Borderlands: The Fallen (29 page)

A
n empty satchel strapped over one shoulder, Zac was creeping through the debris field, on his hands and knees, wincing as the rock ground into his kneecaps.

He crept up to a boulder shaped like a giant’s anvil, to find himself in the shade of the inner shell of the volcano. The shade was a relief—the late afternoon sun fairly blazed into the “auditorium” of the volcano shell.

He heard a beeping, a humming, and glanced up to see the monitor flying slowly over, making those sounds as if they helped it search. The monitor did look roughly like an airborne manta ray, one big as a small car, but semitransparent, lights twinkling inside it, and with four long transparent rubbery tendrils whipping about from its front end. It was eyeless, but Zac suspected it was
all
eye, in a way. It was the roaming eye of the crashed alien ship.

Was it in fact just the surviving main computer of the
ship that was maintaining the monitor, as Berl supposed—or were there aliens alive in there, somehow?

Was the monitor itself an alien? A creature? As Zac looked at it, he thought it seemed, really, more like a sophisticated, prehensile floating machine than like an organism.

It drifted slowly over, and Zac held perfectly still, even holding his breath, remembering what Berl had said about the monitor being sensitive to motion. At last the monitor veered off to the right, like a kite changing direction, and he lost sight of it.

Zac let out a long, relieved breath, and raised himself up just enough to look around for artifacts. Something rippled with light, in those rocks over there. But could he get to it?

What Berl had in mind was his keeping the monitor busy—when it was far enough off, Zac was supposed to throw rocks, then hide, do whatever he could to keep it snooping curiously over here—while Berl slipped in from another side and grabbed some more artifacts. Zac had his own satchel and hoped to find a few himself. They could be worth a lot of money to Atlas, or Dahl, or Hyperion.

Of course, Zac was taking a far bigger chance than Berl was. But Berl’s rifle and his trained drifter were persuasive—Zac was in no position to argue.

Zac picked his way through the rocks, hunched over, constantly glancing at the monitor, still turned away from him. He stepped onto a pile of rocks, a shelf of rock near the closest artifact—and the rockpile slid apart under him, with a noisy clatter. He glanced at the monitor, saw it turning his way to investigate the noise.

He flattened, rolled partway under the shelf of rock, and lay still, holding his breath again. He wasn’t completely hidden but if he lay still, he might go unnoticed.

Zac heard the monitor whispering wordlessly, hummingly to itself as it moved slowly by overhead; he felt a tingle as it passed over, as if it were probing, and a formless pressure on his eyes. He smelled something odd, too, like rancid pickles. His head ached briefly … and then the effect vanished. It had gone.

He breathed again, aware that his pulse was thumping in his ears, and slowly eased out from under the stone.

He rolled onto his stomach and got his feet quietly under him, stood partway up, little by little—

There. The monitor was about seventy meters off, poking at a different end of the debris field.

Licking his dry lips, excited to be here and scared and angry at Berl all at once, Zac turned and climbed the shelf of rock as quietly as he could. On the other side was an object as big as a man’s head, not quite spherical, shaped like a flawed pearl. It was translucent, iridescent, and small lights flicked on and off in it. He reached for it—and as his hand got close, the warped sphere extruded small spikes, made of the same material as its body, like a sea anemone. He drew his hand back—the spikes disappeared back into it. Was it safe to pick this thing up?

Zac took off the empty satchel, turned it inside out, then used it as a kind of loose glove to pick up the artifact. It didn’t spike out when he picked it up that way and he found it only as heavy as a baseball. He closed the satchel over it and glanced around for the monitor.

The strange delta shape, glimmering within itself as if
thinking visibly, had come to a dead stop hovering over the debris field; it was turned away from Zac, about sixty meters off.

He suspected that the artifact had called to it in some way. The monitor seemed to be thinking it over …

Zac hurriedly slid off the rock, taking the satchel with him; he crawled back under the stone shelf and waited. Again that rising hum, the wordless whispering, the pressure on his eyes, the strange smell … It lingered a little longer this time. Then it was gone.

