Five Days Dead (6 page)

Harley shrugged.  “I suppose.”

Victor shook his head. “Later scyes were developed with sensory disabling safeguards to prevent that from happening, but you could still hurt yourself using a scye, even while sitting on your recliner. They were a pretty awesome piece of technology at first. You could watch a farting dog lick himself from 2,000 miles away, just like you were there. But once the Link and linktags evolved the thrill was gone. Why bother with watching a farting dog lick himself when you could be a farting dog licking himself on the Link?”

Harley smiled softly. “A farting dog licking himself? You’ve been a self-pleasuring farting dog then Victor?”

“Shut up.”

“You said it.”

“It was just an example.” Victor looked more defensive than Harley thought he should, but he didn’t say anything. “All I meant is that with the Link reality was, I don’t know, kind of a bore and scye sales died. But then the Federation Marshals found a use for them. Take the same technology, add a kick ass shielding system and you have something of serious potential. One-part personal drone, one-part protector and one-part weapon. It is the elite weapon of the chosen champions of the world.”

Victor grinned and Harley nodded. He wanted a scye badly.

“Stupid name though, scye,” Harley finished his own beer and handed the can to Victor so he could crush it with his bicep.

“Well, what the hell would you call it then?” Victor asked.

“I don’t know,” Harley popped another beer. “Kick ass glowing orb?”

Victor sat back, furrowed his brow and smiled. “Kick ass glowing orb? Kago? You want to call the chosen weapon of the Marshals of the Federation a kago?”

Harley nodded and lifted his beer.

Victor shrugged. “Does have a ring to it.”

With the fire slowly dying, Victor let the scye rise until it floated 20 feet above them. “It will wake me if anything comes within 200 yards. Get some sleep.”

Victor climbed behind the wheel of the truck and Harley took shotgun, reclining his seat and letting it form around his tired and aching body. Beside him, Victor quickly started snoring.

Harley could hear the young man and his children getting comfortable in the back of the truck. 

“Dad?”  It was the little girl; her voice was barely a whisper.

“What Raiz?”

“That man. Is he a zombie?”

“He’s not a zombie.” Quinlan said and Harley could hear the young father settle in by his children.

“I think he’s worse than a zombie,” the boy named Noah said. Harley smiled and closed his eyes. But he did not sleep for a long time.             

In the darkness of the tree line, a man sat on his haunches, watching the truck as those inside drifted to sleep. A mouse danced across his battered boots and he reached down and offered it a sunflower seed. The mouse accepted it and scurried away.

The scye floating above the camp did not alert the deputy to the stranger’s presence, and the stranger watched it for some time with his gray, gray eyes before he turned and slipped into the night.

Rotting

  When Harley opened his eyes, the little girl named Raizor was staring at him. She had climbed through the back window of the truck and was standing on the back seat, leaning over him. Her eyebrows knotted tightly and her chubby cheeks flushed, she looked as if she had only recently awakened. He cursed and sat up.

“She doesn’t think you’re a very nice man.” The boy had also slipped through the window and was now sitting in the seat directly behind him. Harley grinned. A 6-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy had gotten the drop on him. 

“I’m not a very nice man.” Harley whispered back.

Dawn was beginning to push at the night and the cloudless sky slowly leeched from black to dark blue. The two children on a hopeless search for their mother stared at him and in the gray of the dying night their eyes were black sockets he could not read.

“Do you think she’s okay? Our mom?”

Harley looked at the boy lost within his own clothing and shook his head softly. “No. I don’t.”

The boy named Noah nodded and bit a quivering lip. A tear slid down Raizor’s face. “We don’t think so either. But Dad does.”

“Why does he?”

Noah scooted to the middle of the back seat and Raizor cuddled next to him. “He always thinks things are going to be okay.”

“Are they?”

Raizor shook her head and silently mouthed “no.”

Harley looked out the windshield. “Life’s intrestin that way.”

Victor moaned and stretched and finally opened his eyes. Harley shook his head. With senses that dull it was a wonder the big man was alive, even with a scye. When he looked back again, Quinlan was leaning through the back window. His eyes were wide and alert. He wasn’t smiling. Harley wondered how long he had been awake and imagined it had been since his children first opened their eyes. Perhaps he had misjudged the young man. They exchanged a nod.

“Who’s got breakfast?” Victor asked. His booming voice echoed in the truck and was obscene as morning kissed the mountains.

“Already ordered.” Quinlan raised his right hand and an eyeset dangled. 

“Hope you ordered coffee, ‘cause I’ve got to have me some coffee.”  Victor threw open the door of the truck and stepped out to relieve himself on the carcass of a deer. The scye dropped to hover over his shoulder and when he returned to the cab, it took its position above them.

