John Adams - Wastelands 2

“Who?” I said, blearily.

“Jenna. You haven’t seen her?”

“No,” I said, guiltily, “not since Lyman—”

“Shit!” he said, and spun on his heel, taking off.

His urgency penetrated my fog and I chased after him. “You think something’s up?” I said.

He nodded grimly. “Lyman’s been too smug lately, like the cat that ate the cream. I think he’s got her.”

“Where would he keep her?” I said. There wasn’t much standing that you could keep a person locked up inside of.

“Those assholes have an ‘armory’ where they keep all their goddamn weapons. He’s said as much to me, when he was bragging. I want to find it.”

“Hang on a sec,” I said. “Have you checked her place?”

“You know where it is?” he asked, surprised.

“Come on,” I said, feeling perversely proud that he didn’t.

She wasn’t at her place, but there were signs of a struggle. Her pack was shredded, her seeds ground into the concrete floor.

Timson took one look and tore off. I followed his long strides as best as I could. I knew where he was headed: Steve’s.

Steve lived in part of a half-buried underground shopping mall. Timson pummeled down the stairs with me close behind.

Steve and Lucy were twined on a pile of foam rubber. Timson hauled him up by the arm and slammed his head against a wall.

“Where’s the armory?” he roared.

Steve held his head. “Fuck you,” he sneered.

Timson slammed his head again. Lucy rushed him from behind and I tripped her.

“Where is it?” Timson said. “Don’t make me any angrier.”

Steve dangled, nude, from Timson’s meaty paws. Terror and anger warred on his features. Terror won. He spilled his guts. “They’ll kill you,” he said. “They’ve been fighting off wanderers all week. They’re in a bad mood.”

Timson snorted and dropped him.

Lyman was expecting us. He blocked the entrance to the armory, a bomb shelter with a heavy, counterweighted steel door. I’d seen a few doors like it in my travels, but I’d never managed to get one open.

Timson got ready to rush him, then checked himself. Lyman had his gun hanging lazily off one hand.

“Afternoon, boys,” he said, grinning.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Timson said.

Lyman held up his gun with an expression of mock surprise. “Probably not,” he said. “Not unless you give me a reason to. I’m here to protect.”

“Well, I’m about to give you a reason to. I’m going in there to get Jenna. I’ll kill you if you try to stop me.”

Lyman stuck his gun back into his waistband. “You’re too late,” he said.

I saw red and started forward, but he held a hand up.

“She got away. We only wanted to scare her off and get rid of her seeds, but she went nuts. It’s a good thing she got away, or I would’ve forgotten my manners.”

Timson growled .

Lyman took a step backwards. “Look, if you don’t believe me, go on in and take a look around, be my guest.”

Jenna wasn’t inside, but they weren’t kidding when they called it an arsenal. I hadn’t seen that many weapons since the War. It made me faintly sick.

Then I spotted something that froze me in my tracks. Beneath one of the long tables, a dented silver canister with ugly biohazard decals. You saw fragments of them sometimes, exploded in the midst of plague-wracked corpses. A plague bomb.

Lyman strutted around like a proud papa. “Lots of these were here when I found the place, but we’ve picked up a few here and there along the way. Nobody’s chasing us out of here.” He followed my horrified gaze.

“You like it?” he said. “That’s just in case someone does manage to run us off—it won’t do them any good! Our Final Solution.” He patted the bomb with a proprietary air.

All of a sudden, it got to me. I started laughing. “Nobody’s chasing you out!” I gasped. “This is your rubble, and nobody’s chasing you out!” Timson started laughing, too. Lyman and his boys reddened. We left.

We found Jenna with Hambone, in his cave. She had the remains of her pack with her, and was shoveling Hambone’s things into it.

She startled when we came in, but once she’d seen us, she went back to packing. “Getting outta Dodge,” she said, in answer to our unspoken question.

“Are you all right?” I asked, feeling guilty and awful.

“They killed my seeds,” she said, in a hopeless voice. I started to reach for her, then stopped and stared at the floor.

She finished packing and grabbed Hambone. “You coming?”

Timson shouldered her pack, answering for both of us.

I’d settled seven years before. I thought I’d stayed in good shape, but I’d forgotten how punishing life on the road could be.

Jenna set a brutal pace. She wouldn’t talk to me any more than necessary. We ate sparingly, from what she scrounged on the way. She knew a lot about what was edible and what wasn’t, skills I’d never picked up, but my belly still growled.

“Where are we going?” I said, after a week. My feet had toughened, but my legs felt like they’d been beaten by truncheons.

Instead of answering, she pointed up at a plane overhead. Of course, I thought, time to make a long-distance call.

A week later, I said, “Have you thought this thing through? I mean, the station may be automated, but it’ll have defenses. Locks, at least. How do you plan on getting in?”

Timson, who’d been silent the whole morning, said, “I’m curious, too. I’ve been thinking: this Australia thing is kind of far-fetched, isn’t it? If they wanted to rescue us, they would’ve done it a long time ago, don’t you think?”

“Screw Australia,” she said impatiently. “Any station capable of maintaining those jets is bound to have lots of things we can use. I want a fence for my garden.”

“But how are we going to get in?” I said.

“Hambone,” she said, with a smug smile.

Hambone grinned affably. “Guh?” I said.

“He’s a pilot . High ranking one, too.”

“Not to repeat myself,” I said, “but, guh?”

She spun Hambone around and pulled his shaggy hair away from the collar of his grimy tee-shirt. “Look.” I did. She dug at the knot of scar tissue at the base of his skull. Horrified, I watched as the scar flapped back, revealing a row of plugs, ringed with cracked and blackened skin.

“Brainstem interface. I noticed it the first time I saw you guys. You never noticed?”

“I noticed the scar, sure—”

“Scar?” she said. She flapped it around. “It’s a dustcover! Hambone’s wired! We’ll just point his retinas at the scanner and voilà , instant entry. Damn, you didn’t think I was going to try and hop the fence, did you?”

Timson grinned sheepishly. “Well, actually …”

We reached the station the next day. The familiar roar of the jets was joined by the ear-shattering sound of them landing and taking off, like clockwork.

The airfield was fenced in by a lethal wall, ten meters tall and ringed with aged corpses. A lot of slow learners had found out the hard way about the station’s defenses.

We wandered the perimeter for several kilometers before we came to a gate. It had a retinal scanner, like I sometimes found when I unearthed the remains of a bank machine. Hambone grew more and more agitated as we neared it.

“Go on,” Jenna whispered. “Come on, you can do it.”

His nervous drumming became more and more pronounced, until he was waving his arms, flailing wildly.

Jenna caught his hands and held them tightly. “That’s all right,” she cooed. “It’s all right, come on.”

Centimeter by slow centimeter, Jenna coaxed Hambone to the scanner. Finally, he put his eyes against the battered holes. Red light played over his features, and the gates sighed open.