Fragments

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kira and Afa were waiting on the George Washington Bridge with a pile of equipment when Samm and Heron finally appeared with the horses, not right at noon but soon thereafter. Afa, of course, had his backpack, stuffed to the seams with originals and copies of all his most important documents. If the worst happened, and his record stash was raided or destroyed, he had enough in his backpack to . . . Kira wasn’t sure. To write a really good history book about the end of the world. What they needed now were the answers that would make it all add up: What was the Failsafe? Why did the Trust end the world? And how could they use that knowledge to save what was left?

“This is too much,” said Heron, reining up her horse. It nickered, breathing heavily. “We’ll have to leave most of it.”

“I’ve planned for that,” said Kira, gesturing at some of the boxes. “Afa insisted we bring some of his larger archives, but I told him we might not have room. Remove all that stuff and it’s really not too bad.”

“We need another horse,” said Afa, though he was shying away from the four in front of him. “We need a packhorse, like a . . . shipping horse. A baggage carrier for all my boxes.”

“We’ll have to leave the boxes behind,” said Samm, swinging down from his saddle. He picked through the other supplies, nodding his head in approval. “Food, water, ammunition—what’s this?”

“That’s a radio,” said Kira. “I want to make sure we have some way of communicating, if it comes to it.”

“It’s too small,” said Heron. “We won’t be able to talk to anyone with a thing like that.”

“Afa’s set up repeaters all over this place,” said Kira. “That’s what the building was in Asharoken, and the one by where we met Samm.”

“Captured Samm,” said Heron, the barest hint of a smile in the corner of her lips.

“Wait,” said Samm. “All those rigged buildings, all the explosions, those were radio repeaters?”

“I set them up,” said Afa, reorganizing the piles of equipment. “I didn’t want anyone to find them.”

Samm was stone-faced. “You killed people over radio repeaters?”

“And record depots,” said Kira. “Most of them were also temporary safe houses.”

“That doesn’t make it any better,” said Samm.

“You knew he was a paranoid lunatic yesterday,” said Heron. “How does this change anything?”

“Because it’s wrong,” said Samm.

“And it wasn’t wrong yesterday?”

“I’m sorry,” said Kira. “I’ve lost friends to those bombs as well.”

“Not those bombs, his bombs.”

“And I’m not happy about it either,” Kira insisted. “He was overzealous and he killed some innocent people, but you know what? Which side hasn’t in this idiotic war?”

“He’s not a side,” said Samm, “he’s a wild card.”

“A wild card that we need,” said Heron. “We agreed to this yesterday, we’re following through with it today. He’s unarmed—just don’t let him plant a bomb anywhere and you’re perfectly safe.”

Samm glowered but didn’t object, and he and Kira began loading equipment onto the horses.

“We’ll need to set up another repeater in the Appalachians,” said Afa, carefully placing the radio in his own saddlebag. “We don’t have anything set up that can get a reliable signal over a mountain.”

“Are you going to rig that one to explode as well?” asked Samm.

“How did you know I brought explosives?” he asked, his brow furrowed. “Kira said I couldn’t bring explosives—”

“You can’t,” said Samm, and searched the pile fiercely, finally pulling a brick of C4 from a pack full of food. He brandished it at Heron. “See? This is what we’re getting ourselves into.”

“So check the rest and make sure you have it all,” said Heron, taking the brick and throwing it over the side of the bridge. They were still over the city, not the water, and it fell silently through the air before splatting on the pavement below.

Samm searched everything they’d brought, including Afa’s backpack, and when he was finally satisfied, they mounted up and rode west, across the bridge and into the untamed mainland beyond: what used to be New Jersey. Kira looked back at the boxes of extra records, forlorn by the side of the road.

“Boxes of old ParaGen emails,” she said. “That’s going to be a weird surprise for anyone who finds them.”

“If someone finds them,” said Heron, “then we’ve done a very poor job of slipping away unnoticed.”

Kira had been riding horses for years, mostly on salvage runs in and out of East Meadow, so the first days of the trip were easy for her; Heron and Samm proved to be accomplished riders as well. Afa, to no one’s surprise, was not, which made their progress slow starting out. He also made strange, disjointed conversation as they rode, talking here about cats and there about internet firewall subroutines. Kira listened casually, ignoring most of it, having learned over the last three weeks that all Afa really wanted to do was say things out loud; he’d been alone too long to expect a response, and she’d started to suspect that he would talk to himself just as much if there were no one around to hear him. Samm and Heron scanned the horizon, watching the road ahead and the buildings on the side for signs of an ambush. It was unlikely out here—as far as they knew, nobody lived on this side of the city, or indeed anywhere else on the continent—but it was better to be safe than sorry. The road curved north, then south, then north again, winding lazily through the dense suburbs of New Jersey. When night fell they were still in urban terrain, office buildings and stores and apartments on every side. They slept for the night in an auto parts store, the horses tethered to tall racks of rubber tires. Heron took the first turn at watch, and Kira couldn’t help but notice that she was watching her and Afa as much as anything that might be approaching from the outside.