A stork floated down to their campsite a few minutes later with breakfast. There was orange juice, coffee, milk, sausage, eggs, toast, pancakes, disposable plates, cups and utensils. Quinlan slipped on his eyeset long enough to accept delivery of the meal from the stork. He dished up a plate of food for the three of them and they sat on the back seat to eat their breakfast.

Victor helped himself to a huge helping of food, grumbling that there were no hash browns. As he sat in the driver’s seat of his truck, slurping his food and alternately farting and burping, Harley wondered how he had ever become a Deputy Marshal. Marshals were the elite of the Federation, the best, brightest and strongest. They were the vanguard of the Lord High Judge, the warrior champions of the new world and Victor Shelley didn’t seem to fit the bill.

Harley had to remind himself that he had seen Victor fight. With those medically altered arms, he was a force worthy of respect. But he was overconfident and far too loud to survive long in the Wilderness. If his truck on the other side of the slide had been stolen or destroyed he gave them a day or two at most before the Wrynd had them or the Rages. He was a Deputy Marshal so he could call for an airlift and it might arrive before it was too late, but he didn’t think Victor would ever do that. It was too bad really. The children didn’t deserve the fate rushing their way. But then, no children deserved the fate rushing their way.

Their father seemed forged of stronger mettle than Harley had originally given him credit for, but he could see in the softness of his eyes that there wasn’t a killer hiding in there. Outside of the Hubs and the Link you needed to be a killer if you wanted to survive.

As the light of morning finally found them there was no sign of wildlife outside the truck, at least not living wildlife. The carnage from the Rages the night before was everywhere. There were more than 20 deer carcasses scattered across the roadway and intermixed with their lifeless bodies were a half dozen raccoon, dozens of bats and three large owls. The wounded bear had fled. When Noah and Raizor went outside to relieve themselves, they had to pick their way through the wreckage of animal flesh to take care of their business at the tree line. While they did, Quinlan stood behind them, his body tense as he nervously gripped a baseball bat. Harley marveled.

“What’s he going to do, hit a line drive if something attacks?” 

Victor looked at the young man and grinned between mouthfuls of food. “We all live in our own world Harley, you know that.”

“You could have given him a gun.”

“Tried to. Said he was a horrible shot. I told him he needed a weapon and he brought the bat. To each his own, you know?”

Quinlan and his children climbed back into the truck, shivering in the cool of the morning. Victor turned on the heater and opened the windows to give some relief from his abundant gas.

Victor finished off the last of the food, drank the last of the coffee and barked that they needed to get their gear together if they were going to make it across the slide before noon. Quinlan handed Noah a jacket and slipped a sweater over Raizor’s tangled hair and they stepped out of the truck, the children trying to sidestep the gore of the dead animals on the road. Harley remembered being their age and how much he had loved seeing animals in the wild. He wondered if any child would ever look at wildlife and feel that way again.

Victor opened the back of the truck and Quinlan started stuffing items into his pack. Harley watched with interest as the younger man carefully wrapped his eyeset and stowed it away. It was a familiar routine.

“Didn’t take you for a pilgrim.” Harley slipped the holster back around his waist and buckled the scabbard and sword to his side.

Quinlan nodded toward Harley’s sword. “Didn’t take you for a pirate. Or a cowboy.”

Harley grinned in spite of himself. “I’m a whole lot of things.” 

“Which do you kill with most, the blaster or the sword?” 

Harley’s smile faded to a frown. “Killed too many with both I suppose.”

Quinlan shrugged and lifted Raizor onto the tailgate of the truck to wash her face with a wet wipe. She fought back valiantly but with little success.

Harley surveyed the tree line, not at all comfortable with their exposure among so many dead animals. Scavengers would arrive soon enough. “You live in the Hub. Thought people in the Hubs had a linktag. Seems to me it would be more convenient than an eyeset.”

“Probably would be.”

“So?”

Quinlan lifted Noah onto the tailgate and washed his son’s face as well. Noah didn’t fight it the way his sister had. He handed them both toothbrushes and they sat on the tailgate swinging their legs and brushing their teeth.

“So, the linktag makes you lose focus.”

“Focus on what?”

“On what’s real.”

“That’s hateful language.” Victor volunteered from the front of the truck, where he was filling his own pack. “What part of our wonderful new world isn’t real?”

“I’ll rephrase. It may be real enough for now. But it’s not sustainable.”

“Sustainable?” Victor walked to the back of the truck and his scye trailed behind him. “The Federation has created the greatest civilization the world has ever known. We have cured disease, ended hunger, created Hubs for all of humanity, built a Link and digiverse where you can be and do anything you want. You‘re given an income, housing, medical and a linktag as a basic human right. This is the New Age of Discovery and you think it isn’t sustainable? Are you sure you’re a pilgrim because you sound like a neand, one of those who simply refuse to evolve, to let go of old ways and superstitions.”

“I’m no neand. I’ll take advantage of what your Age of Discovery has to offer, but I won’t be dependent on it and neither will my children.”

