Winter's Edge: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Outzone Drifter Series Book 1) (2 page)

Brogan turned slowly around. “Find who, Chief?”

“The men who killed Sarah and Jessica. You got no leads, no names, no faces, nothing.”

Finally the chief had brought it out into the open. Something about that gave Brogan a sense of satisfaction, even though he suspected Henderson had already shut off the video camera.

“I know,” he said. “But the Outzone’s got plenty of people just like them. Maybe that will do.”

He stepped out of the office and closed the door softly behind him. The chief was a good man. Brogan knew he would never see him again.

By the mid-21st century, huge advances had been made in the field of neural implant technology. In 2032, a
brain-machine-interface,
also known as a
digital cerebellum,
had been developed to mimic natural neuronal activity, converting digital information into instructions the brain could understand.

The first generation of these devices only allowed digitally-held memory to be accessed by the brain. While it was an extraordinary achievement, it was only the first step.

Less than twenty years later, the latest generation of BMIs could program the brain for all types of neural activities: downloading learning programs, muscle memory drills, and the acceleration of real-time cognitive functions.

All this proved useful to both the military and law enforcement, and soon all new sign-ups were compelled to have such devices fitted. It specifically said so, in minute digital ink, on the last page of the enlistment form. Brogan, for one, was damned sure he had missed it.

These days, the “brain scoop” was a routine medical procedure, and the operation to remove Brogan’s BMI took less than thirty minutes. Its removal was a required step in his expatriation process.

First of all, because it was State property and they wanted it back. Secondly, because in the Outzone, only deep-cover agents had such implants fitted, and there were street-made devices that could detect them. Agents were unwelcome in the Outzone. Once discovered, they rarely lived long.

When he awoke from the anesthetic, Brogan felt a certain lightness inside his head. Like something insidious had been removed from deep within his psyche. As he lay on the bed gradually coming to full consciousness, he wondered whether that sensation was simply a reaction to the medical procedure.

He touched the top of his skull gingerly, where under a bandage, a tiny hole had been drilled for the robotic keyhole procedure. He felt nauseous, and could sense a headache coming on. Big time.

A short time later, Dr. Weiss, the surgeon who had presided over the operation, entered the room. He saw Brogan was awake and came over to the bed.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Great,” Brogan lied. He swung his feet off the bed and sat up groggily. “Thanks Doc, I needed that like a hole in the head.”

The surgeon smiled. Brogan’s crack was a running joke deep cover agents made before being sent into the Outzone.

“That’s good,” he said. “Everything went smoothly. No complications. You may have dizzy spells, perhaps some nausea for the next couple of days, but that’s all perfectly normal.”

“So long as my brain doesn’t start dripping out my ears, I think I can handle it.”

“You’ll be fine. How long will you be in the Outzone?” the surgeon asked.

“For good. I’m on a one-way ticket.”

Dr. Weiss stared at him, a puzzled expression on his face.

“I’m not an agent,” Brogan explained. “I’m expatriating.”

“Expatriating?” the surgeon said, staring at him incredulously. “Your form says you’re a lieutenant in the SRF.”

“Ex-SRF. I’ve resigned.”

Weiss shook his head. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Only manual workers from S-1 and 2 leave for the Outzone. What on Earth led you to make a decision like that?”

Brogan’s head was starting to pound. Too much thinking already. “Just plumb crazy, I guess,” he said as he got up from off the bed.

The surgeon put a hand on his shoulder. “You should rest a couple more hours. Then I’ll do another quick scan, make sure everything’s okay.”

“Sorry, Doc, can’t do that. You’re expensive and the State’s not paying for this. I am.”

Brogan walked unsteadily over to the closet and began taking out his clothes.

Dr. Weiss stared at him. “You know it’s the Wild West out there, don’t you?”

Brogan had put on his pants and was fixing the buckle. He dropped both hands to his sides, then wiggled his fingers.

“Suits me fine,” he said with a grin. “I’ve got fast hands, like a gunslinger.”

