“Unlike the rest of their bone structure, the enamel of infected teeth can only strengthen over time due to a constant infusion of HBRS pseudo-cells from the salivary glands. You can add bites to the list of problems that will never solve themselves.”
–Dr Ava Sherman. Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. 2 Months After.
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“Holy shit! Is he dead?”
Leah pressed her gloved finger against Liam Fenix’s throat and waited for a pulse. “No, Buttercup. He’s just passed out.”
“I didn’t know humans could go to sleep like that,” Kurt said.
Leah winced. “They don’t normally. This must have something to do with the altitude and lack of water. We’ve been pushing him hard.”
“We have?”
“Look, you two do me a favor and get him in that bed upstairs. Let the guy rest it off.”
Buttercup frowned. “I don’t know, boss. This town’s the only one we’ve seen for days, and it’s right on the road. You sure we want to sit here much longer?”
No, Leah thought. I’d rather be on a boat, zipping off to the ass end of the world. “Just do it.”
Liam Fenix got laid to rest and her crew went to work fortifying the place. The spike traps got reset, and a perimeter was established. Soon, Kurt went off to Hunt, while Buttercup kept a low profile outside, scanning for threats.
As shelter went, they could have done worse. The humans had done well to maintain this place before being driven out. The useless electronics had all been tossed to the wayside to make more space for storage and bedrolls. Varnish had been applied to the redwood walls sometime after the outbreak, and far less rot had set in because of it. The floor creaked less than she would’ve expected, and the weight of the roof pressing against the second floor showed little signs of giving way.
Leah considered reapplying the grease she needed to keep her suppressor properly silenced, but found herself instead at the kitchenette reading while Mastermind did the same. She had lost all the books she’d pilfered from Liam Fenix’s house during the firefight, but as luck had had it, her favorite novel had been stashed with her M16, so she wasn’t without mental sustenance during these lulls.
For all of Hades’s ideas, using books as currency was perhaps his best. Hollowing accelerated when the mind went idle and existence became pointless, and nothing kept a brain busy like a good story. So long as rezzers could focus on something other than their miserable world, they could keep their reservoirs strong.
And so that was what Leah chose to do now. As the oldest Hunter, she had wealth beyond all others, and could get just about any book she wanted with ease, but this series had always had a special place in her heart, since the moment she’d first graced her eyes onto its pages. It was a story about a teenage girl who fell in love with a vampire. In spite of the biological differences between the two, they somehow managed to shatter through the gap to form a tender relationship.
Leah had read this particular novel more than a hundred times, but the one advantage to hollowing was that no memory stayed permanent, and so revisiting some scenes still brought her the same emotions as they had at first. Each read evoked senses that she seldom got to appreciate. It was as though her own soul hadn’t trapped in this desiccated shell, and that she might find love herself. As if she wasn’t any less than human.
But Leah was still this undead creature, and this story was only a story.
“How fucked are we, Mastermind?” Leah asked. A moment of silence passed unopposed. “Go on, don’t hold back. I know you’ve done the math already. Give me the numbers.”
He sighed. “We are only averaging approximately twenty miles a day, spread over a thirteen hour period. That reserves an eleven hour bloc for Liam to sleep, relax, and eat. The extra time has helped us to stave off hollowing, but our pace remains stymied by our human companion’s limitations.
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“Though by your own admission, Hades will believe that you originated in San Jose and not Reno, that presupposition will not hold true for long. Mother did us no favors by alerting everyone of our trajectory. Had she gone northwest instead of due north, we might have afforded ourselves more security, but I’d calculate that even if Hades does not know the final destination for certain, he will have sent advanced parties to watch every outpost east of the Seaside area, both large and small. Our destination will be in that net, so he will not be far behind when we poke our heads out.