He waited as long as he could bear it, then crawled out from under the rock and looked around. He couldn’t see the monitor.

He had no idea what the artifact he’d found was good for. But it was going to have to do Berl for now. His heart was stuttering in his chest.

Still one thing to do—and the timing should be right. He lifted up so he could see the monitor, drifting over the debris field now about forty meters to his left. Berl wanted him to throw a rock to distract the thing—but that would be stupid: this thing would probably track the source of the rock.

No. He was going to be more obvious than that and hope he could move fast enough to get where he needed to go.

He crept through the rocks, keeping low, looking around for the monitor, and when he was near the edge of the debris, he saw Berl, waiting near a cluster of artifacts, about halfway across the field. Berl had one hand on the artifact hanging around his neck. Bizzy was nearby, within spitting distance, literally, of Zac: about thirty meters away.

Zac waved at Berl, meaning,
Okay—now!

Then he jumped up and howled.

He waited till the monitor turned, then he spun about and ran, leaping from rock to rock, jumping behind boulders. He heard the humming, the whispering. Felt the probe …

Faster.

Gasping, Zac redoubled his speed, plunging into the sunlight, reaching the pathway of ancient lava flow around the debris field. He leapt up onto it and darted between two rocks, and then behind two more. And shading his eyes against the sun, turned to see if something Berl had said was true:
The monitor won’t leave the debris field.

It did seem to have stopped on the edge of the debris field. Behind it, he could see Berl scrounging among the artifacts …

Then he saw the monitor approaching Bizzy.

Berl, dammit, pay attention.

But the old hermit was greedily harvesting artifacts, his attention fixated on his treasures …

The monitor got within a few meters of Bizzy and then began to gleam, to flicker inwardly … and Bizzy straightened up on its legs, shook itself, and turned toward Zac.

Bizzy stalked over toward Zac and began spitting glowing blue corrosive venom at him in meteoric globs. The stuff burned through the air, hit the stone next to him, dissolving its way through it …

“Oh fuck,” Zac said, turning to scramble away. Bizzy came after him, quickly gaining ground.

Zac ran down the pathway of melted stone on the edge of the gulch, thinking:
Maybe it’s simply time for me to get the hell out of here.

He hesitated, looked back to see Bizzy—and saw he’d turned away, was stalking toward Berl—and spitting venom.

Good luck, Berl
.

Zac turned to run down the pathway. Then he heard a long, pealing shriek, from Berl, in the distance.
“Zaaaaaaaaac! For God’s sake, boy! Help me!”

Zac slowed … and stopped. “Oh come on, dammit …”

“Zac! Help me! He’s not listenin’ to me! He’s got me cornered! Zaaaaaaaac! You gotta come back here!”

Groaning, Zac turned around … and stopped. “No, goddammit, that old man was ready to shoot me down … he cracked me in the head … He tied me up …”

A particularly piteous cry.
“Zaa-aa-aa-aaaac!”

He shook his head. There was no living with this if he didn’t try to help.

Zac started back toward Bizzy, not sure what he could do to help the old hermit. Another long hot jog up the path of ancient lava flow—and there was Bizzy and the monitor, both of them focused on an igloo-shaped rock. He couldn’t see Berl at first—then caught a movement in the shadow of the rock. The boulder was tilted up, at the bottom, resting on another rock, leaving a space in which Berl sheltered. There were smoking, steaming spots on the rock, and in puddles around it, where Bizzy had spat his caustic venom.

Berl tossed a rock out, trying to distract them away. It didn’t work.

Bizzy spat a glowing blue wad that struck Berl’s shelter. The corrosive bubbled and steamed, and the rock began to pit and burn away under it.

“Zaaaaaaaaac! He doesn’t obey me no more! You gotta do something!”

Bizzy was bending down now, trying to aim his toxin into Berl’s hiding place, like an exterminator trying to get at a rat hiding in a wall crack.

