Extensis Vitae: The Shattered Land Read online

  She walked outside the warehouse and leaned against the wall, savoring the cool night air on her skin. With another sip of brandy, she could feel the warmth spread in her belly. She breathed deeply of the crisp air and realized how nice it was to be back on the surface again. She had never been good with confined spaces. The whole ugly business in the underground colony with Haze’s gang slaughtering the innocent colonists and selling them as slaves was yet another black mark against her even though she had been compelled to not interfere. At least now I can put that behind me—that’s one positive. The source of the betrayal that had led to that episode still needed to be dealt with, but that was for later. After another swallow of brandy, she was able to push those thoughts aside.

  Millions of stars twinkled overhead in their cold beauty. She could almost imagine that she lived in a better, purer time, where society was gone and people could live freely under the heavens. I wish that were the case. She remembered a time when there were no stars to be seen in the sky at night. Before the Cataclysm, the sprawling urban cityscapes held the majority of the world’s fourteen billion people and produced all the pollution and light that came along with a population that size. Only in the most remote areas could she remember seeing stars in the sky. The night sky of twenty years ago definitely paled in comparison to the awesome depths of the heavens now.

  After a time, Rin realized that the stars were fading as the sky turned gray. Her flask seemed a lot lighter than what she remembered. With a bemused smile, she went back inside the warehouse. It would soon be time to wake Reznik and continue their travel, which would be just a brief stretch along her seemingly endless journey.

  Chapter 4

  Mason woke to the bludgeoning of a hangover. He groaned and rolled over. The empty bed told him the whore was long gone, which came as no surprise. What was a surprise, and a pleasant one at that, was the fact that a couple of fingers of whiskey still remained in the bottom of his bottle. He couldn’t remember if the whore had been attractive or not. He just remembered that her skills had been well worth his money, which was all that mattered, he supposed. There was a loud clink as his artificial hand secured the neck of the bottle.

  He drained the cheap alcohol in one swallow and lay back, waiting for it to take the edge off the hangover. The dreams had been troubling him again and even after all these years showed no sign of going away. The hunting is the only thing that makes them go away, he thought. Now that this job turned out to be a bust, might be time to head back east again and take some more of them out. Still haven’t found a solution to keep those bastards from coming back, though.

  Mason slowly sat up and swung his feet over to the floor. The early morning sun streamed in around the edges of the room’s thin curtains. He scratched at the bandage on the side of his neck as he considered his next move. He had been lucky: a bullet had missed his carotid artery by a fraction of an inch. The wound had bled heavily but, once patched up, had not caused any lasting harm.

  Joining Haze’s gang had ended up being a lucrative job for him over the past few years. They were all dead, but luckily for him, he carried a small fortune, the gang’s take from the last shipment of slaves they had delivered to Skin City. He didn’t need to work for a very long time, he figured, but he knew the Overseer would be interested in hearing what had happened after the attack on the underground colony had gone sour. Apparently, the colonists weren’t as defenseless as Haze had led everyone to believe.

  The Overseer would probably take the news personally, but whatever he decided to do after that Mason didn’t really care. He would deliver the news and stock up on supplies then head back east if he couldn’t find any interesting jobs around Skin City. Hopefully make those damn dreams go away for a while, he thought. He groaned as he got to his feet. The sharp pain of the headache throbbed for a minute before it began to recede. He methodically gathered his gear and then set out.

  ***

  Marcus’s legs and back ached, and his throat was parched. They had left in the darkness in an attempt to get as far as they could before the heat of the day sapped their strength. Liu’s breath rasped harshly as he staggered along, arm across Marcus’s shoulders. Marcus thought they were lucky to have come across the road and, soon after, the piece of scrap metal he had bent into a crude splint for Liu’s ankle. It was secured in place by strips he had torn from his sleeve.