Victor shook his head and knelt down in front of Noah and Raizor.  “Wouldn’t you two rather have a linktag so you could be on the Link anytime you want, not have to put on those silly eyesets?”

“We’ve never been on the Link.” Noah said flatly.

Victor raised an eyebrow at Quinlan. “Never?”

Quinlan shook his head. “If we need something from the Link, I can find it. They’ll get an eyeset when they need one and they don’t need one right now. Vania and I want our children living in realtime. We want them to know what the real wind feels like on their face, to feel the warmth of the real sun. We want them to be truly alive, not to just imagine a life, but live one.”

Victor stood up and grinned at Quinlan incredulously. “There have been petitions to the senate to have it declared child abuse to not let your children on the Link. If that were the law, I would have to take your children from you…for their own protection.”

“Then it’s a good thing it’s not law.”

Harley laughed at the ice in the young man’s voice and Victor grinned and slapped him on the shoulder good-naturedly. “What isn’t sustainable about our wonderland Quinlan Bowden?”

“How many people are unemployed in the world Deputy Marshal Shelley?”

Victor shrugged. “I’ve heard upwards of 90 percent. But everyone has an income. Your right as a member of the Federation.”

Quinlan nodded. "When introduced in the United States, Right to Income was called Right to Work.  Senator Facio presented it as a way to force businesses to give people gainful employment, to not automate everything we do. He just wanted to give everyone a fair chance at employment, a fair chance to do something to get ahead in life. But technology made most workers obsolete. You didn’t need a hand at the controls because the automation could take care of things all on its own. Business responded to Right to Work by pleading hardship. They would rather be taxed more heavily so the government could give everyone an income than forced to hire people to do a job that could be better done by automation. The bill was amended and became Right to Income and eventually signed into law. The Federation adopted it when it took over and drafted the Declaration of Human Rights.”

“Sounds like a win for everyone.”

“Maybe.” Quinlan lifted Raizor off the tailgate. “But if you give nine billion people nothing useful to do, they will find something to do that’s probably not useful, something much worse. Before the Energy Wars, there were close to 12 billion of us on the planet. The wars and the aftermath shaved off close to 3 billion and since then we have been in decline. The world population is projected to be fewer than 8 billion in another 100 years and that’s as our lifespan is increasing. What’s the average lifespan now, 150, 175, higher? So why is that, in this utopia you’ve built? Could be that procreation is just too damn much work.  The most popular sexual partner of today is the filler. Digital wallpaper on the Link is what we want to have sex with.”

Harley smiled and hooked a thumb toward Victor.

“Why is that deputy? Because they give you exactly what you want, no questions asked and fillers are always satisfied.”

Noah looked wide-eyed at his father and Quinlan chuckled. “You two cover your ears for a second.” Both children dutifully put their hands over their ears, giggling. “Close to 20 percent of the population that are in a relationship are in a digibased relationship. They’ve never physically touched each other.”

“That’s neand-hateful language.”

Harley chortled. “Hard to procreate on the Link Victor, even with your dick.”

“The biggest trend in parenthood now is having a digibaby instead of a realtime one. Why? Because you can shut the damn thing off when they’re crying or sick or interfere with other things you would rather be doing.” Quinlan scowled. “Age of Discovery? What exactly are we discovering, how to be a slug?  This world of your Federation is not sustainable. As a species, we’re rotting. The Wrynd are the first sign, but there will be more. The world knows it and has responded with the Rages. It’s cleansing itself of us.”

“You’re not a neand. You’re a radical.” Victor grinned but in his eyes there was menace. “A revolutionary even.”

“I’m no revolutionary.” Quinlan said flatly, returning Victor’s stare and Harley was surprised to see not a hint of fear in the young father’s eyes. He truly had misjudged him. “I’m a husband searching for his wife.”

“The zombies have her.” Victor said, and he strapped his own holster around his waist.

“Speaking of Wrynd.” Harley cleared his throat. “Always thought zombies were neands, the most radical of the radical neands. Surprised to learn they aren’t.”

“Of course they’re neands.” Victor responded.

“No. They’re not. I had never thought about how or where they get their ink. I mean, I knew it had to come from somewhere, but I just never considered the where or how. But then I was watching the Wrynd tribe you plan to walk this man and his children into, and I saw King Orrin receive his latest shipment of ink. It came by stork. Bit of a surprise to see a stork hover down and drop off a rather large package of illegal drug to a Wrynd tribe in the middle of the Wilderness. The bigger surprise was when I realized he wasn’t wearing an eyeset. That’s when I understood ol’ King Orrin had a linktag and had ordered up his batch of ink through the Link. And it just got me wonderin’ how in the world could that be, that the Marshals of the Federation, the defenders of the New Age of Discovery you’re so proud of, how could they not know that the Wrynd were on the Link?”