The neurosurgeon sighed. “You want to know something? When agents return from the Outzone, they come to this center for a checkup. I run their brain function tests—interferometric scans, proton-beam nano-imaging, things like that, to make sure their brains have healed correctly while they’ve been away, ready for insertion again.”

Brogan felt a piercing pain inside his head. Like the two cerebral hemispheres were being sawed apart with a rusty blade.

“Sorry, Doc, you lost me there. Then again, you’re a brain surgeon.”

Weiss ignored the wisecrack and continued. “They all tell me passing through the Scangate is like stepping into a time machine and going back two hundred years. Most agents can’t wait to get back here. Your decision to expatriate means you won’t have that luxury.”

Brogan focused his eyes and finally managed to stop the room from tilting to one side. “You say most, but not all of them, correct?”

“Correct. Different personality profiles react in different ways. Some of them turn ‘native’, as we jokingly call it. They itch to get back. Once we medicate them, pretty soon they start to feel normal again, I can assure you.”

Brogan smiled at Weiss. A handful of brightly-colored pills washed down with a cup of bug juice could do just about anything to a man.

“I bet,” he said.

He understood the point the surgeon was making, however. Agents went over to the Outzone because it was their duty, the
normal
ones hankered to get back. As far as Weiss was concerned, someone who chose to go there of his own accord was way out there to the left of normal.

He was fully dressed now. As he put on his jacket, a trickle of cold sweat ran down his back, then his stomach lurched violently. His nausea had reached the point of no return.

“Doc, where’s the bathroom?” he croaked. “Gotta puke.”

Solomon’s Point, Outzone

With his shoulders hunched against the wind and rain, Haiden Ritter squinted one eye and adjusted the focus of his binoculars. From his position at the top of the hill, he gazed down at the approaching rider, nudging a large chestnut-colored Palomino along the trail below. Soon the horse would pass the point where Ritter stood crouched behind the crest, only the top of his head sticking out.

“Is that her?” a voice to his right whispered.

To either side of Ritter, the two Gresham brothers peered over the ridge too.

It was Brick, the older of the two, who had spoken. He was a giant of a man; six foot five, two hundred and ninety pounds, with immense shoulders, huge legs, and hands the size of bricks, as his name alluded to. An intimidating sight when he stood at full stretch.

Brick didn’t intimidate Ritter, however. In fact, Brick did exactly what Ritter told him, and it would remain that way so long as he continued to deliver the goods, something he was quite sure he would do. Ritter was not a man short on confidence.

“I can’t tell yet,” he replied. “Not with the hood up.”

The rain was coming down hard and the rider’s head was bowed, the hood of their slicker securely fixed on.

“Same horse,” Nooge Gresham said in a low voice to his other side. At six foot four and weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, the younger of the two brothers was an imposing sight as well, and attracted a lot of stares when he entered a room. That was, until Brick followed him in.

“Same horse,” Ritter affirmed. “We’ll know soon.”

The grassy hill whose crest the three men lay crouched behind overlooked Riverdale, a farming community thirty miles south of Two Jacks, the Outzone’s third largest city. Two Jacks was a rough town, full of miners, loggers, drifters, and gamblers. However, the land south of the city was lush and fertile, and in the early years of the Outzone many pioneers had setup homesteads in the area. They had quickly formed themselves into farming communities to protect themselves against the bandits and marauders that roamed the area, such as the trio who waited patiently on the hillside a mile away from the entrance to the Riverdale gates.

The rider got closer, turning their head a moment to one side. Ritter caught sight of a strand of pale blonde hair blowing in the wind, the same corn silk hair that had caught his attention a few days ago at the market.

It belonged to that of a pretty girl in her early twenties, one who would fetch them a fine price. Ritter and the two brothers had been following the girl’s movements for several days now, waiting for an opportunity to catch her alone.

He swept the binoculars up and down the trail. There was no one in sight. A smile formed on his lips. Though it had taken some planning, it appeared now that their patience would pay off.

He lowered his binoculars. “It’s her.”

Nooge stretched out his hand. He had been waiting impatiently to get a closer look. He eagerly placed the glasses up to his eyes. “Oh yeah. That’s her alright. Boy, can’t wait to get some of that.”

