The Boy at the End of the World (10 page)

CHAPTER   17

Zapper held her head in outrage as Fisher turned the spitted frog over the sizzling fire.

“Nai, that is no way to cook frog! You want all fat to run out? Fat is good! Fat is delicious!”

“How
should
I cook it, then?”

“You boil. Does Fisher know how to boil? You put water in pot and pot on fire and frog in pot, bubble-bubble until done, all the fat stays in.”

“Do you have a pot?”

Zapper shook her head and Fisher shrugged. “Then roasted frog it is.”

Fat dripped into the fire. Zapper groaned.

Click had clicked and whirred through this entire exchange. In fact, that was almost all the robot had done since Fisher had returned to camp with the limping prairie dog.

Protein remained at the edge of the fire's glow, his eyes gleaming in the shadows. The mammoth clearly did not like having a stranger around. Not one bit.

“You are an intelligent rodent with opposable thumbs and powers of speech,” said Click.

Zapper nodded agreeably. “Ai.”

“And you speak our language,” continued Click.

“Zapper speak human, but only when Zapper must. Is encoded in Zapper's DNA. Human is hokay for saying human things. But Zapper is preferring her own language.” She demonstrated with a series of grunts and squeaks.

“Your species has evolved in unlikely ways,” said Click.

Zapper waved her paw dismissively. “Hah, evolution not only way to change. Prairie dogs is changed also by human scientists. They clone us, and then they engineer clones so can think smart things and talk smart things. Smart things like us is good to sneak. To spy. To set bombs. Humans use weaponized prairie dogs against their enemies. But now humans all gone, except for bad frog cooker. Still us prairie dogs, though. Some, at least.”

She gazed down at the dirt.

Fisher removed the frog from the fire and peeled off its crackling skin.

“How many more of you are there?”

“There is eighty-eight dogs. Eighty-six at the colony, and me and Nailer. Only Nailer is dead, so now is only eighty-seven dogs.”

As Fisher and Zapper shared the frog, the prairie dog told the somber tale of how she'd come from so far away to end up in this jungle.

“We live in the west, where we is safe and secure, except for the snakes and the coyotes and naked rats and acid turtles. We kill them good when they come hunting. But our worst enemy is more dangerous. The rovers. They take many forms: flyers, swimmers, crawlers, diggers. They is nasty machines, and hard to kill.”

“Machines?” Fisher interrupted. “They sound like gadgets!” Fisher went on to describe the gadgets, and Zapper agreed that rovers and gadgets were probably the same mechanical creatures.

“They always come from east,” she said. “Always, they is searching, looking. They is finding our hunting grounds, is driving us from colony to colony. So Greycrown, our leader, sends me and Nailer on expedition. We try to find the rovers' home, to spy on them, find their weaknesses. Then we is to report back to colony and figure out how to make war. But at mouth of big river, rovers catch Zapper and Nailer. Zapper get away. But not Nailer. Nailer is killed.”

Fisher couldn't read her expression. The muscles in her face weren't built like his and didn't show emotion the same way. But her shoulders bent forward and her head sagged.

“Nailer was your friend?” he asked.

Zapper bared her teeth. “Nailer was Zapper's littermate. After they kill Nailer, the rovers chase Zapper through jungle. Zapper hide until rovers pass her. And now they go west. Many of them. More than ever. They is coming to find our last colony, to destroy it, and end prairie dogs forever. Zapper must go west too. Must go home, to warn colony.”

“I know where the rovers come from,” Fisher said. “At least originally. They were the defense systems of my Ark. But they evolved in bad ways. Now instead of protecting life forms, they want to destroy them. And they're not even the worst machines around.”

He told her everything that had happened to him since becoming born, including finding the Southern Ark and its evolved defense system, the Intelligence. Zapper stared into the fire as Fisher spoke, nodding. Orange flames flickered in her shiny black eyes. She remained quiet for a long time, as if weighing what she wanted to say.

“Prairie dogs know of Arks,” she said finally, her soft voice a whispery rasp. “In colony, old ones tell stories passed to them from long ago. They speak of forbidden places, human places where the dead sleep, to be woken up later so dead can haunt the living. Is spooky places.”

She shivered.

“Is three Arks built,” she continued. “Is lost Ark, on other side of land. Is Southern Ark, where is nothing but death. And is Western Ark, near prairie dog colony, where dogs is forbidden to go.”

Click whirred, and Fisher sat up with a start. “Wait, you're saying you know where the Western Ark is?”

