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  “The Authority?”

  “Like I said… Raine. Lot for you to digest. Take it in small bits. Just know this… most Ark survivors are gone. Those left, work for them. Others tried to escape, but were hunted down. Ones deemed useless-well, they’re really gone. ”

  “Sounds like a nice group of people, your ‘Authority.’ ”

  “The Authority runs things. Or think they do. Out here, in the Wasteland, kinda hard for them to have much control. Too many muties, bandits, groups like us.”

  “Muties?”

  Dan looked over at him. “Okay. You asked about the asteroid? Way before my time. Even before my father’s time. His father was here. And he said it was supposed to kill everyone. But something happened. It didn’t do that. Though might as well have, when you look at what was left. That world. Your world. Gone. Cities, even-I’ve heard-whole goddamn landmasses.”

  “And time…”

  “What’s that?”

  “The computer said time now was different.”

  “Oh you mean it’s off a few days? That sort of thing? Yeah, not the same. Days nearly an hour longer. The asteroid’s strike played with the planet’s orbit. Really messed with the weather, too. God knows what year it is according to your time. We just date things from when the asteroid hit.”

  “And muties-what are they?”

  “You tell me. The asteroid created pockets of radiation. Where it didn’t kill everyone, some survived, but… they changed. They became like animals. Living together like rat packs. Breeding like crazy. They feel no pain. Not too hard to kill, but there seems to be a hell of a lot of them. And oh yeah-they can eat just about anything. But they do have… their preferences.”

  Dan paused as if there was something else he was about to add.

  “Look, when we get to my settlement you best not ask too many questions. Not till people get to know you, at least. Get to trust you, know what I mean? They kinda connect questions… with the Authority.”

  Dan spit out the side of his buggy as if the word was distasteful.

  “Okay?”

  Not ask questions? Raine thought. How else was he supposed to figure out what was going on? After all, if this was his future-what the hell was he supposed to do in it?

  But he kept his mouth shut.

  “Good, Lieutenant Raine. You’ll do just fine.” Dan sniffed the dusty dry air. “Or you won’t. And there you go, ahead.”

  Dan pointed.

  From out of the cover of low-lying hills ahead, Raine saw something that looked like a town. Except, as they got closer, the buildings seemed pieced together from anything and everything: container cars, metal walls, fencing, tractor trailer bodies sliced in half…

  And he also saw people with guns on the side of the roadway leading into the heart of the settlement.

  “The Hagar Settlement,” Dan said quietly.

  He looked over at Raine.

  “Home sweet home.”

  He gunned the vehicle then, racing toward the settlement entrance.

  ELEVEN

  THE HAGAR SETTLEMENT

  The vehicle flew over the pits and rocky outcrops. As Dan Hagar rolled passed the guards of the settlement, they lowered their weapons. A slight tip of the head.

  Dan seemed to be the person to know, Raine could see.

  As they got closer, he could see the strange buildings that made up this world of the Hagars. They had electricity-a few buildings had signs that lit up. Others gushed a stream of smoke into the blue sky.

  But it was the way people dressed that had Raine staring.

  No one dressed the same, as if their clothes had to be as jumbled and mismatched as the buildings. Then as he passed an old man-who knew how old?-staring at them driving through the settlement, Raine saw that whatever people wore also offered protection.

  Layers against the sun, thick padding around knees, elbows, shoulders; some had head gear, a covering that reminded him of an ancient painting he saw in a kingpin general’s home in Pakistan.

  Skullcaps.

  To protect a key organ.

  And if no one was making new clothes, did they just piece the material together, stuff handed down from generation to generation? Where did the clothes come from? The ancient material of those who didn’t survive?

  In which case, were the garments on these people a daily reminder of what had happened to the once great planet Earth?

  Dan looked over.

  “Everyone’s checking you out, Raine. Don’t let it rattle you.”

  Raine thought that he had been the one staring at everyone. Now, when he looked away, he saw that Dan was right. Everyone they passed stared at him, eyes wide.

  “Because I’m not from around here?”

  Dan laughed. “Right. You’re a… newbie.” Another laugh. “No. Not that, I am afraid. You see, your… suit.”

  Raine looked down at what he was wearing. The smooth contours of the Ark suit. The places where the cryo pod could connect to it.

  Looking brand new. Different from anything these people wore.

  Except Except… he remembered someone they had passed. Bits of jacket.

  Part of an Ark suit.

  And Raine would have sworn that’s what one of the bandits wore.

  Am I really safe here?

  “The reason, Raine, why everyone is staring, is that you are an Ark survivor.”

  Dan slowed the vehicle in front of a gathering of buildings-or it could have been one building, where a domelike hut meshed with a metal warehouse structure before trailing into a series of smaller buildings.

  “Ark survivors-a live one, at least-are mighty rare here.”

  Dan stopped his buggy and got out.

  “C’mon, time you met some of the locals.”

  Big grin from Dan.

  And Raine wasn’t sure that meeting the locals was such a good idea.

  He followed Dan down a tight alley, two walls of metal making a path between structures before turning and ending at a door.

  Raine heard a crackling sound. Small pops. Explosions. Followed immediately by a loud “Damn it!”