“Don’t leave any bruises like you did last time,” Ritter said, a sour look coming over his face. “I don’t want to have to wait a month to sell this one.”

“Bitch better behave herself then. Do exactly what she’s told,” Nooge replied. He looked across at Ritter with a toothy grin. “Besides, Haiden, that was a fun month, or don’t you remember?”

Ritter didn’t return the smile. “Quit yapping,” he growled. “We need to catch her first.”

Something about Nooge’s goofy smile and incessant chatter always managed to rub Ritter the wrong way. He wished the man would take a page from his older brother’s book: talk less, smile less. Neither of the brothers were exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, but at least Brick had the sense to keep his mouth shut and not advertise the fact.

The three dropped back from the ridge and scrambled down the hillside, their rifles slung over their shoulders. At the bottom, two motorbikes were parked, raised up on their main stands. One was a red Honda XRF 450cc dirt bike, a high-performance machine with air-fork suspension and an extra-wide exit pipe to handle the powerful engine. Ritter hadn’t come across many bikes in the Outzone that could match it for speed, especially not the clunky diesel engines running on bio-fuel that most people had.

The second motorbike wasn’t too shabby either: a sleek-looking lime-green Kawasaki 250cc belonging to Brick.

Ritter started his engine as Nooge slid onto the back seat behind him, while Brick straddled the Kawasaki, his huge legs easily reaching the ground on either side.

Keeping the machines at low revs to minimize the sound of their engines, the men picked their way through the rough ground behind the west side of the hill, crossing a small arroyo swollen with water from two days of constant rain. Then, sweeping up the shallow bank at the far side, they emerged onto the trail.

A thousand yards ahead of them, their prey continued to ride her horse at a slow trot, unaware of their presence behind her.

They had cut off the girl’s path back to the farm. It was several miles to Solomon’s Point, the market town at the southern end of Arrow Lake—where it narrowed to the tip that gave the lake its name. Stallholders from the Two Jacks’ markets rode across the lake in skiffs to Solomon’s Point each week to buy produce to sell back in the city.

They got to within five hundred yards before the rider turned her head. She stared hard at them for a moment then turning around, flicked her whip lightly across the Palomino’s flank. The horse’s hind legs kicked out into a fast trot.

Ritter took that as the cue for them to make their move. Twisting his right wrist back hard on the throttle, he leaned forward and the 450cc machine tore up the wagon track with a burst of acceleration. The girl took another look behind her, rose out of her seat, cracked the whip hard, and the horse took off in a gallop up the trail.

A horse was never going to outrun two powerful motorbikes. In a short time, Ritter closed the distance to within a few hundred yards, Brick following close behind. Glancing around again, the girl jerked hard on the horse’s reins. It veered left off the trail and plunged down the bank into an open field, galloping at full speed across the sodden grasslands.

Ritter waved urgently to Brick to catch up with him. When the Kawasaki had pulled alongside him, he motioned for his companion to ride farther up the trail, then cut across into the field ahead of the girl. Gunning his engine, Brick shot up the track.

Ritter rode down off the trail, the back wheel of the big Honda sliding down the muddy bank. Behind him, Nooge jammed the fingers of both hands under the seat, gripping it hard. Increasing his speed, Ritter plotted an intercept course toward the horse and rider galloping across the field at full pace.

Checking behind her, the girl saw Ritter make his angled approach toward her. A moment later, she jerked the reins again and headed back toward Riverdale where, in the distance, a wooden rail fence marked off the property.

Ritter adjusted his angle too, all the time gaining on her. He was no more than seventy-five yards away now. Turning his head, he saw Brick bearing straight down on the girl. They were closing in on her.

Behind him, Nooge rapped hard on Ritter’s shoulder. “We got her!” he whooped gleefully.

Three shots rang out in succession. The rider had taken out her pistol and fired it into the air.

Smart girl
, Ritter thought to himself. That might get attention from someone at the farm. He was no more than twenty yards away now. The girl’s hood had blown back and her long blonde hair flapped in the wind. He could see the look of desperation on her face. She rode well, up off the saddle with her legs bent at right angles, cracking the whip as hard as she could.