Authors: Gregg Rosenblum
Danielle grabbed Nick’s hand, squeezed, and Nick could feel his heart thumping in his ears. He turned to her to find something reassuring to say, maybe that Javier had been sniffing too much bear dung on his recons, but then it hit him.
“What is it?” Danielle whispered.
Nick didn’t answer. He wasn’t even seeing Danielle now; he was picturing the glint of metal in Kevin’s hand, the nervous, excited look on his brother’s face as he slipped the object into his pocket—the object that Nick had assumed, without really thinking about it, was just pre-Rev junk. He realized now with a churn in his stomach it might be something else entirely.
“I’ve got to go.” Nick slipped quietly away from the meeting, hoping he was wrong. Or, if he was right, that he wasn’t too late.
Nick burst into the bedroom he shared with Kevin. “Hey—” He cut himself off as he saw his brother sitting on the bed, his face flashing red from the glow of the screen. Kevin, startled, covered the object with his hands.
“Turn it off, Kevin! Now!”
“I tried to, but I can’t,” Kevin said. “It turned itself on, and I don’t know how to turn it off.”
Nick grabbed the chaff, threw it onto the ground, and began stomping on it. “Hey!” Kevin yelled, trying to push Nick away, but Nick held his brother off with a stiff arm and kept pounding on the chaff with his heel. The glass screen cracked, the casing broke into fragments, and the pulsing stopped.
Kevin, still held back by Nick’s grip on his shirt, began kicking at Nick’s shins. “That was mine! I found it!”
Nick, shaking with adrenaline and anger, threw Kevin down onto his bed, hard, bouncing him off the mattress and onto the floor. “You idiot, you may have just gotten us killed!”
CASS LAY ON THE GROUND AT THE KIDBON, STUDYING THE BEAUTIFUL night sky.
One hand was tucked underneath her head, and the other held her notebook. It was a cloudless new-moon night. Maxed-out stars. There was the Big Dipper, pointing to the North Star, and there, Orion’s belt, and tonight, Mars shone bright over the tops of the southern trees. Cass traced lines from point to point in her mind, getting ready to sketch in her notebook. She decided that yes, if the sketches worked out, it would be worth using one of her precious white-birch canvases to paint a night scene …
“Earth to Cass! Anyone there?” Samantha nudged Cass on the shoulder with her foot.
Cass sat up so quickly she got a head rush. “Sorry,” she said after a few moments, when her head cleared. “It’s such a nice night.” She held up her notebook. “I was going to sketch.”
“Yeah, well, stop floating around up there in space,” said Samantha.
“What, you mean I’m missing out on our ten thousandth kidbon?”
Samantha shrugged and turned away. “Be that way if you want to.”
Cass stood up. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head—
Would it kill you to try a little harder with your girlfriends?
Not that Samantha was really her friend, or that any of the Freepost girls were, for that matter. She’d always been more comfortable alone sketching or playing bosh with her brothers, but still … “Samantha, I’m sorry.”
Samantha smiled. “Let’s go closer to the fire. I’m cold.”
Cass and Samantha moved into the inner circle of the kidbon. There was nothing new to see, of course, just the same campfire, the same kids getting together in the southern clearing like they did every time the first gens and older second gens gathered for Council. Samantha picked her way through the group, saying hello, and Cass followed. Brian and Stacy were draped all over each other, a big show reminding everyone that yes, indeed, they were still a couple. Angelo, Peter, and Jessica were arguing about who had to do the early turn with the flock tomorrow. Harriet sat by the pit, her red checked bandanna tightly holding back her hair, giggling about something with Benjamin. And on the other side of the pit sat Travis and Gapper, their bare feet stretched out toward the fire. Cass could see Gapper’s missing front tooth as he laughed at something Travis said.
Samantha tucked her hair behind her ear, took Cass’s arm, and pulled her toward Travis and Gapper. “Come on,” she said.
Suddenly Samantha’s friendliness made sense—she needed Cass to talk to Gapper while she flirted with Travis. Of course. She should have known. Cass pulled her arm free. “No, you go,” she said.
So Samantha moved off and wedged herself between Travis and Gapper, shooting an angry look that Cass ignored by sitting down next to Jessica.
“Fine,” Jessica was saying to Angelo and Pete. “I’ll take the early flock tomorrow. But then you two had better do next week.”