Zapper grunted. “Ark is secret. Hidden. Elders know, because they must know places to avoid. Colony leader Greycrown know for sure. But she not tell.”

Zapper had said the rovers—the gadgets—were seeking out her colony. But maybe that's not all they were after. Maybe they knew the prairie dog colony was near the Western Ark, and that was the real prize they sought.

Fisher felt something flickering in his chest, like the beginnings of a fire that, if tended and fed, could grow into a towering blaze.

“I want to leave at first light,” he said. “I want to talk to this Greycrown of yours. Once I tell her the Ark is the last chance for the human species—for all kinds of species …”

Zapper's dark eyes grew sharp as she aimed a penetrating glare at him. “Zapper will take you to colony,” she said. “But Zapper must warn you: Greycrown not liking idea of more humans. To Greycrown, even one human is too many.”

CHAPTER   18

After the jungle came desert. Sand dunes stretched without end. During the day, Fisher and his companions faced blazing heat. At night, the air cooled to an arctic chill. Wind-blown sand pelted them around the clock.

Fisher replaced his splint with a new one made from the long leg bones of the stilt-frog. His fingers were still sore, but he was healing.

Protein's soft, padded feet handled the terrain well, and nimble Zapper had no trouble scampering across the sand, even with her wounded thigh. But for Fisher and Click, it was a difficult slog.

Zapper knew the way. Navigating by sun, moon, and stars, she led them to oases and springs that kept them alive. On their fourth day on the dunes, they found a sign. Shifting sands must have only recently uncovered it. Though weathered and pitted, Fisher could still make out the lettering:

HOUSTON 27 MILES

SAN ANTONIO 226 MILES

DALLAS 268 MILES

“Ah, I believe we are in Texas,” said Click. “Or rather, what was once Texas.”

“How long will it take us to cross it?” asked Fisher, spitting out fine sand.

“I do not know. Texas did not used to be a desert. The world has changed. City development, farming, ranching … they change things.”

Zapper stopped at the top of a dune and called down to them. “Is not much farther. Maybe 1,400 miles. We do fine, as long as we not fall into acid turtle pit.”

Day after day they drove themselves relentlessly across the desert. Hot winds whipped Fisher's clothing like flags. Sand collected in the fissures in Click's cracked body. When they could, they took shelter beneath towering stands of prickly pear cactus, huddling in the shade of the broad, paddle-shaped leaves and eating sweet, red fruit. Fisher fastened his long hair behind him with a strip of shredded cactus leaf, and he grew skilled at hunting the gliding reptiles that flitted high among the cacti. Rest stops were short, and sleep was rare, and they covered the miles.

And strangely, it was Click who urged Fisher on when he grew tired. It was Click who encouraged him to climb high up the cacti to scout ahead, or to gather the best fruit. Whenever there was a choice between stopping or continuing, it was always Click who prodded Fisher along. Sometimes Fisher figured Click had finally embraced Fisher's strong desire to reach the Western Ark. But sometimes he wondered if it was something else.

Fisher wore holes in his shoe treads. He patched them with the skin of cactus leaves and with tufts of Protein's hair. Zapper taught him how to make a real deadfall trap, which involved a more complex arrangement of sticks than Fisher had come up with on his own. And he was almost glad when Zapper's trap caught no more than Fisher's ever did.

At night, Zapper entertained them with prairie dog songs. They sounded to Fisher more like the cries of an animal who'd stepped on a cactus spine, but Zapper said they were songs of celebration, of sorrow, and songs to make one feel brave in times of darkness and danger.

Fisher didn't have any songs to contribute.

“Why don't I have songs?” he asked Click one night, as he wove dry grasses into a head covering to protect him from the sun.

“Your personality profile—”

“I know, I know. There was probably a Singer profile that made music, right?”

Click whirred a moment. “No. That was not a skill set included in the profile banks.”

“So humanity was never supposed to have music again?”

Zapper made one of her nonhuman expressions, but Fisher was learning to read them. Her face showed disbelief.

“At colony, song is how old stories stay alive. Is how dogs know who we are, and how we is coming to be this way. We is knowing stories from the first days, when we is weaponized by human scientists. And older days, when we is being born from rock and lava, from deep underground.”

“I doubt you originated from geological phenomena,” said Click. “That is merely mythology.”

“Nai,” said Zapper. “Is song. Is our story.”

Fisher had no song, no story. At least not in the way Zapper and her community did. All he had were bare facts. The falling leaf feeling returned.

