Chapter 10
The Mercenary's Tale
From the Journal of Martin Baker, May 30th, 2086,
We've left Denver, curving north and east along the North Platte River. The river is a sluggish thing, and the scenery is just scrub and mountain. The boat is little more than a raft with an outboard motor; our ferryman sits in a tiny lean-to by the engine, and leaves us to our devices.
Lee, Evangeline, and I sit by her vehicle, the small motorized rickshaw-thing that is once again laden with trade goods, this time from the west instead of the east. Several pounds of marijuana from California, woodcarvings from “Cascadia” (the Pacific northwest, apparently,) and other such goods.
We've concocted a game that would make Chaucer proud: we're going to trade stories. Drawing straws, we've ordered ourselves Evangeline, Lee, then myself.
This is all a tactic that they've concocted to draw out the circumstances of my incarceration. I'm not sure whether I will go through with it, though.
Evangeline told us of her homeland, the oppressive theocracy that is thriving in the southwest. Now, Lee has sat up and straightened his back, preparing to tell us his story.
I was born in Milwaukee. My parents were both sports, like me. Mom was just hairless, with patchy skin pigmentation, but dad took after grandfather, who was Changed way back before the Great War. Dad was eight feet tall and had these nodules like me.
When I was a kid, we lived in one of the abandoned section; this was before the Stepchildren had a big presence in the North, and the Chicagoans would occasionally come hunting for Dad.
He wouldn't have that. Never did. He was too big to use a gun, but he didn't need one. His skin was so thick that their guns were next to useless.
Mom died when I was six. Dad tried to bury her, himself, and I wouldn't have that, either. Afterward, he insisted on leaving town. We walked along the river for a while, but the water was worthless.
Drink it, and you begin vomiting. Your anus bleeds. You get other kinds of sickness, too. Radiation in the water.
So we walked off. South. West. Creeping around the edges of society.
We were ferals, honestly. We hunted anything not dying of cancer. If we couldn't get it from an animal, we tried to scavenge it from the dead. If we couldn't get it from the dead, we would rob the living.
This lasted until I was twelve. By that time, I was about your height (Lee held one giant hand level with the crown of Martin's head.) Dad had grown another foot.
I carried a gun; dad carried a hatchet.
The summer of seventy-eight was bad. Real bad. Black clouds rolled in from the west, and the rain stung when it hit your skin.
A lot of animals died off, most of what we could scavenge was too damaged to be used. We turned to robbery.
For a while, things were fine.
Then, Dad got it in his head to attack someone wearing a white suit, a lot like yours, old man. This guy was one of the Guardians of Ijtihad; a scientific Mujahideen with a brace of heavy weapons strapped to his back.
As soon as dad jumped up out of the ditch we were hiding in, the man pulled out a shotgun. A black shotgun, like the one I was carrying up until those legionnaires got us.
He fired at dad, and it actually got through his skin, piercing into his side.
“Been looking for you,” the Mujahid said, chambering his next round, “I've got another tungsten-core round waiting for you, if you choose to get up.”
Dad took a swing at him from the ground, broke his knee.
He lay on the ground cursing, but he had enough sense about him to keep the gun trained on my father.
He fired again, hitting dad in the shoulder.
As he chambered another round, I snuck up behind him.
Dad had taught me to always keep a round chambered when we were going after someone who knew how to shoot. If they looked nervous, or uncomfortable with their weapon, or--rare as it is--without a gun or knife or club or anything, then leave it unchambered.
You ever seen how someone jumps when they hear a round being chambered not five feet from them?
It's hilarious.
But I had a round chambered.
I put it right through the mujahid's skull. It came out his left eye.
I went through the mujahid's stuff, and took all the medical supplies I could find, and used them on Dad. I took his gun, and a pistol, but left the rest. I could only carry so much, and I had to help dad get to where he was headed.
He told me that his injuries were bad, and demanded that I help him get to the lake.
I slung him over my shoulder as best I could, and we walked. North. East.
It was slow going, and we were hungry. There were days when I had to tell myself that I wouldn't eat my father's flesh, should he die.
We ate the death-fungus that blooms where the bombs fell. It made me sick, at first, but I could survive on it.
After weeks of walking, we reached the lake. My father smiled with his broken, crooked teeth, and walked down into the water.
He'd been complaining about how his bones hurt for a long, long time, and I've been back to visit him since then. He told me how it is:
Like his father, dad never stopped growing. His bones creaked, and his joints ached. Every few years, I go out on the lake, and I see my father. He's ancient, now, must be fifteen feet from head to tail, with a long tangle of hair down to his waist. The nodules between his fingers have fused, making a webbing.
He's a creature of the water, now, and when I get older, I'm probably going to go the same route. I'll probably choose the sea over a lake, but the end result is the same.
Lee quieted, and closed his eyes.
They sat in silence for a moment, then the raft veered to the side and settled at an angle. A grinding noise came from the fore of the boat.
The three passengers tumbled to the side, Lee and Evangeline grabbing hold of the deck.
Martin, however, was unable to get traction with his gloved hands, and slid down into the powerful, slow-moving current.
“What did we hit?” Evangeline demanded, looking to the fore.
They had passed around a bend in the river, and the waterway was swollen due to a blockage in it, a wall of rock that they had run aground on.
The hillside that the river passed beside had caved in, disgorging rubble that choked the passage of the water and revealed a great, steel structure hidden inside.
The world swam about Martin. His helmet slammed shut, and his ears popped. The world rushed by him in a confusion of white water and jagged stone.
He was swept along, dragged by the current's unseen hands.
Beaten against the rocks, he was swept through a narrow channel into a swift, smooth stretch. Swimming perpendicular to the current, he dug his fingers into the silt along the side of the river, carving five parallel trenches into the soft soil.
His hand caught upon a rock, and he held fast.
Pulling himself upward, he climbed from the river, onto land.
His helmet snapped open, and he lay in the soft, wet soil. His wrist unit was ticking faintly.
With a grunt, he pushed himself up and staggered away from the river. He had been pulled down a branch of the river, away from the boat.
He heard a high-pitched metallic “ting” noise. He looked down, and saw a small red and white box:
50 9MM ROUNDS
HOLLOW POINT
NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION.