Rook Winters - Weight of Ashes

Court adjusted the position of his fingers on his mag gun. There was something in the trees ahead.

Probably a deer. Too quiet for a moose , he thought. Moose would’ve been a nice treat.

They’d eaten a lot of deer and feral dog lately. They’d be heroes if they brought back a moose.

Beside him, he heard a hint of a wheeze in Walker’s breathing. His hay fever was bad this year. Court found it ironic that the kid was allergic to the outdoors given that his people had lived off these lands hundreds of years ago, before the expulsions, before grav tech, before electricity, before cities even.

Court raised the gun and looked over the sight lines at the spot where experience told him the deer would come into view. He saw its head for a fraction of a second. A doe with her ears forward but not facing Court. Something else had her attention. Before he had time to react, the animal bolted.

“What spooked it?” Walker asked.

They heard the answer a moment later. An inorganic sound, something out of place this far from civilization. It was coming from the old road.

“Let’s check,” Court said. “But stay out of sight.”

They moved faster than they did while stalking prey. The noise they made didn’t matter compared to the whining that was growing louder and the sound of fallen branches snapping as something sped along the remains of what was once a highway for gas-powered vehicles.

“There.” Walker pointed to a two-wheeled machine bouncing over the uneven asphalt mangled by decades of frost heaves.

“That’s a motorcycle,” Court said. The driver was old like Marsh and the other council members but this man’s white beard and hair were neatly trimmed. A smaller passenger sat behind the driver, dressed in black, including a helmet.

Not from around here , Court thought.

“Should we flag them down?” Walker asked. “They’re lost for sure.”

“Don’t be foolish. We don’t want anything to do with city people.”

Then Court heard a hum that wasn’t from the motorcycle. He grabbed Walker by the shirt and pulled him deeper into the thicket for better cover. It was a sound Court had heard twice before. The first time was with his father on their way home from trading venison for seeds. The second time was a week later when explosives fell on their village. His parents…

Court squeezed his eyes tight. This wasn’t the right time for emotion.

“What’s that other sound?” Walker asked.

Court scowled at the younger teen. “It’s a grav control flyer. Shut up and don’t move.”

The ground under the tangle of bushes was damp. Moisture soaked through the elbows of Court’s shirt. It wasn’t great cover, and he hoped that whoever was in that flyer only cared about the people on the old motorcycle.

That thing had to be at least fifty years old. It couldn’t outrun a grav flyer, especially not driving over a neglected highway that was more path than road.

Walker flinched at the sound of a thunderous crack. They couldn’t see clearly through the trees but they saw enough. A section of road was sucked into a black dot then spit back out as dust in all directions, leaving a hole the size of a bear in the ground. The leaves around Court and Walker danced as the air reacted to the disruption.

There was no way the driver could avoid the hole but he tried, leaning to his left and jerking the handles. They hit the edge at an angle, launching the passenger from the back. The motorcycle flipped and the man screamed as it crushed his leg.

Walker started to get up and Court clamped his hand on the boy’s arm. “Don’t move,” he whispered.

The flyer settled a few inches from the ground, hovering over the old asphalt and weeds. It was quiet for something that literally floated in the air. This one looked big enough to hold a half-dozen men but was no louder than a croaking toad. Court could hear the ground crunch under the weight of a Qyntarak as it stepped off.

The sketches and grainy photos of Qyntarak that Court had seen didn’t prepare him for how huge and terrifying they were in real life. This one was twice the size of the man it was bearing down upon. Its four spindly legs supported a long body that curved up and then hung down at the end, like a branch bearing too much fruit. It wore body armor and cradled what Court guessed was a weapon in its two shortest arms, the ones that looked most like human arms with finger-like parts. Its other arm equivalents, two long ones with pointed ends and two shorter ones with blunt pincers, were fanned out like tree branches made of snakes.

He’d once heard Qyntarak compared to a giant centipede crossed with a spider crossed with a horse, but that comparison was inadequate because it didn’t capture how alien they looked. Court knew that underneath that body armor, there was nothing resembling a face.

“Dr. Donovan,” the monster said, its voice synthetic and unnatural through the speakers of its body armor, “you have left the compound without authorization and are guilty of desertion.”

The man, Donovan, wiped blood from his mouth and said something in a language Court didn’t recognize.

“The governor has a message for you.”

A long moment passed in silence then a different but equally synthetic voice said, “Donovan, friend of many years, the disappointment you have created in me is great. Your actions are foolish gestures. This failure brings shame to me. It was selfish of you.”

Donovan uttered something else in the unknown language. Then in English he said, “You are the fool. The human spirit cannot be contained. Oligarchies never last. Empires always fall.”

“We shall see. At least, I shall see. Your time has expired. Others will resume your work and you will be forgotten. You have accomplished nothing but to bring cold to my mandibles. Goodbye.”

The alien moved forward. “Traitor.”

Another crack, this time quieter.

The Qyntarak returned to its flyer and it shot upward with a deep hum.

Walker began to move again but Court kept his grip on him and shook his head no. They waited until the hum was gone and the chirping of birds resumed. Cautiously, they moved to the road. The old man was lying on his back with a hole in his chest almost as large as his head. What was left of his torso was covered in gray powder. Blood oozed and mixed with it, creating a sludge in the cavity.

Walker steadied himself against a tree and vomited.

“You alright?” Court asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Where’s the other one?”

After a brief search, they found the body, stiff and unmoving, among the trees at the edge of the road.

“It’s a girl,” Walker said. “Or a woman, I guess.”

She wore a dull black bodysuit with no visible seams or fasteners. Her helmet was solid with no visor or eyeholes. Court pressed his fingers against her neck and then her wrist.

“The suit’s cold. I can’t feel a pulse through it, and I don’t see how to remove it.”

“We can cut it open with my hunting knife.”

“No, not out here. We need to get them closer to the village and find Marsh. He’ll know what to do.”

Court was weeks away from his twentieth birthday, almost a year since he became a full adult in the village, and even though the fourteen-year-old Walker thought the older teen knew everything, Court was well aware of how much he didn’t know. Like what to do with two dead bodies.

“We’ll push them on the motorcycle,” Court said.

They followed the road for nearly a kilometer to where a dry creek bed reached the road. It was slow moving with the bodies draped over the motorcycle. Blood trickled from the dead man and Court worried that it might attract coywolves or a bear. He didn’t say anything to Walker. If the kid was worried, he wasn’t letting on.