Winter's Edge: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Outzone Drifter Series Book 1) (34 page)

He stared out over the rocky ledge, back down into the valley, and saw the light of Roja’s machine heading slowly along the western shore of the lake. Every ounce of his anger was now gone.

It wasn’t a conscious decision to unsling the rifle from his shoulder, but he did so nonetheless. Pointing it into the air, he fired twice, the shots ringing out loudly in the cold night air. Below in the valley, the light from Roja’s headlamp turned to one side, then came to a stop. He fired one more shot.

Moments later, her machine set off again, heading northward this time, slowly at first, then picking up speed. In no time at all it had reached the foothills, and she tore around the series of S bends before reaching the first serious switchback, the one he’d just ridden up.

From his seat, Brogan peered down over the handlebars as she passed directly below him. The light from her headlamp vanished, then reappeared a few seconds later when she came around the bend, the Suzuki’s engine whining as it dropped a gear then accelerated up the grade.

Moments later, as Roja’s machine pulled up alongside him, Brogan realized he had no idea what he would say to her.

There was a serious look on Roja’s face when she took off her helmet. She stared at him hard, her dark eyes flashing in the moonlight. “What made you change your mind?” she said. When Brogan just stared at her, she broke out into a big smile. “You miss me that quickly?”

Brogan grinned back at her, then turned his head up toward the clear skies above, the moon and the stars shining brightly down on the two of them. “Looks like rain tonight,” he said. “And you’ve got the tent.”

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What you might want to know while reading the story…

THE GREAT GLOBAL WAR (2035-2040)
started off as what seemed to be yet another Middle Eastern proxy war between three superpowers: the US, Russia, and China. This one proved to be a little different, however: a test ground for the world’s first “pure” cyber-robotic battle. The situation quickly escalated out of control, and soon armies of near-sentient “soldier-bots” were released on both sides, slaughtering vast swaths of the civilian population. Twelve months later, the war had become a full-blown global conflict as droves of long-range drone bombers and weaponized satellite systems unleashed deadly payloads of both conventional and unconventional weapons across the entire planet. In the United States, both the Western and Eastern seaboards were carpet bombed, and no coastal city survived intact.

Five years later, the war finally ended in an exhausted stalemate. According to UN estimates, the world’s population had been reduced by over seventy-five percent. In the US, Europe, Russia, and China, the losses were significantly higher. On September 5, 2040, United Nations Security Council Resolution S/RES/3902 came into effect, and after more than a century of interventionist foreign policy, America once more became an inward-looking, insular nation. As part of the resolution, the United States, Great Britain, the Peoples Republic of China (PROC), and the Russian Federation, along with all other nations involved, agreed to withdraw their troops (both human and robotic) from foreign lands, close down overseas bases, dismantle their military satellites, and a strict arms moratorium was imposed. Although certain political boundaries had been redrawn around the globe, some favorable to the US, others not, no major country gained significant geopolitical advantage from the war.

Current US pop: 25 million

THE STRATA STATE:
During the last years of the war, US political structures were close to collapse. Amid deep social unrest, many individual states descended into anarchy. However, as several states collapsed, a new one formed: New Haven, an authoritarian state deep in the northwest where the survivors of America’s elite had flocked during the war. Carved out of two former states, it emerged out of the ashes of the old corporate state to become the single-most powerful political entity in post-war America, rivaling the influence of the federal government itself.

While constantly lauding the concept of the “New American Dream,” social mobility proved hard among the lower stratas. S-1 citizens rarely managed to attain a status higher than S-2, and only those from S-5 were eligible to hold public office. However, due to its political stability and effective security policies, during the Secessionist Wars (2040-2042) the surviving fourteen states of the union quickly implemented New Haven’s “Strata State Solution,” and today the term is now synonymous with the entire US political-security apparatus.

Current New Haven State pop: 2 million

THE OUTZONE:
Ceded from federal jurisdiction under the Outzone Territory Act of 2041 as part of the US government’s strategy to divide the rebel states at the height of the Secessionist Wars, the Outzone is a quasi-sovereign tract of land approximately 48,000 square miles in size with neither political structures, police force, nor army. Ungoverned and ungovernable, it is an unregulated and fragmented society where gangs, clans, and tribal groupings exist in a few small cities and self-proclaimed fiefdoms. Consisting of mainly mountainous terrain, the territory encompasses some plains and wetland areas as well.

Although coming under scathing criticism at the time for conceding such a large swath of territory, there had been little choice. Just three months prior to the negotiations, a select group of generals had bluntly given President Lynehart their bleak assessment of the current situation: that the military were being swamped and at the point of collapse on several fronts. After a devastating global war, they simply didn’t have the manpower or resources to take on each and every militia and rebel force in the country. Some sort of political strategy was urgently required to split the rebels, and the agreement with the “Outzoners,” who had previously been part of the alliance of secessionist rebels, consequently proved to be the decisive turning point of the civil war.

Outzone estimated pop: 200,000

WINTER’S EDGE:
The Outzone’s unofficial capital came into existence during the Great Global War when refugees fleeing the carpet bombing of America’s coastal cities flocked in droves to the interior states such as Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Many chose to settle in New Haven when the state went by another name. Prevented from entering the tightly-controlled city of Metro New Haven, where America’s wealthy had established themselves during the war, the various ethnic groupings instead settled along its western border in a series of adjoining districts: Pueblo Libre, South Park, Little Russia, New Harlem, Kill City, and Barrio T, each in turn further divided into sub-districts and governed by its own gang,
oficina
, clan, or tribe.

Winter’s Edge estimated pop: 60,000