands? Absolutely not. That’s a terrible idea. Who’s running this universe? What kind of sick jokes are they pl
aying?

  Echo isn’t nearly as excited about the wheelbarrow as me. She just smiles vaguely and says it’s good. Then she says something about Haven–she’s still hoping to get there. I don’t step on her dreams this time. I keep my tongue.

  We’re starving, so I cook up the meat. By the time we’re done eating, dusk is coming on. Still, I’d rather get somewhere than nowhere, so I load up the pack. Our clothes are mostly dry, so we’re able to dress. Echo has been wearing the blanket all day. She hands it to me to put away, and again I become highly conscious of her nudity. My face feels hot. A vein pulses in my throat. Not only that but she needs help to dress; she can’t put weight on her calf and bending puts more pressure on the damaged nerve in her shoulder. I help in my own terribly awkward way.

  Afterward, I help her into the wheelbarrow. We set off down Big Road. There’s a tight pinch in my left bicep while I push. I try to rearrange the weight in different ways. It partially helps. If we’re going to travel, I’ll just have to deal with it. Our limited mobility stirs up worries that Cabal will come back. He could desert the army and come after us–does he want us that bad? I wish I knew.

  I caught a deserter once…

  We listen for the whine of a solar cycle and watch for more traps ahead. Every new boulder gives us pause. I stop frequently to scan the terrain with my spyglass. We’re constantly finding new mines, despite the fact that there aren’t any.

  Two hours past dusk, we stop. The moon is out, bathing the land with its pale white effulgence. My arms ache. Was I excited about the wheelbarrow? It’s a thing of torture, not liberation. But it’s gotten us this far. Aside from occasional sounds of pain, Echo has been very quiet. We camp off the road, under the open stars.

  I’m lying half-asleep when I become aware of Echo’s eyes. She’s close, with one arm over me, and when I turn my head, she’s awake and staring. Her face is awash in moonlight. There’s a crispness to the vision that’s almost otherworldly. Her hand moves slowly. She tries to avoid wincing but can’t entirely succeed. I’m astonished and at the same time unsurprised to feel her hand inching under my shirt, exploring. I swallow hard. There’s a flutter in my stomach. Still, the movement pains her, it’s connected to the muscles in her injured shoulder, and the hand comes to rest, scratching lightly at my skin.

  “You can do what you want to me,” she says quietly. Her eyes are intense, unreadable. I stare stupidly. Is this happening?

  “You can do what you want,” she says again, and the air is still, the night silent. With a painful effort, she shifts. She slides her body onto mine. She’s a weight on my chest as I inhale.

  “Do what you want, Tristan. Please,” she whispers.

  The slow movement of her pelvis is both glorious and unmistakable, yet something is wrong here. It’s in her eyes. She’s almost tearing up from the pain, which calls her motives into question. My sudden confusion destroys any growing lust. The “please” bothers me too; some fear lies behind it. She’s desperate for me to use her, but not out of any physical need or desire…

  And then I realize: she’s afraid I’ll leave her.

  This is the coin she offers. This is her value. Does she think I’d abandon her to die? That I’d walk off and let my oldest living friend starve? Isn’t she Annabel Lee, the girl who waits in the desert, and didn’t I give her that heart-shaped necklace which even now dangles between us?

  Rage–how little she must think of me. And I almost mistook her feelings for genuine desire. I grip her arm, though she squeals in pain, and thrust her to the side, sitting up. She’s staring at me, fearful and astonished, when I say the first thing that comes to mind.

  “Is that what you said to Ballard?”

  She draws back, stricken. Her fear turns to hurt. But I’m angry still, and I’m not done wounding her. My next question is quiet, almost intimate.

  “What about Cabal? Him too?”

  Her jaw quivers. Her eyes glaze over. I’ve said something terrible, something forbidden, even if I don’t fully understand it. I sensed her weakness, I forged a dagger out of words, and her face is exactly as it would be if I’d jabbed it into her heart. She bursts into tears.

  I’ve broken her. She makes a sound almost like high-pitched words, but I can’t understand a single one. My anger melts, yet I refuse to let it go, because if I do it will slip toward shame. This was her fault. She did this. She deserves it, I tell myself. Beneath is a secret fear that I’ve gone too far, that I’ve driven her permanently away, that she’ll shield herself always now. But so what if that’s true? I’ve been alone before. I don’t need her.

  I stand and move away, looking off into the night, and she just sobs like a broken thing.