  Dan knocked on the door, but walked in without waiting for an answer.

  “Hold on, Halek,” he called out. “You got company.”

  Raine followed Dan into the room.

  Inside, a man was sitting at a bench, his back turned to them, pieces of weapons-barrels, triggers, stocks-spread out in front of him.

  He didn’t even look up at Dan.

  “Halek?”

  “I’m busy. Trying to get all this crap you bring me to work. God… damn. ” He threw down a piece he was holding. “Junk, so damn old, and you expect me to get it to work, and-”

  Finally, he did turn.

  “You have got to be kidding me-an Ark survivor? Here?”

  Raine first thought that perhaps Halek was impressed. Maybe being a man from the past was important.

  But Halek’s face, frizzled with spiky hairs sprouting in every direction, and rheumy, bloodshot eyes, didn’t look pleased.

  He stood up.

  “Halek, Lieutenant Nicholas Raine… Raine, meet my brother, Halek Hagar.”

  Raine stuck out his hand. Which wasn’t taken.

  Halek rubbed his cheek instead, studying him like he was the strange new addition to a zoo.

  Then he turned to his brother.

  “And you don’t think that the goddamn Authority will know that you got ’im? That we have him here? Do you really think we can afford that?”

  Raine wasn’t feeling too welcome.

  In another world, another time, he would have offered to leave.

  But here -now -where the hell would he go?

  For now, he was tethered to Dan Hagar and this place.

  He repeated the two operative words in his head. A personal reminder.

  For now.

  “I know,” Dan was saying, snapping Raine back into the situation, “but they were all dead. The bandits tried to grab him… he was the lone sur
vivor. The Authority may think bandits got him.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you? They know the bandits would deal for him.”

  Halek turned back to Raine. Then he took a step in his direction, the man’s smell strong. Was water for bathing in short supply here, or was it just an option Halek chose not to elect?

  “Which is exactly what we should do. Tie the bastard survivor up and sell him to the next batch of Enforcers that show up.”

  Dan put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. Then he turned to Raine.

  “My brother worries about the Authority. A lot.”

  “Damn right I do.”

  “But he forgets that we need all the help we can get here. Isn’t that right, Halek?”

  Dan’s brother didn’t disagree. But the look on his face didn’t appear all that convinced, either.

  “And this here survivor is a Marine lieutenant.” He looked at Raine. “I imagine you’ve seen things, Raine, hm? Done things? I mean, there were reasons they picked you, right?”

  “Guess so. It all happened fast-the selection, that is.”

  Dan nodded and then looked back to his brother. “I’ve already seen how good he is with a gun. I wouldn’t mind him by my side, especially with the Wasties coming closer every day…”

  “Wasties?” Rain said.

  “The Wasteland bandit clans. What you shot at out there. All independent, but they seem to be converging on our little settlement. Another gun”-Dan took a breath-“another set of balls? I definitely could use that.”

  Halek’s tongue did a slow exploration of his lips, around the chapped flesh and cracked corners of his mouth.

  “Hell, he might even know something about the pile of weapons you got there,” Dan said as way of appeasement.

  “I know what I need to know,” Halek said fast.

  But the point had been made.

  Dan looked at Raine.

  “Think it’s time you had a shot or two of what we like to call Hagar’s Finest.”

  “Something to drink?”

  Now both Dan and Halek started laughing, as if in on some private joke.

  “Oh yeah-something to drink indeed.” • • •

  Raine put down the glass of… whatever it was.

  Dan looked at him. “Home-brewed stim juice. Packs a punch, so probably enough for now. You need a place to sleep. Food, maybe?”

  He watched Halek shoot his brother a look. The reason for it then became clear.

  “Halek-you got a place back in here that our friend from the past can sleep?”

  “It’s way too crowded here, I can’t-”

  “Just a cot, okay, brother? I know this isn’t a hotel. I’ll send over some food. We eat very simply. Things we can grow. Probably bland for you.”

  “Thanks,” Raine said.

  He looked around the room. It reeked of guns and oil and the man who worked on them. Raine wondered if he hadn’t been better off sleeping inside the Ark.

  Halek stayed focused on his brother.

  “ Then we talk about him?”

  “Yeah. In the morning.”

  “Talk?” Raine said to Dan.

  “Don’t worry about it for now. It will be dark soon here. We’ll be beefing up our security. You may hear some gunshots. Perfectly normal.”

  Halek took a big sniff, his last expression that he wasn’t too happy with his guest. Then he stood up.

  “Got a space over there. Get you a blanket of some kind. Don’t know if I got any damn pillow.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  Dan also got up.

  “I’ll be back in the morning. Then”-another glance at Halek-“we’ll talk.”

  Raine stuck out his hand. An off moment-Dan acted as though he didn’t know what to do with it. Then a grin. “Right. Yeah, a handshake.”

  And he took Raine’s hand.

  Was there a reason people no longer shook hands here? New diseases? Or maybe that pledge of friendship, what a clasping of hands represented… didn’t apply?