He wondered if there would come a time when he'd be telling another person his own story, how he became born, and the things he did to survive, and the battles he fought to find other humans. Maybe someone would remember his stories, many years after he was gone. They would sing about Fisher, who thought he was the last boy, and they would know what the world was like before they became born.

As Zapper sang more songs beneath the wheeling sky, Fisher hummed along.

One night, they made camp in the lee of a rock slab. Protein lowered himself to the ground and snoozed, and Zapper commenced hunting some of the insects zipping overhead. She promised to give Fisher some fat ones.

“Is wonderful bugs here!” shouted Zapper, running across the sand. “Zapper's friend at colony would be loving it here. Catches-Big-Bugs loves big bugs!”

Glider lizards whooshed overhead, swooping down to snatch insects from midair.

While the lizards fed on insects, Fisher's stomach rumbled at the idea of feeding on the lizards. He whizzed off a rock with his slingshot but missed.

“I need a better weapon,” he said. “Something that shoots things out of the air.”

“Then you is liking the weapons back home at the colony,” said Zapper. “Is shooters and zappers of all kinds, plus boomers and exploders and sizzlers. Prairie dogs is great with weapons.”

“Can you kill gadgets with them?”

“Ai, prairie dogs is very great at killing rovers. You see when we is at colony. Is whole rover graveyard. Is great for spare parts.”

“Now that's something I want to see,” Fisher said.

Click whirred.

A bug came down to hover before Click's face, and a lizard dove after it, smacking hard into Click's head and knocking the robot to the ground.

Dazed, the winged creature wobbled on its slender limbs.

“Is easy food!” cried Zapper with delight.

Fisher ignored the lizard. He went to help Click up when a small black object fell from Click's eye socket. It wriggled in the sand.

“Nano-worm,” breathed Fisher.

A nano-worm, from inside Click's head.

A part of the Intelligence had been traveling with the group since they'd left the Southern Ark. And Click had been carrying it.

Protein charged forward and pressed down on the worm with his front leg. He snorted and growled, and when he finally lifted his foot, the worm was just a small pile of black dust.

“Is still dangerous!” Zapper screamed with a yipping bark. She touched a switch, and her stick buzzed like a swarm of angry bees. With a bark, she brought it down on the black dust. The little motes sizzled and smoked, and even after they were born away on the breeze, she did not switch off her stick.

“What else is in robot's head?” she snarled, aiming her weapon at Click.

Click whirred and whirred. “I do not know. I will run a more comprehensive self-diagnosis.”

Zapper's black eyes narrowed. “Zapper is diagnosing you by taking you apart.”

“No.” Fisher placed himself between Click and the buzzing tip of Zapper's weapon. “Shut off your weapon and lower it, Zapper.”

“But robot is bad machine, with worse machines inside head.”

“The nano-worms went scattering when Fisher blew up the Intelligence with cryonite gas,” said Click. “One of them must have landed on me and found its way in through my eye socket. But I have run my diagnostic and the only foreign substances I detect now are particles of quartz and feldspar. In other words, sand.”

The point of Zapper's weapon continued to buzz away. Fisher felt the fine hairs on his arms standing at attention.

“If Click wanted to hurt us, he could have done so any time,” he said. “But he hasn't. He's always tried to help me. It's like we shared a frog.”

Zapper barked. “Is bad sign when machine eats meat.”

“No, I don't mean we literally shared a frog. I mean, if Click had a frog and thought it would help me survive, Click would give me the frog.”

“Robot doesn't eat frog? Then what does robot do with frogs?”

“He doesn't do
anything
with frogs! I'm just saying … I trust Click. Okay?”

Despite his words, it dawned on Fisher how Click had changed since they'd left the Southern Ark. All that talk about the value of taking risks, urging him to climb higher into the cacti. And Protein must have known. It was since leaving the Southern Ark that the mammoth had stopped bringing Click little offerings.

Zapper narrowed her dark eyes. She tightened her paws around her weapon. Then she switched it off, and the buzzing sound died away. “Hokay. For now.”

A tense charge remained in the air, as if Zapper's weapon was still on. She let out a breath.

“Zapper thinks human ape is making mistake.”

Protein slowly approached Click. He reached out with his trunk, sniffing Click's head, the back of his neck, the place his heart would be if he were human. Reaching to the ground, he picked up a fallen prickly pear fruit and pressed it against Click's dorsal hatch. For Protein, it was as if the robot had been switched back to his former settings, and everything was okay again.

Fisher knew it couldn't be that simple.