Origins (The Wasteland Chronicles, #2) (4 page)

“They’re still holed up in there,” Anna said. “Two, maybe a few more, are on the top floor. They want out of Bluff in exchange for Lisa’s life.”

Char faced upward. “Alright,” he yelled, “I’m here. What do you want?”

Everyone quieted. Only the wind blew through the dust-strewn street. The people in front of the Bounty began to murmur.

A full minute passed with no response from the bar.

“I demand an answer!” Char bellowed.

“Let us out of here,” a voice said. “You know what happens if you don’t.”

“You kill her, then what?” Char asked. “You die.”

“We’ll do it if you leave us no choice.”

“There is no need for that,” Char said. “I am glad to let you scum out of my town if it means saving Lisa.”

It was quiet. I could imagine the men in that upstairs bedroom, debating quietly what they should do.

“How can you guarantee our safety?” the same one said.

“I promise, none of my men will lay a finger on you. I’ll have them set down their guns when you come out. We can escort you by Recon on your way out, which should protect you if anyone decides to go commando on your sorry asses.”

“I never agreed to that,” Makara said.

Char held a hand up, silencing her. “Work with me, Makara.”

The men on the second floor were quiet.

Then: “Have everyone drop their weapons,” the man said. “We agree.”

Char scowled, and waited a long moment. I didn’t see why he hesitated – this seemed like the best deal he could get. Finally, he answered.

“Alright. In another minute, everyone outside will have dropped their weapons. All of them.”

“How can we be guaranteed of that?” the man asked.

“I guess you’re just going to have to trust me on that one, aren’t you?”

Char waved for everyone to set their guns down. Grumbling, the men did as they were told. Makara seemed least happy of all to do it.

Nothing happened for a long while. It was hard to tell whether they had accepted or not.

“Are the weapons on the ground?” the man asked.

Char grunted. “Yeah.”

The shutters of the window upstairs slammed open. Inside was a man with a rifle, aiming right for Char.

“Get down!” Makara yelled.

But no shot came. Instead, the man screamed. Inside the window stood Anna, her blade slicing toward the man’s neck. It cut through, severing the man’s head from his body. The head flew out the window, landing at Char’s feet.

Anna turned quickly, slashing her sword. Another man cried out. She raised the blade above her head, and stabbed downward.

Anna sighed, wiped off her blade, and sheathed it. She came to the window and looked down. “They’re all dead.”

Makara stood silent. It was hard to tell if she was relieved, or angry. Maybe she was both.

“I didn’t even see her leave!” I said.

“That was the point,” Char said. “Neither did those scumbags up there.”

Makara went into the building. I followed her in. The wooden interior was dark, and crowded with round circular tables. The room was narrow, but long. The bar itself sat on the right-hand side.

Two pairs of feet pounded down the steps. Anna was the first to appear. She passed us and walked outside. The second was Lisa. She was tall, slender, and had long wavy brown hair and blue eyes. Her skin was tan and slightly freckled.

Makara ran forward and embraced her. “Lisa, it’s so good to see you.”

Lisa smiled. “Why did it take a hostage situation for you to come down and visit me?”

Makara pulled back. “I’m sorry. It’s been so busy, with my brother’s condition. I guess you’ve heard about that.”

Lisa nodded. “Yeah. Bad luck. But it’s good you found him.” Lisa’s eyes turned on me. “Who’s this?”

“This is Alex,” Makara said. “He’s from Bunker 108, out San Bernardino way.”

“Long way,” Lisa said. “You’ve been taking care of Makara?”

“More the opposite.”

Lisa eyed me up and down. “I believe it.”

“Hey,” Makara said. “He’s come a long way in the week he’s been out. Holding up better than I expected him to.”

Lisa didn’t say anything: instead she stepped behind the bar. She picked up a dirty mug and began to wipe it clean.

“Lisa, stop working,” Makara said. “You were just now being held hostage.”

“This place isn’t going to clean itself. You can talk while I put this place back together.”

Makara turned to me. “I want to catch up with Lisa. Go check on Samuel?”

I knew I was getting kicked out, but I nodded. “Sure. He’ll want to know what happened here, anyway.”

