Revelation (29 page)

Father? You mean, the Wanderer?

Yes
, Askal answered.

The Wanderer was their father. Askala in the north was called the mother. I wondered what connection, if any, there was between the two.

It is a difficult thing to understand
, Askal said, sensing my thoughts.
It is hard to put human terms to it. But both are needed, if the dragons are to exist – both Askala, and Askalon.

Askalon
, I thought.
Is that the Wanderer?

It is our name for him, yes
, Askal said.

The way these creatures thought was very confusing. How could the two Xenominds on Earth, Askala and Askalon, be both mother and father to them all, and yet be on different sides? I felt that anything I could learn about them might help our cause, but maybe now wasn’t the time for that.

My brothers are ready to leave,
Askal thought.
I am going with them.

When are you going to come back?
I asked.

When we are needed. Which may be soon.
There was a pause in Askal’s thoughts.
Find a place to hide, little human. I sense a great tempest in the north, sweeping in this direction. You will not want to be caught in it.

Suddenly, Askal stepped backward, taking me by surprise. With that, our communication was severed. As the dragon backed further away, I became all the more aware of how large he was. A creature like him could not be kept as a pet. He was an equal.

I realized I hadn’t even said thank you.

Askal looked me in the eyes a moment before turning to his brethren. Together, without so much as a sound, they cast off into the night. With a flapping of wings, they left us behind, watching in amazement.

“They saved us,” Anna said.

I nodded. “Now there can be no doubt. They are on our side.”

Anna turned to me. “We need to check on Samuel. Maybe he woke up while all that was happening.”

Her voice told me that she didn’t believe much in that possibility, but it was worth finding out. We started back to
Gilgamesh
, where refugees were already exiting, entering the battlefield with expressions of shock and horror. How many had lost loved ones? How could we go on after something like this?

Michael was forcing himself up the boarding ramp to
Gilgamesh
against a tide of people, trying to find his wife and daughter. I had been so out of the loop lately that I had never even had a chance to meet them. Michael finally found his way inside the ship as the last of the survivors exited. Lauren and his daughter, Callie, hadn’t been among them.

Anna and I walked up the boarding ramp, fearing the worst. But when we entered the galley, we saw Michael embracing his family, crying tears of joy that they were alive. I saw his wife’s face over his shoulder, her eyes closed with tears streaming down, her blonde hair falling in waves. The daughter, Callie, couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. She hugged her father fiercely and contentedly.

They both opened their eyes, watching me and Anna. The eyes were blue, and with a start, I realized I had seen Lauren before. Seeing a familiar person, even a person I didn’t talk to all that often, was hard to describe. I definitely recognized her from my time at Bunker 108.

“You must be Alex,” Lauren said, parting from Michael. “I’m glad to see you’ve made it.”

From the way she said that, I knew she wasn’t just referring to the battle. She was referring to everything I had been through in the past three months.

“It’s a miracle I’m still here,” I said.

“Isn’t it a miracle that any of us are?” she asked.

Michael turned to face me, keeping an arm each wrapped around his wife and daughter.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” he said. “But this is Lauren, my wife, and my daughter, Callie.”

Lauren forced a smile, while Callie just looked afraid. I didn’t blame the little girl. I was probably covered with blood.

“I wish it could have been in better circumstances,” I said. “I’m just glad everyone here is okay.” I sighed. “A lot of people out there are not.”

“Did everyone else make it?” Anna asked.

“Char and Ashton were on the ship the entire time,” Michael said. “I saw Makara outside still, giving orders, trying to organize all the gang lords. I imagine they’ll be taking stock of who is hurt and who isn’t, trying to find time to help everyone they can.”

With so many wounded, so many to bury, finding shelter would become all the harder. We were not far out of reach of the
Radaskim
horde. It was a question of when, not if, they would attack again.

“We have to find a Bunker,” I said. “We can’t stay out here in the open any longer.”

