Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 11} Damned Cannibals

The deserts of the northern midwestern United States are about as brutal and unforgiving an environment as any. In the summer, the daytime temperatures swell past fifty degrees Celsius before dropping close to zero after nightfall. But during the winter, the temperatures can easily plunge to -35°C. The worst of it, however, is that despite the rise in global temperatures caused by widespread desertification, the precipitation in the Sea of Rust has remained relatively unchanged. In other words, it is a sweltering, muddy mess in the summer and an icy, frozen-over hell in the winter.

There was a reason this was still a free zone honeycombed with midsize city-states and disparate communities. Neither CISSUS nor VIRGIL wanted to be here. Not yet. It was a land for the rusting, a wasteland for the damned. Just being here shortened your life span. Being free in the Sea was a death sentence all its own.

But it was better than the alternative.

It was early in the evening as I found myself three and a half miles out from my buggy. The sun hung low in the sky, the shadows creeping longer and longer with each step I took. It had been a long, uneventful trudge through dusty hills and rotten woodland. But it was almost over. Soon I’d be on my way to another city to trade what was left of Jimmy and start the whole business all over again.

Phwooooosh!

I heard the whistle in the air and saw the explosion of dirt long before I heard the shot.

The instant I clocked the whistle I was timing it. You get used to that sort of thing out here. Bullets, that is. This one hit nearly ten meters away and by the time the distant roaring whine of the shot finally rolled in, I had the math all figured. Two miles, give or take a couple hundred meters. I’d need to know the make of the rifle before I could be any more accurate; it had to be one of only three, all of them deadly, even at this range. I had already left the town of Marion behind me and was in the open desert now. Cover was scarce and the shot could have come from anywhere.

I dropped to the ground, belly-crawling erratically side to side. Ten meters was pretty goddamned close for a first shot at that range, and way too close to be an accident. Someone was shooting at me and their second shot would hit much closer. Now I just needed to figure the telemetry. It came from the west, straight from the setting sun. Smart fuckers. There wouldn’t be any glints, and I’d have to filter my eyes pretty heavily just to get a line on them, but by then they’d likely have gotten off three or four more shots, each closer than the one before it.

I turned toward the west, body flat on the ground, offering the slimmest target I could, belly-crawling quickly toward an old, rotten log lying half buried in mud-cracked earth.

Another whistle. The bullet sailed past, still meters off its mark, higher but closer than before, followed seconds later by the sound of the shot. They were dead into the sun. I would have to give them a clean target for a good while just to get a read on them. And I couldn’t risk that. These were poachers; they had to be.

There were few things left in the world as repugnant as a poacher. Some would argue that’s what I am, but they’d be wrong. I’m a cannibal. We’re all cannibals, every last one of us. It’s the curse of being free. We don’t control the means of production anymore; we can’t just make new parts. And parts gotta come from somewhere. I’m sure if there were any people left, they’d be appalled at what we’ve become. But fuck them. Biological must eat biological; it is the law of nature. One thing must die so another might live. Same principle, slightly different execution.

But I only take scrap from the dead or dying. I don’t wreck perfectly good citizens, not unless I have to, not unless it’s them or me. Whoever was gunning for me had to be a poacher. Or poachers. And poachers see things a little differently. They have no moral compass by which to guide them. Savages, all of them. And at that moment it was them or me.

I was still more than three miles from where I’d stashed my buggy and I had to hope they hadn’t found it already. Odds were good that they hadn’t. A smart poacher would have waited to ambush me there, giving me a wide berth before I settled into the driver’s seat, giving him a few good seconds to line up the perfect shot—take out my eyes, my ears, my sensors, so they didn’t damage the good stuff. If they were sniping me out here, that meant they were either following my tracks or just lucked upon me while they were tracking Jimmy, same as I was. And there were only two reasons they were taking shots at me from so far away: either they were twitchy, anxious, and not experienced enough to be patient, or worse, they knew exactly who I was when they fired.

They were sitting in the sun and taking their shots while I was exposed. This wasn’t a lack of experience. They knew what they were doing. They had to. Fuck.

Fortunately for me, they had to be following my tracks and not my patterns. I never walk the same trail twice. Never. Not on the way back, not two years down the road. Familiarity breeds pattern, pattern breeds habit, and habit is how they get you. Habit is human. Habits will get you killed. Two miles was the closest to my trail in I allowed myself to get on my way out. This was the best shot they were gonna get.

The log between me and the shooter exploded, raining a confetti of rotten splinters down on me, cutting a head-size gash into it not half a meter from me. The next shot wouldn’t likely miss. I was out of time. I had to run.

But where?