There was nothing for it. “Bizzy!” Zac shouted. “Goddammit he’s your friend! Leave him alone!” On sudden inspiration he took off the satchel, reached in, and took the risk of touching the artifact. He felt it spine up but nothing that hurt him. “Bizzy! Back off him!”

The artifact pulsed … and Bizzy turned toward him. The drifter seemed to hesitate, clearly torn, confused.

But the monitor, spinning toward him, didn’t hesitate. It rushed toward Zac—and just as he thought:
It won’t pass out of the debris field …

… It did. It was capable of improvising.

Zac turned to run, then heard the humming, the whispering, felt the probe. And something whickered down and snapped around his shoulders, his upper arms, his chest. He felt a paralyzing pain go through him … and then his feet left the ground.

He was lifted upward, upward … He looked up to see he was close under the monitor, and it was turning. It was carrying him. It carried him past Bizzy and Berl.

The monitor carried Zac right to the crashed alien spacecraft. And deposited him within it.

It was hot, in the glaring sunlight, as Marla trudged with Cal up close to a featureless cliff of bluish sandstone. Vance was close behind, his gun not pointing at them—but ready, just in case.

This whole journey felt so pointless to Marla. The more she thought about it, the more she doubted that Zac was anywhere around here. She doubted he was alive at all. They should be trying to get to a settlement. And suppose Zac was up there? What would happen to him? Vance didn’t like rivals. Chances were, he’d—

“Watch this, Marla,” Vance said.

Vance grabbed her son by the collar and the back of his pants, lifted him off his feet, and threw him at a wall of stone.

She jumped to her feet—she’d been resting on a hump of sand—and then, instead of hitting the rock head-on, Cal vanished into it.

She swayed, staring.
“Cal?”

After a few seconds he thrust his head into view—it appeared that his head was sticking out of a natural sandstone cliff. No body was visible, just the head.

“I’m okay, Mom … There’s some kind of hidden place in here …” His head vanished into the wall.

Vance grinned. Marla didn’t return the smile. She walked over to the wall of stone, put her hand out—and her hand disappeared into it.

“Some kinda generated illusion thing,” Vance said. “I think it’s used to protect that alien ship. I found it following some tracks here. Was about to go up there—then I thought I’d go and have another look to see if I could get into that tunnel rat colony and look in on you. Only … I had to think it over. Then—there you were, popping up outta the dirt!”

She glared at him. “You threw my kid at a big rock.”

“Hey, ease up, pretty lady,” Vance said, flashing his big
smile. “I was just funning with you and the kid. I knew it wouldn’t hurt him. It wasn’t a real rock.”

“Funning? Yeah? Like when you threatened to beat us into pulp and drag us with a rope, was that just funning?”

“No,” he admitted. “It wasn’t.” He shrugged. “Whatever. Go ahead on in, I’ll be right behind you so don’t try to run off.”

She shook her head, thinking that Vance wanted complete control, and he wanted to be liked too, even loved, and maybe that wasn’t so unusual—but it was a toxic combination.

It was not surprising, given his history and what had happened to his family. But she couldn’t trust him again.

Marla turned to the wall, closed her eyes—and walked through it. She opened her eyes and found herself in a narrow pass through the stone; a sort of crooked natural corridor leading to a pathway climbing steeply toward the cinder cone. It was cooler in here, in the shade.

Cal was just walking back toward her, down a twisting ramp of stone.

“Looks like it goes up toward the volcano, Mom. Could be Dad’s up there …”

“Wouldn’t count on it, kiddo,” Vance said, coming through the wall. “Maybe he is up there—what’s left of him. Or maybe he never got there.”

Cal nodded. “I know. The chances aren’t good. But … it’s what we have.”

Marla looked at her son and smiled. Cal sounded like a man now.

She hoped he’d understand what she was going to do next. “We’re not going up there,” she said. Both Cal and
Vance looked at her with surprise. She shook her head. “Cal and I aren’t going. You shouldn’t go either, Vance. There’s death up there.”