I walked out of the Bounty. I found Anna standing outside.

“Heading back?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all. That was pretty cool, what you did. How did you sneak in there?”

Anna shrugged. “I have my ways.”

“Are you a ninja?”

“Are you just asking that because I have a katana?”

“Pretty much.”

“If there is a way to describe me, it’s ‘adaptable and fluid.’ It’s how I’ve survived this long. It’s how I’ll continue to survive.”

We were approaching the compound gates.

“So, where did you learn how to handle a sword like that?” I asked.

“It’s a long story, so I’ll keep it short. My mom taught me to read. And there are still real-life books out there, if you can find them. Wherever we holed up, my mother would read to me. When she came across a book she liked, she stored it in her pack for later. One day, when I was a kid, my mom came across a book about a samurai named Hideyoshi. He was a real person who lived in Japan, born to peasants, who was not strong but was able to outsmart and outmaneuver his opponents with only his mind. He became one of the best samurai in history, not only on the field, but in politics.

“More than anything that story gave me hope. If Hideyoshi could rise above his circumstances, so could I.

“I kept that book and read it so much that it became a part of me. Later on, I found this blade and some books on swordplay. I don’t use just samurai forms. Sort of a mix and match of things that fit my style.” She paused. We were in the courtyard. “But fancy swordwork is only ten percent of being a samurai. The rest is honor, manners, principle, and heart.”

“So how did you, a person of honor, end up in Raider Bluff?”

“Well...anyone who wants to live needs to go where the people are. Where the money is.” She stared ahead. “I know this place is not perfect. Far from it, actually. But it’s better than working for the Vegas Gangs or one of the settlements that could be wiped out at any point. Besides, for a Raider and an Alpha, Char is good enough. With him in charge here, this place is much better off than it would be.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Look, I have to get going. Take it easy, Alex.”

She turned and walked toward the front doors. I supposed she was a samurai, for what a samurai was worth in twenty-first century post-apocalyptic America. I just wished I could use a sword like that.

I turned from the courtyard and made my way to the clinic. It was time to report to Samuel.

S
amuel looked even better than he had a few hours ago. He sat up in bed and fed himself some more of the leftover stew.

“Good to see you up,” I said.

Samuel smiled. “If Makara feeds me one more bite, I’ll scream.” He paused. “One of the Raiders came in and told me what happened. Is everyone alright?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Anna saved the day. She snuck into the building and assassinated the two guys holding Lisa hostage.”

Samuel smiled and shook his head. “You need to watch out for that one, Alex.”

I frowned. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

Samuel ignored my question. “And Lisa?”

“She’s fine,” I said. “She seems a bit quiet, though. Pretty much your type all around.”

Samuel chuckled. “I guess we’ll see about that later. And Makara?”

“She’s fine, too. She didn’t look happy about Anna getting all the glory.”

Samuel shrugged and took another bite of stew.

“Char mentioned something about a Great Blight,” I said. “What is that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s the biggest obstacle we face reaching Bunker One. Hundreds of miles of old-growth Blight. I bet the monsters in the Great Blight will make Kari look like someone’s lost pet.”

It was hard to imagine any monster getting bigger than Kari. That giant had been at least three times the size of a normal human, but at least we had escaped her.

“Great,” I said. “Tell me, why are we going through that? Char mentioned something called crawlers, and from the way he described them, I’m thinking we need to come up with an alternate route.”

“That’s the way we have to go,” Samuel said. “Nothing we can do about that. We’ll just have to hope the Recon is faster. We have the turret and thousands of rounds of ammunition if things get dicey.”

“Hopefully, that’s enough,” I said. “How’s the shoulder?”

“Feels like hell,” Samuel said. “But I’ll manage. I’ve been doing some prelim scouting.”