  Raine couldn’t guess. But for now he was eager for whatever space Halek had for him. Even a sip or two of the foul liquid they gave him had him wanting to shut his eyes. Or perhaps it was the ironic fatigue from waking up decades after doing nothing.

  “Dan. Thanks. For saving me.”

  Dan released his hand. “Yeah. Well, we’ll see.”

  And he walked out of the chaotic armory.

  Raine turned back to where Halek was muttering as he pushed piles of metal around.

  Raine stood there. Stranger in an ever stranger land.

  And he felt that whatever the morning brought, it might be even stranger still.

  He walked back, a bit unsteady, to where he hoped to lie down… and simply sleep.

  TWELVE

  TO SERVE SOMEBODY

  He dreamt.

  And even while Raine dreamed, he realized, in a lucid way, that for all those decades of deep sleep he hadn’t dreamt at all.

  Now, though, he dreamt of the Ark station, the scientists milling about, looking at him with sideways glances as if they were in on a practical joke.

  That gave way to images of the bandits who attempted to kill him. They screamed at him, making threatening gestures. Waving knives. One shot a gun that echoed hollowly in the aural caverns of his sleeping mind. A muffled shot into the sky.

  Where he could look up.

  Something coming. Covering the sun.

  The asteroid. I didn’t miss it after all. It is coming right down on me.

  Except he could see… this was far too small an asteroid. It was more like a hovering aircraft. Like a helicopter, but boxy, the engine sound roaring above the screaming bandits.

  And the flying thing-whatever it was-started shooting at him.

  He blinked. At the glare of the sun suddenly revealed. The gleaming metal of the strange chopper.

  He blinked.

  Awake.

  And even before he took in the dingy light and foul smell of the place where he had slept, he saw something… within his eyes.

  Like a screen.

  First just wavy lines, as if fruitlessly chasing those floaters made by blood vessels crisscrossing the iris. But then resolving. Showing a thin red bar that rose and fell…

  Rose and fell, he quickly realized, with his heartbeat. Then another bar. Immediately filling his point of view from the bottom of his eye to the top.

  Green.

  The nanotrites. The small biomechanical engines. One showing heart rate, the other… his body functions? His health? Could they show other things? Did the scientists who planted them know all they could do?

  When he blinked again, their work done, they vanished.

  He sat up on the wood plank covered with a thick blanket that had been his bed. On the floor, a plate with a roll-like thing that Dan had brought over. Cheese, or something like cheese. No meat.

  Meat was rare, Dan had said. But there was soy.

  He took a breath.

  Day One, he thought. He cleared his voice, wondering if Halek was around. That sound brought a jumble of noises, as gun parts were pushed away and a chair scraped the floor.

  Halek walked back to him.

  They sat at the table again after Halek had gone to get Dan.

  Dan’s face seemed set. No repeat of the handshake. No smiles. They sat down facing Raine as if this was an important meeting.

  Dan let Halek start.

  “You’ve got to do a… service. ”

  Raine nodded. “Sure. Of course.” He took a breath. “A service. Mind telling me what the hell a ‘service’ is?”

  “Easy there Ark man,” Halek growled. “This is the Hagar Settlement. You can be tossed out as easily as Dan dragged your ass in here.”

  Dan put a hand on his brother’s beefy forearm. If they ran this place together, Raine thought, then Dan was the brains and restraint… and Halek got what was left over.

  Though from the look of the guns all around, Halek did pretty well putt
ing bits and pieces together to make weapons.

  “It’s the code here. Hell, not just here. All the outer settlements, and Wellspring-”

  “Wellspring?”

  “It’s a city,” Dan said. “Or, what we call a city. No one survives here without help. And without everyone helping each other, you might as well just let the muties have you.”

  “A service…” Halek repeated, getting Dan back on track.

  “To stay, Raine, you have to do something that helps the settlement. And then to keep staying, there will be other things. It’s either that-”

  “Or leave?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “Tell him, Dan. Tell him what it is.” Halek leaned close. “What he’s got to do.”

  “So I talked with some of the others here. They got something for you. We lost someone on a patrol a few days ago. Never came back. He was on the road that runs northeast from here. It goes a way out, ultimately turning into a jumble of rock and rotting buildings. With the disappearance, we are down a man.”

  “So-what do you want me to do?”

  “You go check out that road,” Halek said, a gleam in his eyes. “Bandits are always trying to creep close to us, especially of late. It’s like they’re getting ready for a raid on us. We need to watch all the main roads here-so you check it out.”

  Raine saw Dan watching him. His easy manner-the smiles, the “welcome to the future” stuff-gone.

  Is this why he rescued me?

  “We’ll set you up with a buggy. Won’t be much.”

  “It’ll run. That’ll be enough,” Halek said.

  “Right. It will run,” Dan said. “We have a radio. Not too reliable. But you can communicate. When the wind’s right, at least. Keep your eyes peeled for deep ruts, stray boulders… you don’t want to blow a tire out there or crack an axle. You go out there, and if you see signs of bandits, you radio it in. Then we’ll come out and-”

  “We’ll rub the bastards out,” Halek said.

  “Weapons?”

  Dan looked away. Raine guessed that he and his brother had discussed that issue as well. “You got that rifle I gave you.”