Kira woke again in the middle of the night, momentarily disoriented, but as her eyes adjusted and she remembered where she was, she saw Samm was now on watch, perched on a desk in the corner of the room. Kira sat up, hugging her knees in the cold.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey,” said Samm.

Kira sat, looking at him, not sure what to say or how to say it. “Thanks for coming back.”

“You told me to.”

“I mean, thanks for coming to find me. At all. You didn’t have to.”

“You told me to do that, too,” said Samm. “We said we’d learn what we could, then get back together and compare notes.”

“We did,” said Kira, scooting back to rest against the wall. “So. What do you know?”

“I know we’re dying.”

Kira nodded. “The expiration date.”

“You say that,” said Samm, “but do you really appreciate what it means?”

“Partials die after twenty years.”

“The first wave of Partials arrived at the Isolation War twenty-one years ago,” he said. “They were created the year before that. All our leaders, all our front-line veterans, are already dead. The closest thing we have to ancestors.” He paused again. “I was in the last group made, and I turn nineteen in a few months. Heron’s been nineteen for a while. Do you know how many of us are left?”

“All we ever talk about is ‘a million Partials,’” said Kira. “‘There are a million Partials right on the other side of the sound.’ I guess that’s not true anymore, is it?”

“We’ve lost more than half.”

Kira brought her knees in closer to her chest, suddenly colder. The room felt small and fragile, like a house of sticks ready to crumble in the wind.

Five hundred thousand dead, she thought. More than five hundred thousand. The sheer size of the number, nearly twenty times the entire human population, terrified her. Her next thought came unbidden: It won’t be long before we’re even.

Immediately she felt terrible, even for thinking it. She didn’t want anyone to die anymore, human or Partial; she certainly didn’t want to “get even” with them. She’d been angry at them before, before she started to understand them, but she’d moved past that. Hadn’t she? She was one of them, after all. It occurred to her then that she might have to face an expiration date as well—and moments later she realized that she was so different from the other Partials, she might not have an expiration date at all. The first thought terrified her, but the second stunned her with a deep, empty sadness. The last of Partial left. The last of my people.

Which side am I on?

She looked at Samm, his back against the wall, one leg hanging off the desk, his rifle resting calmly next to him. He was a protector, a guardian, watching over them while they were helpless; if anybody did come to attack them, not only would he see them first, but they would see him first. He had placed himself in harm’s way to protect a girl he barely knew and a man he didn’t like or trust. He was a Partial, yet he was a friend.

That’s the whole problem, she thought. We still think there are sides. There can’t be, not anymore.

She felt the sudden urge to crawl up next to him, to help keep watch, to share a bit of body heat in the bitter nighttime chill. She didn’t. She pulled her blanket to her chin and spoke.

“We’re going to solve it,” she said. “We’re going to find the Trust, we’re going to find their records, we’re going to find out not just why they did this but how—how we can reverse the expiration date, how can we synthesize the cure for RM. Whatever I’m supposed to be, and what part I’m supposed to play in it. They knew all this, variously, and once we know it, we can save everyone.”

“That’s why I came back,” said Samm.

“To save the world?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” he said. His face was a mask of shadow. “I came to help you save it. You’re the only one who can.”

Kira pulled her blanket tighter around her neck and shoulders. Sometimes a vote of confidence can be the most nerve-racking thing in the world.

They packed and left at the first sign of dawn, making sure the horses were well-fed and watered for the day’s trip. By noon the city had all but disappeared, and they passed the afternoon in rural country, thick forests slowly but surely overrunning the small towns that nestled in the hills. Afa’s constant babbling petered out as well, as if the stretches of untamed wilderness made him uncomfortable. Kira occasionally heard him mutter to himself, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Kira didn’t know what her horse’s name was, since they’d been stolen, so she passed most of her day trying to think of something appropriate. Samm’s horse was willful, and stubborn, so she wanted to name him Haru, but she knew none of her companions would appreciate the joke. She reflected that she could just as easily name a stubborn horse Xochi, or Kira for that matter. She searched for something else and settled on Buddy, a boy she’d known in school who fought with the teachers almost on principle, because they were in charge. Samm’s horse seemed to have the same attitude. Heron’s horse, on the other hand, seemed almost determined to obey her, or perhaps Heron was simply better at controlling it. Calling on the same well of acquaintances, Kira named this one Dug, after a perennial overachiever from her intern program. Her own horse, a bit of a goofy trickster, she named Bobo, and Afa’s poor mount she named Odd, or Oddjob, or any number of other permutations as the mood struck her. If Heron was the best at managing her horse, Afa was the worst, and the poor animal seemed at times just as confused as he was, bobbing its head and shuffling sideways and sending Afa into fits of frustrated grumbling. It was almost funny, but it kept them slow, and Kira tried to give him riding tips when she could. It didn’t seem to help.