Typical
. Cass fought the urge to roll her eyes. Jess was such a sucker.
“Jess,” Cass said, smiling, “are you scooping sunrise flock drop for these two again?”
Angelo and Pete grinned, and Jess shrugged, like it was no big deal.
“I’ve got an opportunity for you,” Cass said to the boys. She paused dramatically. “One game of bosh, me and Jess against you two. Loser takes sunrise shift all month.” Jessica could barely play, but Cass was so good it didn’t matter who her partner was. And the boys knew it.
“We’re already set, Cass,” said Angelo. “Jess said she’d take it tomorrow. And besides, it’s too dark.”
“We can play right here by the fire,” Cass said, then shrugged. “But it’s all right, I understand. You’re scared.”
And so of course, the game was on. Cass grabbed a lightstrip, gave her notebook to Jessica for safekeeping, ran off to the bosh field, and fetched the set of pre-Rev metal balls that had been found by a first gen on a scavenger run last year. They cleared a space next to the fire, Cass and Angelo on one side, Jessica and Pete twenty feet away facing their partners. The rest of the second gens gathered around to watch.
Gapper, who had appointed himself judge, stepped into the center. “Okay!” he announced. “One game of bosh, winner takes all, Cass and Jess versus Angelo and …”
A buzzing roar swung by overhead, drowning out Gapper, a wave of sound that rose quickly from silence to a painful howl and just as quickly back to silence. Cass looked up to the sky, her ears throbbing. Nothing. Then came a deep, slow thrumming drone that she could feel in her chest, and then she saw it come over the tree line, covering up Mars, swallowing up the rest of the night sky. She forgot to breathe.
Black. Metal wings. Huge.
Cass opened her mouth to scream, but there came a blinding flash and another roar and she found herself in the air, then just as suddenly on her face in the dirt. She lay there, feeling the ground. Trying to form a thought.
After a few moments Cass began to hurt—her wrist bent underneath her body, her ribs all along the right side of her body, her left ankle, her cheek. She couldn’t hear a thing. There was something wrong with her ears. She opened her eyes, and at first she could see nothing but curling smoke, but then the smoke drifted and a shape appeared nearby, forming slowly into Samantha. Samantha lay very still. Her hair covered her eyes, and a line of blood ran from her ear to her jaw. Cass’s notebook lay on the ground between them.
Cass struggled to her hands and knees. She picked up her notebook and crawled over to Samantha, shook her, but she didn’t move. Cass’s hearing was returning now; she heard yelling, a scream, another explosion farther away. The ground shook. “Samantha!” Cass yelled. She continued to shake Samantha, who remained still. “Samantha!”
Something grabbed the back of Cass’s shirt and pulled her roughly to her feet. Cass screamed and swung wildly with both arms.
“Stop!” said a man’s voice. Cass, after a few moments, realized that it was Javier, the Freepost tracker, who had lifted her. He held a hunting rifle in one hand, pointed up at the sky.
“Javier, what …?”
“Robots attacking. Get into the woods and keep moving.”
Cass stared at Javier. She felt dazed, about to pass out. The air was still thick with swirling smoke. “I don’t understand …”
Javier let go of her shirt and bent over Samantha. He put two fingers on her neck, waited a few moments, then stood.
Cass took a step toward Samantha. “I’ll help Sam …”
“She’s gone! The woods, now!”
Cass heard a rumbling and saw a gray shape, blurred in the smoke, coming toward them. It was roughly the shape of a man, but broader, taller, more boxlike, and rolling rather than stepping.
“GO!” yelled Javier. He gave Cass a shove that sent her stumbling. She finally began to run, heading for the woods, and as she ran, she heard gunshots, followed by a crackling buzz and Javier’s horrible scream.
CASS RAN HARD FOR THE TREE LINE. SHE DIDN’T LET HERSELF THINK about what was happening—the burning shelters, the screaming, the explosions pounding her eardrums and almost knocking her off her feet. She had to jump over a body, a first gen, pants shredded, bloody, not moving, but she just kept repeating to herself,
Trees, trees, trees
. Like one of those dreams where you run and run but never get anywhere, it seemed to be taking forever.