  The crumbling, weed-choked pavement extended as far as they could see. Sometimes it disappeared almost entirely, and Marcus had to second-guess whether they were still following it or not. After several yards, the road always picked up again, straight as an arrow. Where it went, he had no idea. Who lives in this god-forsaken place? The road looked old enough to possibly have been built before the third, and maybe even the second, great Dust Bowls. This had once been fertile land long before the Cataclysm, and the road had probably led between farming communities. Whether they were still active or mere ghost towns he had no way of knowing. Any community we come across now is bound to be only dust and ruins.

  The sun continued to beat down on them mercilessly as it had for a few hours. They were both soaked with sweat, and he knew Liu was in too much pain to even complain anymore. Their most immediate concern was finding water. Water and shade. They wouldn’t last the day if they couldn’t get hydrated and out of the sun. But there was absolutely nothing as far as the eye could see except rocky, broken ground and the crumbling pavement.

  Checking his HUD, he saw they had only gone a little over eight miles. That left thirty-nine more miles to go. The road continued in the general direction of Outpost Echo, so it wasn’t necessary to keep checking his map.

  Marcus didn’t see the yawning pothole until it was too late. He stumbled forward and lost his balance, sending both of them crashing to the ground. Marcus skinned his hands on the rough pavement while Liu just groaned miserably and lay still.

  Slowly, he picked himself back up. “C’mon Liu… get up. We have to keep going.” He didn’t voice what he was grimly thinking. I don’t think we’re going to make it.

  ***

  The shape of the rest of the city was just as bad as the small section they had already passed through. Rin led the way, and Reznik followed a few yards behind as they slowly rode down the street deeper into the city. Rin had suggested earlier that they would make better time if they cut through the city, but it had the potential of drawing more attention. Reznik was at first inclined to avoid trouble and circle the city, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he decided he wanted to see more of this ruin of what life used to be.

  The scene was surreal as they crept down the wide street. The whooshing of the hoverbikes’ rotors was amplified in the stillness by the crumbled buildings encroaching on either side. Trash and dust swirled after them. Anyone within half a mile can probably hear us.

  Graffiti was a common sight, and Reznik once saw a large blood splatter staining the pale cement of a storefront. The blood looked recent. Down an alleyway, several crows watched them with interest for a minute before returning to tearing at a shapeless lump of meat.

  A wide square opened up before them, dominated by a large building with a collapsed facade. Reznik was surprised to note the clock tower seemed fairly intact even though it appeared that a large car bomb had blown the front off the building. The time on the great clock was forever frozen at 11:58. Two minutes to midnight… how appropriate, he thought in amusement.

  A flutter of wings caught his attention. A crow took off from where it had sat atop a leaning streetlight transformed into a makeshift gallows. A corpse in a black-and-silver-trimmed uniform hung from a noose with a sign attached to it. Reznik swerved the hoverbike and pulled up in front of the corpse.

  “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO THORNE TRAITORS TO HUMANITY!” a crudely painted sign proclaimed. The crimson symbol of a gauntleted fist within a circle was painted on the sign.

  The corpse was long dead—it wasn’t much more than a dried mummy wearing its tattered and sun-rotte
d uniform, which resembled that of the Nazi SS. Whether or not the similarity was intentional, he didn’t know.

  “Rebels were responsible for this,” Rin said. Reznik hadn’t noticed that she’d pulled up near him.

  “Rebels? What rebels? And who or what is Thorne?”

  “The wasteland rebels. A loose-knit group that has organized in the last few years to fight the encroachment of the New USA’s borders into the wasteland. Thorne Industries is the mega-corporation that controls the New USA and much of the world. Now even more so than before the Cataclysm.”

  “Thorne Aerospace? The defense contractor?” Reznik asked in surprise as the name suddenly rang a bell. He remembered Thorne Aerospace holding a number of lucrative defense contracts as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had debated whether to stay in the military and get his twenty-year retirement under his belt or to get out like a lot of his fellow operators had and make a six-figure salary. Before joining Delta, he had served in 10th Group with a man who was later the hiring manager for an executive protection contract that was paying extremely well, and Reznik knew he could get the job. When his helicopter got shot down, that had put an end to those thoughts. Damn, here we are almost ninety years later… The company seems to have done quite well for itself.

  “Yes,” Rin answered. “Thorne started out in aerospace and defense over a century ago. The corporation began to monopolize that field, and once the old US government began to edge closer to bankruptcy, it spread like a plague into bio-tech, energy, cybersecurity, and other fields. Decades of mergers and acquisitions without any type of regulation by the weak central government allowed it to flourish.”

  Reznik whistled quietly. His eyes were drawn again to the painted symbol on the hanging corpse. “What do you know about these rebels? And what are their grievances?”

  “I don’t know any of them personally, but I’ve run across some of their fighters on a couple occasions. They fight because they were once settlers or citizens of the New USA that have been forced out of their homelands. Many of those people end up at the mercy of the gangs of slavers and robbers that roam the borderlands of the wasteland and ‘civilization.’ I would imagine some of them are veterans and others alleged criminals that fled the long reach of Thorne CorpSec. Some probably fight because that’s all they know how to do.”

  “Are these guys worth a damn? Or are they nothing more than just another gang that plays at having a greater cause?”

  Rin snorted. “Well, they seem to have more balls than brains from the stories I’ve heard. At first, they were just a rag-tag group of outraged fools that thought it would be a good idea to take a few rifles and pistols and fight back against the infinite resources of a global corporation. After being crushed and nearly wiped out by Thorne forces, they disappeared for a while, until recently. They claim to have a new leader now and seem a lot less brazen and better organized. Red Royce, they call this new leader. Never heard of this character until recently, so I have no idea who he is or where he came from.”

  “That’s usually how it ends up with wannabe rebels. They usually either get stomped out of existence or return better and harder than before.” It would be interesting to see what these guys are made of.

  ***

  “Fifteen miles. That’s as far as we’ve made it, and now we’re fucking goners,” Liu croaked.

  The two of them were sprawled out in a scant three-by-twelve foot patch of shade provided by the rusted and bullet-riddled skeleton of an ancient billboard. The only good fortune they had had thus far was finding this shade. Well, that and the fact that the shadows were lengthening as the sun moved farther across the sky. That was good and bad at the same time. The longer they were out there, the slimmer their chances of surviving became.

  Marcus didn’t know how Liu could even speak. His throat was so dry that he expected to start choking on shriveled scraps of skin at any minute. Every muscle in his body ached. He couldn’t disagree with his friend. There was no way in hell they’d make it to rejoin Bethany at the outpost. They might have a chance if somebody pulled up with water and food in the next few minutes and offered to transport them to Outpost Echo, but that was such a slim chance it wasn’t even worth considering.

  If Bethany even made it. He realized he was slightly worried about the possibility of losing Bethany. She was almost like a sister to him, although in a somewhat deviant way. She was like a tough, sexy, older sister who liked to tease and manipulate him with her sexuality while at the same time itching to kick the shit out of anyone that meant him harm. Why she stuck around and felt obligated to look after him, he had no clue. He was just a mid-level scientist for Section 7 while she was a VIP of some sort that worked semi-autonomously for Alistair Thorne himself. What her actual job was for the CEO of Thorne Industries, he could only speculate. That job usually entailed violence, at which she was very good. She was, in a way, the only family he had even though she could be a pain in the ass. Who am I kidding? If anyone could survive a crash landing, it’s her.

  Marcus watched the high clouds sail by overhead and wished he could fly away from this miserable hellhole. He tracked a bird sailing on the hot air, the first sign of life he had seen in the wasteland other than insects. The bird suddenly wheeled around and flew toward them. It grew and grew until he realized it wasn’t a bird at all but the drop ship. It’s Bethany! She’s come for us! He felt the hot air buffeting him as the ship hovered overhead and the hatch dropped open.