The blast door opened, letting in both Makara and Julian. It was a relief to see them both standing when so many had died.

“Good, everyone’s here,” Makara said. “Bring both Char and Ashton here. I need to lay out the plan.”

Before anyone could move to get the doctor and the Alpha, both appeared in the hallway from the direction of the clinic.

“Is it bad?” Char asked.

Makara nodded. “It’s horrible. At least two hundred dead, and more dying. I’ve ordered that the wounded be divided between the two ships. The rest are to strike immediately west, and on the double. We’re not stopping until we reach Pyrite, where at least we’ll have the safety of the walls. From there, we can hunker down until Ashton can find out which Bunker will be our best bet.”

“The wounded...” Ashton began. “I assume you want me and Char to take care of that. How am I supposed to find time to research?”

Makara sighed. “You will somehow have to find time for both, Ashton. We all have too much to do, and not enough time to do it in. I want you to first get the wounded in the galleys of both ships. Should be several dozen; treat them in order of severity. The worst cases we can shuttle to Skyhome. As long as they don’t stay there too long, they shouldn’t be such a drain on its resources.” Ashton was about to counter that, but Makara continued on. “We don’t have time to argue. We only have time for action. Train anyone who is able, or try to find anyone with any experience with working with the wounded. Work in shifts. Whatever the case, let’s get this done.”

“What about Samuel?” I asked.

Char looked at me. “Samuel is still out, but stable, hopefully. We have more people to take care of than him, now.”

“He’s right,” Makara said. “For now, let’s do what I’ve already said. Move the wounded on board the ships. Once that’s done, Rey and the rest will lead what’s left of the Exodus to Pyrite. Char, you can take
Odin
. Ashton, you're assigned to
Gilgamesh
. I assume that Bunker manifest can be accessed from the ship’s computers?”

He nodded. “It can be accessed from either, but yes, I can man
Gilgamesh.”

“Good. Get to work. Find anyone who can help out. I want to clear this hill within the hour. Pyrite is still twenty miles out. If we push ourselves, we can make it by evening tomorrow.”

I doubted that. With the wounded and the weak, we’d be lucky to make the town in double that time. I kept my mouth shut, however.

“I can help with nursing,” Lauren said. “I have some experience, though I was never registered with the Bunker.”

“Anything we can get helps,” Makara said. “You can help Char here.”

With that, we broke up. Anna and I headed outside, leaving the bodies of the dead but moving the wounded on board the ships. With everyone in the Exodus working with a single purpose, it was all done in thirty minutes. From there, anyone with any sort of medical experience was assigned to either Ashton’s or Char’s team. Admittedly, that wasn’t much. With Lauren, we had about a dozen people spread across both ships tending the wounded. There was not much we could do for any of them – not with the ships’ limited resources. Painkillers ran out very quickly, along with bandages. It was an impossible ordeal, but it was the best we could do. It was decided that the priority was getting to Pyrite before the swarm closed in on us again.

It was a long, hard journey. The first of that tempest Askal had warned us of closed in just as dawn broke. Of crawlers, there was no sign, but the bleak, cold wind from the north did a sort of work that crawlers could never do. Dozens died from exposure, and where they did, they were left behind, stripped of anything useful. We had become like the monsters we were supposed to be fighting. It took monstrosity to survive in these circumstances. The only thing that kept people going was the promise of warmth, the promise of safety.

In the end, it might have turned out to be an empty promise.
Gilgamesh
reached Pyrite first, leaving
Odin
to guard the Exodus’s rear. The people there were hostile, according to Ashton – unwilling to take in either
Gilgamesh’s
wounded or
Odin’s
. We weren’t going to get in there with anything short of battle. Not that Pyrite was the strongest town, but the thought of having to fight any more, much less fighting people instead of the monsters behind us, was simply exhausting.