Samuel reached for his bedside table and picked up a tattered, folded piece of paper. He unfolded it, revealing a map of the United States, along with its cities and highways. Several points on the map had been marked already – mostly in the Mojave area. In thick, red marker, a line had been drawn from Raider Bluff to Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

“I’ve been considering the most efficient route to Bunker One,” Samuel said. “We’ll be taking I-40 east most of the way. As we travel further east, it will get drier and drier. Our first obstacle will be a giant desert called the Boundless. Most who try to traverse it aren’t heard from again. Then again, most don’t have a Recon at their disposal. There will be a lot of empty, uninhabited land. And mountains. Lots and
lots
of mountains. But as long as we stick to the line of the old highway, getting there shouldn’t be an issue. We’ll take plenty of food and water; water both for drinking and to recharge the hydrogen cells. My main worry is the Great Blight – which starts somewhere in New Mexico.”

“How do we get through that?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know what to expect. It’s not as if we have satellite imagery of the Great Blight, so everything is up in the air once we make the border. No one even knows where it begins, exactly. All the same, we have to go through it, all the way to Cheyenne.”

I thought of the Blight that Makara and I went through while trying to find the entrance to Bunker 114. It was hard to imagine hundreds of miles of it at a stretch. The xenovirus would have had a chance to evolve a lot of deadly monsters in an ecosystem like that.

“Somewhere in there is the city of Albuquerque,” Samuel said. “There, the road turns north. We’ll be taking I-25 almost all the rest of the way to Cheyenne. After that, it gets a bit trickier. We’ll have to find the right roads to make it to Bunker One. If we’re lucky, we’ll find some signs pointing the way. If not, we always have a compass and landmarks to go by.”

“How long should all that take?”

Samuel shrugged. “In the Old World, two days at most. Now, who knows? It could take anywhere from a week to a month.”

Anna charged into the room, out of breath.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“You won’t believe this, but it isn’t over.”

“What isn’t?” Samuel asked.

“There were a group of Imperials camped out to the south. They’re torching the farms. Without that harvest, the city might starve come winter.”

“What do we need to do?” I asked.

“Char wants everyone at the front gates, pronto. You included, Alex.”

My heart pounded. Here I was, not even a Raider, about to go fight their war.

“Come on!” Anna said. “He wants us at the bottom of Bluff in ten.”

Anna shot out the door. I looked at Samuel.

“Don’t get yourself killed. Stay with Anna and don’t take any risks. Makara should be down there, too; find her and tell her the same. Our mission is greater.”

I nodded. “I know that. I’ll find a nice rock to hide behind.”

“Good boy.”

I walked out of the room, Anna frowned.

“You’re a Raider now,” she said. “You better fight like one.”

“I could compromise, I guess,” I said. “Take out a couple Imperials and
then
find a nice rock to hide behind.”

Anna shook her head. “The gate’s only a couple miles down the road. I suggest we run.”

As Anna took off, I shook my head.

“Great,” I said. “I love running.”

***

B
y the time we made it to the gates I was, unsurprisingly, out of breath. The fact that we went downhill the whole way worked in my favor, but still, two miles in ten minutes was not a good thing in my book. We had gone down countless switchbacks to get to the desert below. The whole time, smoke poured into the sky from the fires consuming the farms. There was still time to save the greater part of the crop, but a lot of damage had already been dealt. I guessed Rex had an ace up his sleeve after all.

At the bottom of the bluff, Anna and I ran to join a group of about twelve Raiders. Among them were Char, Makara, and Lisa. Lisa held a sniper rifle, complete with scope, in both hands, and wore a grim expression to match.

“Good, Anna’s here,” Char said. “Here’s the full situation. There are five or six Imperials trying to escape along the river. We outnumber them two to one, but there are still enough to do damage. It’s likely they’ll take cover and fire on us as we approach. You know the drill, so don’t do anything stupid. They’ve already killed several of the slaves who weren’t quick enough.” Char looked around at everyone. I wondered what “the drill” was, but was too afraid to ask. “Keep low, form a half-circle and flank them in. None of these Imperials need to make it home. Right, let’s go!”

Char turned and ran for the river. Everyone followed.

I ran beside Makara.

“Samuel told me to tell you not to die.”

Makara smiled. “I’ll try, Alex. Stick by me.”

We ran for at least a mile. As we got closer to the action, I could smell acrid smoke in the cold, dry air.

We ran up a small incline. Cresting the rise, we saw them beyond, waiting for us. There were five Imperials lying on the ground, rifles pointed at us. They fired.