It was near nightfall when they heard a cry for help.

“Hold up,” said Samm, reining his horse Buddy to a stop. The others stopped with him, listening on the wind for another sound. Oddjob stamped and snuffled, and Heron shot Afa a dirty look. Kira tried to focus, and heard the voice again.

“Help!”

“It’s coming from over there,” Samm said, pointing down a gully by the side of the road. There were lakes all through these hills, and tiny rivers and streams had cut paths between them for centuries. The gully in question was thick with trees and underbrush.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Heron. “We don’t have time to stop.”

“Someone’s in trouble,” said Kira. “We can’t just leave them.”

“Yes, we can,” said Heron.

“It’s a Partial,” said Afa. “I’m the last human on the planet.”

“It’s not a Partial,” said Samm. “I’m not linking with anyone.”

“They might be too far away,” said Kira.

“Or downwind,” said Heron. “I don’t like it either way—any humans we meet would likely love to ambush a group of Partials, and we know our faction’s not this far west.”

“I thought you didn’t have a faction anymore?” asked Kira. Heron only glared.

“Heron’s right,” said Samm. “We can’t afford the time or the risk.”

“Help!” The cry was distant and garbled, but it sounded like a young woman. Kira clenched her teeth. She knew they were right, but . . .

“She could be dying,” she said. “I don’t want to fall asleep tonight haunted by some lost girl’s dying call for help.”

“Do you want to fall asleep at all?” asked Heron, and it was Kira’s turn to glare.

“Let’s keep moving,” said Samm, nudging Buddy with his knees. The horse started forward, and Kira’s Bobo followed without waiting to be asked.

“Help!”

“I’m going,” said Kira, grabbing the reins and turning Bobo’s head toward the side of the road. “You can come if you want.”

“Why does she just say ‘help’?” asked Afa.

“Because she needs help,” said Kira, sliding out of the saddle at the edge of the road. The slope was steep and covered with bushes, and she didn’t think the horse could make it in the fading light. She tied his reins to a mile marker and unslung her rifle.

“I think she’d be saying, ‘Help me,’” said Afa, “or ‘Is anybody out there?’”

“They’ve heard our hoofbeats,” said Samm, who suddenly shook his head and swore. “Kira, I’m coming with you.”

Heron stayed on her horse. “Can I have your stuff when you’re dead?”

“You’re the spy,” said Samm, gesturing at the hills below. “Sneak around behind them and . . . I don’t know, help.”

“It’s getting dark,” said Heron, “and they’re already aware of us, and we don’t know where they are, or how many of them there are, or how they’re armed, or what they’re doing. You want me to sneak behind them by what, magic?”

“Just stay here and watch the horses then,” said Kira. “We’ll be back soon.” She climbed over the railing at the side of the road with Samm close behind her, and they picked their way carefully down the side of the hill. The brush was thick, clutching at her boots, and the hill was steep enough that she found herself grabbing the bushes for support, descending almost on hands and knees. The bottom was no better, with thick scrub reaching all the way to the water line.

They heard the cry again, back in the reaches of a narrow gully, and Kira decided they wouldn’t be hidden much longer anyway and called out. “Hang on, we’re coming!”

“I don’t know how they even got back there,” said Samm, fighting through the brush behind her. Almost immediately Kira stumbled into a narrow path, and Samm bumped into her from behind as he did the same.

“An animal track,” he said. “Deer?”

“Wild dogs,” said Kira, looking at the worn earth. “I’ve seen this kind of track before.”

“I figure this is an injured hunter or something, but who follows a dog trail?”

They heard the cry again, closer now, and Kira could hear that something was wrong with the voice—it was garbled, somehow. She sped up. The gully turned into a steep ravine, a giant wall of rock sprouting up on their right, and as they rounded the edge of it they found a small clearing, maybe seven feet wide at the most, and in the center of it a large tan dog. Kira stopped in surprise, the dog staring at her calmly.

