Wretched Earth

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“Didn’t think you went in much for abstract curiosity,” Mildred said.

“Nothing abstract about it. ‘Know your enemy like you know yourself,’ Trader always said.”

“I don’t want to know these things,” Krysty said. “They’re not part of Gaia’s nature.”

“Worse than muties?” J.B. asked.

“Yes,” the redhead said emphatically. “There’s a wrongness about them I’ve never felt from the most horrible mutie. Ryan, they’re dead. They really are. Just like those hogs in Canada.”

Ryan nodded. “That’s why I want to know about them, Krysty. How do you fight what’s already dead?”

“Shoot head,” Jak said. “Works.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Why?”

“You really aren’t succumbing to curiosity for its own sake?” Doc asked.

“Fireblast, no. If I know why that chills them, I may be able to find something else that does it, too. At least waste less time and ammo doing stuff that doesn’t faze the bastards.”

“Chopping their heads off should work,” Krysty suggested.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I hacked one or two through the back of the neck, too. That seemed to drop them, and made them stay down.”

“Their central nervous system appears to retain some function,” Mildred said. She squatted with her arms crossed tightly beneath her breasts. Her big chocolate eyes stared intently at nothing in particular as she wrestled with the questions.

“Or perhaps something else makes use of their nervous system,” Doc said.

“You talking crazy, Doc? Don’t need you losing it, just now,” Ryan said.

But Mildred had raised her head and was looking hard at her customary antagonist. “What are you getting at, old man?”

“Clearly, or at least so far as we can tell, life has fled these poor unfortunates that Ryan dubbed ‘rotties.’ Yet they move. And we saw none of those horrid worms from the north.”

“You channeling Galileo?” Mildred asked. “Eppur si muove.”

Doc laughed, a soundless, head-bobbing motion.

“What are you two rambling on about?” Ryan demanded.

“Ancient history,” Mildred said. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Perhaps these unfortunates have been taken over by some kind of organism, not the worms of Canada, which we haven’t seen.”

“Well, we definitely know that’s a possibility,” Ryan said.

“When I was held captive by the vile whitecoats,” Doc said, “my captors often spoke of artificial organisms that they could program to do their bidding. Like living steel, but so small the finest optical microscope could not see them.”

“You talking about nanotechnology, Doc?” Mildred asked.

He blinked. A light snow had begun to fall, swirling on the side of the bus away from the wind. White crystals crusted the long lashes above his intense blue eyes.

“I believe that was the term they used, yes.”

“We’ve heard about that before,” Krysty said. “But how could this nanotechnology be involved here? These are people. Or rather, creatures that were people.”

“Perhaps the nanotechnological machines permeate the bodies of their victims,” Doc said slowly, clearly speaking thoughts as they formed in his mind. “Somehow they animate the limbs and impart some measure of direction to their actions.”

“That almost sounds like demonic possession you’re talking about, old man,” Mildred said.

Doc frowned at her, seeming to chew over the concept mentally rather than take offense.

“Aside from arising from an agency not strictly supernatural,” he said slowly, “how is this possession not aptly described as demonic?”

“So why does shooting their heads chill them?” J.B. asked.

“Obviously, the organisms, or whatever they are, require their victims’ bodies to sustain and reproduce themselves. Like disease germs. Perhaps they also make use of the human nervous system to control their stolen bodies.”

“Ugh.” Krysty shivered.

“Drive us,” Jak said. “Like bus.”

J.B. turned to him, his eyes squinted behind the round lenses of his glasses. “That’s cold-blooded even for you, Jak.”

The albino teen just shrugged.

“If the pathogens are nanoscale robots,” Mildred said, “that might explain why the, uh, the change is infectious.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Ryan said. “Or mebbe I should say, something else I don’t understand. From what that skinny kid told us back in the ’serai, it took his friend hours to ‘change’ after he got bitten. But Plunkett’s gaudy sluts were already rotties when he came screaming down the stairs, when I went in to get him. They couldn’t have been bitten more than a few minutes before.”

“That reinforces the idea the change works like a sickness,” Krysty said.

“How would that happen?” Ryan asked.

“Different people show different reactions to disease,” Mildred said. “Some die quickly, some just get sick. Some are even immune.”

Ryan felt his lips peel back from his teeth, which instantly sent spikes of pain up the bones of his face from the cold.

“So they’re plaguers?” he said.

Mildred nodded.

“All right,” he said. “So we know blowing their brains out drops them. So does cutting the spinal cord, at least in the neck. Shooting them anywhere else is pretty much a waste, unless it gets them to back off long enough to get in a head shot. Or bash their skulls in.”

“Cutting off their arms and legs should do it, too,” Mildred said. “Eliminate them as threats, anyway.”

“Long as you’re careful not to get close enough they can bite you,” Dix said.

“Always the charmer, John,” Mildred said. He flashed her a grin.

For a while they squatted, or in Ryan’s case stood, in silence, listening to the wind boom and sigh across the plains.

“I feel kinda bad we lost the body we were supposed to be guarding,” Mildred said. “Plunkett did pay us up front to protect him and his people.”

“It happens,” Ryan said. “Not even the first time it happened to us.”

“We could never be accused of failing to do everything within our power to carry out our charge,” Doc said. “These were circumstances as unforeseeable as they were beyond our control.”

“Boss Plunkett,” Jak said. He spit, carefully aiming downwind of himself and his companions. “Was dick.”

Mildred shrugged. “And there you have it.”

J.B. rubbed the stubble on his chin. “So what now, Ryan?”

“Continue on to Sweetwater Junction, I reckon. We got some jack and supplies from Plunkett up front, but we burned a triple-lot of ammo getting away. Mebbe we can buy more there.”

“And water,” J.B. said. “That ammo will command some serious jack, though.”

“Right.” Though it lay in the midst of some of the worst, most desolate Deathlands, the ville of Sweetwater Junction was relatively large and prosperous, owing to its location on a trade crossroad, as well as the aquifer that gave it its name. “Our canteens’ll be dry as neutron bones by the time we get there. Mebbe we can even find work for a while, stock up.”