  And then she was there. “Take my hand, Marcus. I’m getting you out of here.”

  He reached for her hand and was almost embarrassed to note that her uniform was torn open, revealing an inordinate amount of cleavage.

  Their fingers touched, and her moist lips parted. “Marcus…”

  “Hey Marcus!” Something jabbed him in the side, and his eyelids flew open. He turned his head and was blinded by the sun overhead. The patch of shade had moved, and he was lying partially in the sun again. Sitting up, he cursed his misfortune as he realized he was back to his hellish reality.

  “Look out there! Either I’m hallucinating from heatstroke, or that’s a vehicle over there,” Liu said excitedly.

  Marcus squinted in the direction Liu was pointing. He saw a dust devil spinning across the plain, but then he looked even farther and saw a plume of dust being kicked up by a moving vehicle. It was maybe a half mile away and was traveling parallel to the road. “Shit, you’re right!” He jumped to his feet and began waving his arms and shouting.

  “Wait!” Liu pulled on his pant leg. “How do we know it’s safe? Maybe it’s some murdering cannibals? Or it could be some lunatic that wants to ass rape and rob us, for all you know!” His friend looked scared but hopeful at the same time.

  “Well, first of all, we don’t have anything to rob, and secondly, I don’t think we can afford to pass up this chance, do you?”

  After a moment, Liu shook his head.

  “Didn’t think so.” Marcus pulled off his sweaty shirt and started waving it overhead while yelling at the top of his lungs.

  After a couple of minutes, the vehicle turned and began coming toward them. From everything he had heard, nothing good usually came of attracting attention in the wasteland, but they both knew they didn’t really have any choice in the matter this time.

  Chapter 5

  “I count four of them,” Reznik said. He panned the scope around as he surveyed the roadblock on the distant bridge below them. Three individuals stood in front of the vehicles holding a conversation while another lounged in the back of one of the trucks. A crimson gauntlet clenched in a fist was painted on the sides of the vehicles. A tent pitched on the other side of the bridge indicated this wasn’t just some random roadblock. This group intended to be there for a while. “They have the rebel markings on the sides of their vehicles. Three look lightly armed, and one is manning a crew-served machine gun—could be a fifty-cal, but I can’t tell from here. How do you want to play this?”

  Rin
lay prone next to him on the stony escarpment, where they had a commanding view of the chasm and the roadblock approximately two miles away. As she studied the distant scene, Reznik wondered how good her eyes were. Even with his augmented vision, he couldn’t make out as much detail as the scope allowed him to see.

  “This is new,” Rin replied. “The last time I came through here, the bridge was free.”

  “Wonder if they are looking to prevent passage or rob travelers. There’s no guarantee they really are rebels either. Having those markings could be a convenient way to get innocent travelers to cooperate.”

  The bridge was the only way across the immense, bottomless chasm that marred the land. The scar stretched for a hundred miles or more. The next closest bridge was half a day’s travel from there, according to Rin.

  The men continued to mill about, unaware they were being watched. The man in the back of the truck smoked a cigarette while another took a pull on a bottle of booze. An overweight man spat on the ground and scratched his ass. Even at such a distance, Reznik got the impression of bored amateurs.

  “I say we just play it cool,” Rin said.

  “Play it cool?” He was surprised at her uncharacteristic colloquialism.

  Rin smiled. “Yes. Let’s just act like we are surprised to see them there. We can try to figure out what they want and decide then how to proceed.”

  Reznik thought that a smile suited her better than the serious poker face she usually wore. “Go with the flow, then. Fine with me.” He smiled in return.

  They slipped back down the slope and returned to the hoverbikes. Reznik was glad they had decided to recon the area before approaching blindly. He loosened his revolver in its holster, a big .45 he had come to fancy. Out of habit, he checked to make sure it was fully loaded even though he knew it was. He slipped the AK-47 into the strap around the saddlebag so it was within easy reach. He noticed that Rin adjusted her katana into a more comfortable position.