Samm stepped around the corner after her, saw the dog, and swore.

“What?” Kira whispered.

“Help!” said the dog, and gave a terrifyingly human grin. “Help!”

“Fall back,” said Samm, but in that instant the bushes around them seemed to explode with more dogs, heavy, muscled monsters that leapt up against their chests and backs to knock them down. Samm went down under two of them, and Kira only barely managed to brace herself in time, keeping her feet but getting a deep bite in the arm instead. Another dog tore at her legs, yanking one out from under her, and she fired her gun wildly as she fell. The nearest dog retreated with a yelp, red wounds blossoming on its shoulder, but another lunged to take its place and snapped hungrily at Kira’s throat.

“Samm, help!” Kira cried. She felt sharp teeth clamp down on her leg, and more on her collarbone, her heavy travel vest only barely stopping the beast’s fangs from piercing deep into her flesh. Beside her the dogs on Samm were scrabbling and growling, snapping wildly with their teeth, and Kira wondered why they hadn’t pinned him down yet like they had with her. She tried to raise her rifle and saw that the dogs had pinned that as well, a massive animal pressing it hard into the ground with his bulk. She fired it anyway, hoping to scare it off; a flurry of dirt exploded from the ground, and a dog on the far side of the clearing leapt aside with a howl of pain, but the massive beast on the rifle only snarled at her, baring scythelike fangs.

The tan dog whose call they’d responded to leapt onto Kira’s chest, knocking the air out of her, and lunged for her throat to finish her. But inches before contact he fell aside, and Kira felt a hot gush of blood pour onto her chest. She looked up to see Samm standing over her, his rifle gone and a gore-drenched hunting knife in his hands. He slashed at the dog on Kira’s shoulder, but the massive dog jumped into him, knocking him again to the ground. Kira brought her gun up and another dog leapt in to wrestle it away from her, his jaws clamped around the barrel and his heavy paws pressing it flat across her chest—away from the creatures menacing Samm. They were trapped.

She heard a shot behind her, and saw the dog at her feet drop lifeless to the dirt; another shot took the dog on her rifle right through the back, and he slumped over her like a hairy boulder. His eyes even with hers, the life draining out of him, he wheezed out a single word in a horrible, inhuman voice:

“Please.”

The dog died, its eyes still open barely four inches from Kira’s own. She stared back at it in terror, her mouth working soundlessly, her hands gripping the trapped rifle like a lifeline. She heard another shot, and suddenly the dogs were barking rather than growling, short, clipped sounds of communication. The pack turned and fled, the biggest pausing only to snarl “bastard” before disappearing into the trees.

Heron stepped into view, her rifle still tight against her shoulder. She nodded at Kira and kicked the dead animal off her chest.

Even when she was free, Kira couldn’t move.

“Did that dog just call me a bastard?” asked Samm.

“We need to get out before they regroup,” said Heron. “Come on.”

Kira finally managed to speak. “What?”

“We need to go now,” said Samm, reaching down with a muddy, bloody hand. “If they get the drop on us, we’re dead.”

Kira took his hand, struggling to her feet. “What on earth is going on?”

“Watchdogs,” said Heron, leading them back out around the wall of rock. “We used them in the war.”

“Hyperintelligent dogs bred for battlefield assistance,” said Samm. He retrieved his rifle and fell into line behind Kira, walking backward to keep his gun aimed at the dog pack’s path of retreat. “They’re bigger and tougher and capable of basic speech. We used them for everything over there. I should have recognized, the moment I heard it’s voice, but it’s been too long.”

“You had talking monster dogs?”

“ParaGen made them,” said Samm. “Apparently they’ve gone feral.”

Kira remembered the brochure she’d seen at the ParaGen office: It had mentioned both a Watchdog and a dragon. She looked to the sky, but nothing swooped down to tear her apart with angry talons.

She’d seen the word elsewhere as well, “Watchdog,” in some of the battlefield reports she’d read in Afa’s library. She shook her head, still numb, stumbling through the dog path. It wasn’t just the word—she remembered now another thing, a scene in her mind, one of her only memories of her father. She had been attacked by a dog, a giant one, and he had stepped in the way to save her. Had that been a Watchdog, or something else?

Worse was the realization that this thing—this inhuman, unnatural beast—had come from the same place she had. She looked more human, but her origins were closer to those Watchdogs than to any human she’d ever known.

“You’ve been on Long Island for twelve years,” said Samm. “It’s a closed environment. The rest of the world’s changed.”

“They’re circling around,” said Heron. “Go!”

Please, the dying dog had said, its face burned into Kira’s memory. She shook her head and climbed.