All the same, Makara ordered that fighting men be loaded into both ships along with the wounded, and landed in the city. If there was resistance, then we had orders to take it out. It was desperate, it was amoral, but we didn’t have time for morality. Not with so much on the line. Thankfully, it turned out the leaders of Pyrite had been bluffing. They begrudgingly accepted our takeover, and tents and a large fire were allowed to be set up in the town’s center. The town, at least, was surrounded by a tall wooden fence. Not great, but better than nothing.

While the Raiders, Exiles, and gang members stood guard in the town center, Anna and Makara ferried the ships back and forth, picking up the weakest members of the Exodus before the cold could get to them. Anna had to learn a great deal in order to pilot the ship on her own. However, necessity had been her teacher, and she was able to get the job done. More and more of the Exodus was unloaded in the town until finally, after two days and several ferrying trips, the last of the Exodus was inside the walls of Pyrite.

With everyone inside, we had escaped the xenoswarm, but at great cost. A few days later, a head count revealed that we were now down four hundred and twelve people – about half from the battle, half from the extreme cold. This left us with about sixteen hundred souls. In a single night, we had lost twenty percent of our total force. And if hadn’t been for the
Elekai,
it would have been one hundred percent.

An inventory of Pyrite’s granaries revealed that, for everyone, there was probably enough food for two weeks. Though angered, the leaders of the small settlement could do nothing about it. In the end, they were forced to join us on our mad journey to escape the growing power of the Great Blight and reach Los Angeles, before it was too late. They soon saw, once they heard our stories, that they would not escape the coming storm. Our numbers had taken a huge hit, but recovered somewhat with the addition of the town.

It was small condolence when so much had happened, and so many additional threats faced us. And with Samuel still out and apparently in a coma, it was only going to get worse. We had to find a shelter large enough for two thousand people, and we had very little time to find it in.

And it was this desperation that led to us to commit our gravest error.

***

Ashton did his research, and found that Bunker 84 was probably our likeliest bet. Even if it was our closest option for shelter, the Bunker seemed so far away. Bunker 84 was in Northern California, buried in the mountains near the border of what used to be Oregon. It would be far colder there than here, especially given the season – however, as long as we could find a way to get everyone underground, I supposed that wouldn’t matter.

According to Ashton, Bunker 84 had been designed to house one thousand people, making it twice as big as Bunker 108. It had fallen in 2045, three years before even Bunker One had. It had been one link in a chain of consecutive Bunker falls, barely a blip on the radar. Most Bunkers began going offline in the early 2040s, and the huge string of falls hadn’t ceased until the mid-2050s.

The last transmission received from Bunker 84 had come on May 6, 2045, though the Bunker Manifest’s information didn’t give specifics. The Bunker had been offline for more than fifteen years, so it was anyone’s guess as to what happened.

It was eerie, but the fact that Bunker 84 had gone offline so long ago, even before Bunker One, showed that it was highly unlikely to have been caused by the xenovirus. It could have just been abandoned because a critical part had failed. If that was the case, we might be able to get it fixed and have the Bunker online again.

Whether, after the last fifteen years, there was any food, water, or supplies left, remained to be seen. It didn’t seem too likely. All the same, Makara immediately ordered a recon team to check the Bunker out. We were getting desperate for any option, and for now, Bunker 84 was our
only
option.

Selected for that team were Anna, Michael, Julian, and I. We were selected to fly up there with
Odin
, find Bunker 84, recon its interior, and return to Pyrite with our findings. Supplies in the town were low, and with the xenoswarm so near, time was of the essence. Makara wanted us there and back in two days.

Nothing, however, could have prepared us for what we found in Bunker 84. It was something so terrible, so horrifying, that I probably would have preferred Blighters.

About the Author

Kyle West is a science fiction author living in Oklahoma City. He is currently working on
The Wasteland Chronicles
series, of which there will be seven installments. Find out immediately when his next book is released by signing up for
The Wasteland Chronicles Mailing List
. The fifth book will be released sometime in December.

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