“And that is if we assume that he will not catch us before we arrive. Other Hunters will have been contracted by now, with the reward incalculable. A single crew would have difficulty following our trail, but supplemented with biodiesel vehicles, long-range telecommunications, UAV imaging, and whatever hidden resources that Hades has at his disposal, and we cannot stay invisible much longer…”
“Just give me a timetable,” Leah said.
He stroked his chin. “Four to six more days under our current approach before someone discovers our location. Whether we silence them or not, we can then expect a heavier response within eight hours, the kind that we will not be able to defeat.”
“I figured as much. What if we buy ourselves time? Maybe lay low somewhere else for a while?”
“Obscuring our objective with an elongated route may provide us with more leniency, but that will also give our enemies more opportunity to entrench themselves in the region. I suspect that this strategy would create more long-term problems than solutions. After all, Mother does not intend for Reno to be our final destination. We do not know how far this contract goes.”
She buried her face in her palm. “So what the hell can we do?”
Mastermind grinned. “Have you ever heard of the old world technique of ‘praying’? I heard that it was quite a popular remedy for impasses like the one we’re experiencing.”
“Don’t get cute. This is serious.”
“I am at a loss then.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I cannot remember the last time you’ve ever said that to me.”
He frowned. “The unfortunate truth is that Liam’s mortality is an albatross around our throats. Unless we can drive him to surpass his own limitations, he will get the rest of us purged, and there is nothing to be done. We do not have the speed, the manpower, or the nourishment to keep this game going much longer.” He held up his book again. “So I would argue that we’d best embrace the sanctuary we’ve been afforded and hope that circumstances change on their own.”
Leah fell silent and ran her fingers along the marble kitchenette top. There had once been a peaceful lifestyle here, long ago. She could just imagine the mother standing in this very spot, slicing up vegetables to supplement the fish her husband had caught, earlier in the day. One of the children would be playing in the living room with toys, and the other would barrel down the stairs nearby. The mother would scold them to be more careful. This was an old house, after all, and their father had only just bought it with the money from that big promotion. They hadn’t let the house “breathe” yet.
It was all a clever ruse, of course. The mother was only trying to balance her children’s autonomy with their security. Children deserved to enjoy their young lives, free from harm. Innocence was a precious resource in a chaotic world, and letting them savor it to their heart’s content was the virtuous path. Humanity had fought so hard and for so long to allow them this gift, so it was only reasonable that they reap the benefits that they had created for themselves. Thus, the mother would cherish and protect her children’s own purity, just as her parents had done before.
Leah dragged her nails across the counter. Why must she have been denied such luxuries? Sure, she could imagine such a life. She could even close her eyes and picture it, as she had done every time she’d read her novel. But she could never experience it for herself. The Hollowing blunted all emotions, expunged the memories of those it affected, and rendered its progeny infertile. There was no childhood for her kind, nor any family to have for support. Those were extravagances of the living. Rezzers knew nothing other than patching the holes of their own reservoir, lest it crumble and they lose their souls. Bolstering the self was the sole paragon to strive for. The only virtue that mattered. Where the story of life was one of empathy and evolution, theirs was nothing more than postponing a protracted death. What value was a family here?
And yet, a relic had entered their dying world and thrown it off balance. Liam Fenix lay above, dreaming of the family he wished to regain. He had driven his body to the brink of death in pursuit of this delusional goal of reuniting with them. It was a foolish, arrogant, and destructive burden he had thrust onto the rest of them, and one that Leah knew would be doubled the moment he awoke. For the living would die over their dreams, and his fate had been tethered to hers. Would she really go as far as Aspen to indulge this fantasy?
Part of Leah yearned for the older days, before she allowed the parasite of hope to poison her own Rez. Things were simpler then, when she and the rest of the Hunters roamed the wastes, killing anything that threatened them, with no regard for where it would one day go. The odds were no more arduous than how to survive the day, and the world was tinted only in shades of black and white. Survival was all that mattered, and the future was irrelevant.
Leah sighed. She missed those days, now more than ever.