Finally, she burst through into the forest. She barely slowed down; the flames of the burning Freepost shelters lit her way. Cass was small and agile and could weave in and out and under trees and bushes as fast as any Freeposter. She gripped her notebook tightly, using it as a shield to shove branches out of her way. She’d be faster without it, she knew, but she didn’t want to let go of that familiar shape in her hands. If she kept heading north she’d get deep into the forest, where she could hide and then in the morning make her way to her family’s emergency rendezvous. Her father had insisted on building the extra shelter north of Freepost, taking more than a year to scavenge and barter for the supplies. He had drilled it into his family:
In an emergency, get north to the shelter
. Her parents and brothers would be there, waiting for her. They had to be.
Cass heard someone, or something, crashing through the brush behind her. She made a split-second decision to dive down the bank to her left, to cross the stream where it was dark, and then she heard Nick yell, “Cass!”
She turned in midstride, and her feet hit a muddy patch and slipped out from underneath her. Her head slammed into the hard earth, and everything went black.
When Cass opened her eyes, Kevin and Nick’s faces were swirling in front of her in the dim light. She blinked a few times, and their faces steadied. Nick hauled her upright, and gave her a quick, hard hug, and then Kevin did the same. Cass’s vision darkened again for a moment, and she had to lean against Kevin to keep from falling. She realized that two other figures, hard to see in the faint glow of the Freepost fires, were standing behind her brothers.
Gapper’s shirt had a large hole in it, and the skin underneath was burned. He was watching the path back to the village, shifting from foot to foot like a deer ready to bolt, his curly hair even wilder than usual. Jessica seemed unhurt, but her eyes had a glassy, faraway look. Her arms were crossed tightly around her, and she was rocking back and forth, her long ponytail swinging.
“What’s happening?” said Cass slowly.
“It’s my fault,” said Kevin. He squatted down and held his head in his hands. “It’s my fault.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Cass. “Mom and Dad … have you seen Mom and Dad?”
“Come on!” said Gapper. “Come on, come on, come on! We’ve got to go!”
“Shut up, Gapper!” said Nick, without looking away from Cass. “We got separated from Mom and Dad. We’ll meet them at the emergency shelter.”
Cass nodded and closed her eyes. Her head throbbed painfully where she had slammed into the ground.
“Cass, we’ve gotta go!” said Nick, gently shaking her shoulder. “We’re too close. Are you okay? Can you run?”
Cass opened her eyes. She had to concentrate to keep her vision from swirling, but she nodded. “I’m fine.”
Nick took the lead, crossing the stream and scrambling up the embankment on the far side. Everyone followed except for Jessica, who just stood there, rocking. Gapper doubled back and tugged roughly on her arm, and she finally began to move.
They had to make their way slowly now, picking carefully through the dark forest. Still, they had been playing in these woods for years and were able to keep moving northward, following a game path.
Cass was having trouble keeping up. She was fighting back dizziness, and her reactions felt slow, like her brain wasn’t talking right to her body. She’d see a tree root, and think
Root, step over the root
, but she’d snag her foot anyway and stumble, and one of her brothers would have to help her back to her feet. She noticed that she was no longer holding her notebook, but she couldn’t remember dropping it. A small, clear part of her brain realized she probably had a concussion, and she knew that could be dangerous, especially out in the woods, in the dark, with the medical shelter burned to the ground and the Freepost nurse probably dead or captured. But the thought floated away, leaving just the fear and fatigue and scattered fleeting thoughts of black metal birds and missing parents and Samantha in the dirt and Javier screaming.
They followed the rough trail for another mile, getting cuts from tree branches they couldn’t see and bruises from their stumbles, and then Cass went to lean against a tree, missed, and found herself on her hands and knees in the dirt. Her brothers rushed over. “I’m fine,” Cass said weakly, her words slurred. “The tree moved.”
Kevin and Nick helped her to her feet. “I think you’ve got a concussion, Cass,” said Nick, turning to the others. “We’re going to kill ourselves out here in the dark. And Cass needs rest. Let’s find somewhere safe to hole up until it’s light.”
“I’m fine,” Cass said again. She wasn’t, but she knew they needed to put as much ground between them and the bots as possible.
“She says she’s fine,” said Gapper. “Let’s keep going.”
“Nick is right, we’re stopping,” said Kevin.
“Go if you want to go,” said Nick. The brothers helped Cass off the trail, making their way down a gentle slope toward a hedge of low bushes growing on the slope of a small hill.