The expensive boarding school that the twins attended had emphasized healthy outdoor exercise for their students, with regular hikes and camps. They found they had reason to be grateful for this now. By mid-afternoon they’d descended below the snow line and found a deer trail that zigzagged down the slope through a forest of spindly trees. They stopped on a promontory that gave them a good view of the valley below, and ate a diet bar each.
“Just in case someone does come looking for us, we might as well leave a trail,” Hans said. He opened out the diet bar wrappers and arranged them with the shiny foil side up, weighed down with small rocks around the edge.
The wide valley was only sparsely covered with grass and occasional clumps of browning pines and shrubs. None of the vegetation looked healthy. A river glinted in the distance. There were a number of odd gullies, and little hills with jagged spikes sticking out of the top which didn’t look quite like geographical features. The sun came out of the clouds just then and made the spikes on the nearest hillock sparkle.
“Those aren’t rocks,” Hans said slowly. “They’re wrecked battle mechs. This valley was a battleground.”
As Gretta studied the ground, she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. The gullies had been gouged out by aerial battle mechs crashing at high speed. The hillocks and rocky outcrops were collapsed mechs buried under a layer of vegetation. Now that she knew what they were, she could see them everywhere. They weren’t going to be able to get across the valley without passing close to hundreds of them.
“That must be why this is a restricted area. I don’t suppose you packed a radiation detector?” Hans said.
“Why not some haz-mat suits and a fold-up helicopter while I was at it?” Gretta retorted. “I mean, who keeps an emergency kit in the cupboard just in case their parents abandon them somewhere radioactive?” She sniffed hard, and looked away.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Hans said. He sat down heavily. He’d been trying not to think too hard about why they were here.
“Sheisse,” he said. “He dumped us like unwanted puppies.”
Gretta gave a choking laugh, and swiped at her eyes. “You know what annoys me the most? Silly, I know, but he didn’t even do a good job of it, because we’re still alive. Papa is such an idiot.”
“We already figured that out when he married Stefania,” Hans said. “Let’s just hope we got some brains from Mama’s side of the family.”
Gretta checked the map on her phone.
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“We’re about here,” she said, tapping the map. “If we cross the river and follow it south for about twenty kilometers, then head through the forest, there are some old logging roads that will eventually lead to paved roads.”
“And then what?” Hans said.
“What do you mean? We find people and get help.”
“And then what? They say, ‘Oh, you poor little lost lambs! Let us deliver you at once into the loving arms of your beloved parents, who must be beside themselves with worry!’.”
Gretta stared across the valley. “Good point. We need a plan, before we find people.”
“If we go home, what do you think they’ll do?”
“Maybe Papa will feel so guilty, he’ll swear never to harm us ever again. More likely, now that we know what they’re up to they’ll just come up with a better plan to get rid of us.”
“And if we tell the police our father abandoned us in the wilderness?”
Gretta sighed. “Where’s the evidence? Papa would just say we ran away. The nearest police station in the low-tax zone is a good 100 kilometers from the enclave anyway.”
“So even when we get out of here and get back to civilization, we’re still screwed.”
Gretta chewed her lip thoughtfully. “What exactly are they going to tell people about us, though? They can tell the neighbors that we’re at boarding school, and tell the school they’re taking us abroad. I can see them getting away with it in the short term, but eventually aren’t people going to notice we’re not around? I’d hope that our friends would.”
“Remember when Silke Schaefer’s family moved to London, and she swore to you that you were best friends forever, and then she messaged you maybe twice and after than you never heard from her again?” Hans said.
Gretta frowned at him. “We were only eight years old.”
“Yeah, but for all you know she could have drowned in the Thames. It’s not like you were going to go to London and look for her. Do you really think any of our friends are going to come looking for us when we don’t answer their messages? And if they do call the house the step-beast can say we’re grounded.”
“Okay,” Gretta began ticking points off on her fingers. “First step: shelter, and food. We can work on a story as we go. Second: get ourselves back to the enclave and do some reconnaissance without being spotted, and find out what is going on at home. And third—”
“Wreak fiery vengeance on all who oppose us?” Hans suggested.
She grinned at her brother. “Now you’re talking!”
“We need to get across the battlefield fast to minimize any radiation exposure. It might be best to camp up here tonight, so we don’t get caught in the open after dark.”
They found a sheltered spot under the promontory and collected wood for a fire, laying their sleeping bags on the dry ground under a rock ledge.
Despite the hard ground Gretta soon fell asleep, head pillowed on her pack. She came awake with a jolt. It was completely black except for a faint glow from the dying fire. Something was screaming in the valley below. It sounded like the unholy offspring of a fighter jet and a wounded panther. She leaned over to put more wood on the fire.
“Don’t,” Hans said quietly from the darkness. “We don’t want to attract attention.”
“What is it?” she whispered. The thing shrieked again, and she flinched.
“Wildcat IV, Obsidian Class. A hunter-killer battle mech. Not everything in that valley is dead. I recognize the sound from my war games.”
Gretta shuddered. “What if it comes up here?”
Hans laughed softly, without humor. “If it could move, we’d have been dead hours ago. I think it’s crippled.”
There was a deep bellow from below, answered by thin piping wails from more than one direction.
“So, now we know why it’s a restricted area,” Hans whispered. “Nobody wanted the job of deactivating a bunch of heavily armed killer robots so they just colored this part of the map red.” He rolled over. “Try to get some sleep.”
Gretta lay on her back staring wide-eyed into the dark for a long time.