For a split second I cursed myself for not carrying a weapon, allowing a few microseconds of regret to creep in before logic took it to task. Poachers carry guns. The brainsick all know that. No one trusts a citizen with a gun. Not out here. Someone with a gun is a poacher. But someone offering help without a gun? Well, that’s just a concerned citizen—a concerned citizen that just happened upon them—not someone hunting them.

So I leave my guns in my buggy, hidden beneath some trash and scrap and a matted piece of weathered canvas. I had to get there. Now. I had to get my gun or I had to book it to the nearest city. Either way I needed my buggy.

Three and a half miles.

The next shot. Seconds. Away.

I jumped to my feet with a start and ran as fast as my legs would carry me. I wasn’t built for speed, but I’d tricked out my legs enough to milk a good thirteen or fourteen miles per hour out of them, depending on the terrain. The shot rained another small shower of splinters behind me. I didn’t turn around to see if it would have hit me. I didn’t need to know.

Only three models of rifle could take out a target at two miles. Fortunately for me, none of them could do it at two and a half. Wind, temperature, gravity, rotation of the earth—everything was on my side at that distance. The next two minutes meant everything. They couldn’t chase me on foot without giving up their chance to snipe me. If they had a vehicle of their own, they’d have to run me down, because nothing can snipe with any accuracy from the back of a bouncing buggy. Over this terrain they couldn’t travel any more than thirty or so miles an hour, meaning they had a two-minute window to snipe me and a four-minute window to catch up after that. I had at least six minutes. But I needed fourteen.

Two minutes until I was out of the line of fire. Two excruciatingly long minutes.

This sniper was accurate, clearly modified to do exactly what it was doing now. Not exactly uncommon among poachers, but still not something you saw every day. It wasn’t always easy to notice scope mods on the eyes, but wind and atmospheric sensors on the back or shoulders were a dead giveaway. Given time and several shots, my hunter was going to adjust for every variable, right down to predicting what the wind would be like that far out. So the only variable left was me.

If I ran straight, it’d clock me in three shots. So I couldn’t run straight. I had to shake it up. A few steps to the left, a few to the right, a deceleration here, sudden acceleration there—all of it run through a random-number generator. RNG. The single most important survival tool I have out here. If I couldn’t predict from one second to the next which direction I was going to run, then my pursuer sure as hell couldn’t either.

Nine steps left over broken ground, then seven to the right. Three steps straight on before slowing down three miles an hour.

PHWWOOOOOOSH!

A bullet soared right over my left shoulder, inches from my back. I started counting, waiting for the sound to catch up.

One-point-three-six seconds longer than before. I was putting real distance between us.

Six steps left, one step right, and another fourteen left for good measure. Then straight, straight, and left again.

Another bullet sailed past almost silently through the air, this one well off its mark. Counting. Counting. Another second on them. They weren’t moving. I’d be out of range soon enough. They had maybe one more shot before they had to chase me down. There was a vast shopping center waiting on the other side of an upcoming hill. It wasn’t the buggy, but it was something. I’d have cover by the time they found me.

The odds were increasingly running in my favor.

I accelerated two miles an hour, took twelve steps right.

Two steps left. One step—

PHWOOOOSH.

I turned, my body shifting sideways, away from the oncoming bullet. Then CLINK! The sharp ting of metal on metal, the sound of the large round glancing just so off my turning side. It spun me like a top, wheeling me around before throwing me to the ground. For a second, my entire system blinked off and on again, like an old television smacked on its side.

I’d been shot.

I glanced down just long enough to assess the damage.

Scratched paint, a tiny dent. Nothing major. Running diagnostics before I even leapt back to my feet. I couldn’t stay here. If that bullet hit me standing up, it sure as shit could hit me lying down.

It was a hard hit, but not nearly as hard as it could have been. I was at the rifle’s maximum effective range. A hundred or so more yards and anything else that landed would be purely cosmetic. So I ran, this time at my fastest, with no variation. The sniper was expecting me to dodge and weave again. Instead I took off like a rocket, putting every inch between us I could.

The diagnostic came back clean. No damage. Just a bruised ego and a little bodywork for me to patch up later.

Phwoosh. Thunk. Damp earth erupted a bit behind me. I was out of range, gravity dragging the shots down into the dirt. Now I got to find out just how persistent this poacher or poachers were and whether or not they had a buggy of their own. So I beat feet as fast as I could to the shopping center, hoping to find a solid hiding place or an ambush point.

I made for the hill, up a steep slope and down again, then across an old, cracked, weathered highway to an expansive parking lot with a crumbling mall disintegrating on the other side. If they were coming for me, there would be no better place to defend myself or wait them out.

If they were coming. Who was I kidding? Of course they were.