Partials series 1-3 (Partials; Fragments; Ruins)

“You’re late, Walker.”

Kira didn’t speed up, watching Jayden’s face as she walked casually to the wagon. He looked so much like Madison.

“What?” she asked. “Don’t soldiers have to attend mandatory town hall meetings anymore?”

“And thank you very much for the attitude,” said Jayden, leaning his rifle against his shoulder. “It is a pleasure to have both you and your delightful wit with us on this run.”

Kira mimed a gun with her forefinger, silently shooting him in the face. “Where are we going this time?”

“A little town called Asharoken.” He helped her up into the back of the metal wagon, already full of ten more soldiers and two portable generators; that meant she was probably going to field-test some old equipment to see if it was worth bringing back. There were two other civilians as well, a man and a woman, probably here to use the second generator on some equipment of their own.

Jayden leaned on the edge of the wagon. “I swear, this island has the weirdest town names I’ve ever heard.”

“You guys are loaded for bear,” said Kira, looking at the soldiers’ heavy rifles. They were always armed when they left the city—even Kira had an assault rifle slung over her shoulder—but today they looked like a war party. One of the soldiers was even carrying a long tube she recognized as a rocket launcher. Kira found an empty seat and tucked her bag and medical kit behind her feet. “Expecting bandits?”

“North Shore,” said Jayden, and Kira blanched. The North Shore was essentially unsettled, and thus prime Voice territory.

“Valencio, you’re late!” shouted Jayden, and Kira looked up with a smile.

“Hey, Marcus.”

“Long time no see.” Marcus grinned broadly and vaulted into the wagon. “Sorry I’m late, Jayden. I had a meeting that got a little heavier than I planned. Very hot and sweaty by the end. You were a major topic of conversation, though, in between bouts of passionate—”

“Just skip to the part where it’s my mother,” said Jayden, “and then I’ll do the part where I tell you to go to hell, and then we can maybe get on with our jobs like we’re supposed to.”

“Your mother died of RM eleven years ago,” said Marcus, his face a mask of pretend shock. “You were, what, six? That would be incredibly crass of me.”

“And your mother’s already in hell,” said Jayden, “so I’m sure you’ll be seeing her soon. We should probably just drop the whole thing. Bastard.”

Kira frowned at the insult, but Marcus only smirked, looking at the other people in the wagon. “Ten soldiers, huh? What’s the run?”

“North Shore,” said Kira.

Marcus whistled. “And here I was worried we wouldn’t get to do anything fun. I guess we’ve pretty much picked everything else clean by now, though, huh?” He looked across the truck to the two other civilians. “You’ll have to forgive me, I don’t recognize either of you.”

“Andrew Turner,” said the man, reaching out his hand. He was older, late forties, with the beginning of a sunburn through his thinning hair. “Electrician.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Marcus, shaking his hand.

The woman smiled and waved. “Gianna Cantrell. I’m in computer science.” She was older as well, but younger than Turner. Kira guessed maybe thirty-five—old enough to have been in computer science well before the Break. Kira glanced at her stomach, a reflex she wasn’t even aware of until she’d done it, but of course the woman wasn’t pregnant. Salvage runs were too dangerous to risk a child; she must have been between cycles.

“Interesting mix,” said Marcus. He looked at Jayden. “What’s the deal with this place?”

“Grunt salvage went through a few days ago,” said Jayden. “They logged a clinic, a pharmacy, and a ‘weather station,’ whatever that means. So now I get to go all the way back out there on a bunny run. You can imagine my joy.” He walked to the front of the wagon and climbed up beside the driver, a young woman Kira had seen a few times before—still a year or two below the pregnancy age, which made her fit for active duty. “All right, Yoon, giddyup.”

The girl flicked the reins and clucked at the four-horse team—the Defense Grid had a few electric cars, but none strong enough to haul a load this heavy with any degree of efficiency. Energy was precious, and horses were cheap, so all the best electric motors had been commandeered for other purposes. The wagon lurched into motion, and Kira put her arm behind Marcus to grip the side of the wagon. Marcus pressed in closer.

“Hey, babe.”

“Hey.”

Andrew Turner looked at them. “Bunny run?”

“That’s just slang for a salvage run, with specialists like you guys instead of the normal grunts.” Kira glanced at the man’s growing sunburn. “You’ve never been on one?”

“I did a lot of salvage in the early days, like everyone, but after a year or so I was assigned to solar panels full-time.”

“Bunny runs are easy,” said Marcus. “North Shore’s kind of spooky, but we’ll be fine.” He glanced around and smiled. “Road conditions aren’t great outside of the settlement, though, so enjoy the smooth ride while you can.”

They drove for a while in silence, the wind whipping through the open wagon and tossing Kira’s ponytail straight toward Marcus. She leaned forward, aiming the frenzied hair squarely at his face and laughing as he spluttered and brushed it away. He started to tickle her and she backed away in a rush, slamming into the soldier beside her. He smiled at her awkwardly—a boy about her age, obviously pleased to have a girl practically sitting in his lap, but he didn’t say anything about it. She scooted back into place, trying not to laugh.

The soldier next to Kira barked an order. “Last marker. Eyes up!” The soldiers in the truck bed straightened a little, held their weapons a little closer, and watched the passing buildings with hawk-like intensity.

Kira turned, watching the vast, empty city roll past—it looked empty, and it probably was, but you could never be too careful. The markers showed the edge of the East Meadow settlement, and the edge of the region their military could reasonably patrol, but it was hardly the edge of the actual urban area. The old-world city stretched out for miles in every direction, almost coast to coast on the island. Most of the survivors lived in East Meadow, or in the military base to the west, but there were looters, drifters, bandits, and worse sprinkled all around the island. The Voice had become the biggest fear, but they were far from the only one.

Even outside of East Meadow, the road here was well traveled and fairly open; there was garbage, of course, and dirt and leaves and the random debris of nature, but regular traffic kept the asphalt relatively clear of plants, and only rarely did the wagon bump over a major rut or pothole. The realm beyond the curbs was another story: Eleven years of disuse had left the city derelict, the houses crumbling, the sidewalks cracked and buckled by burgeoning tree roots, rampant weeds, and vast masses of kudzu that coated everything like a carpet. There were no lawns anymore, no yards, no glass in any of the windows. Even most of the side streets, less traveled than the main roadway, were crisscrossed with lines of green, Mother Nature slowly reclaiming everything the old world had stolen.

Kira liked it, in a way. Nobody told nature what to do.

They rode in silence a while longer; then one of the soldiers pointed to the north and hollered.

“Pack rat!”

Kira twisted in her seat, scanning the city, then caught a flash of movement in the corner of her eye—a school bus, the sides hung heavy with odds and ends and the top piled high with boxes and crates and sacks and furniture, all precariously strapped down with hundreds of yards of rope. A man stood beside it, siphoning gas from the tank of a parked car; two teens, Kira guessed maybe fifteen and seventeen years old, stood next to him.

“Dude,” said Marcus, “he’s still using gas.”

“Maybe he’s found a way to filter it,” said Gianna, peering at the bus with interest. “A lot of the outer communities do—still destroys the engines, but it’s not like we’re running out of those anytime soon.”

“They should just move into town,” said Turner. “He could have a real house, we could hook him up with electricity and security and . . . well, everything.”

“Everything but mobility,” said Gianna. “And anonymity, and freedom—”

“What do you mean, ‘freedom’?” asked the soldier sitting next to Kira. His name tag said BROWN. “We have freedom—what he has is anarchy.”

“Safety, then,” said Gianna.

Private Brown hefted his rifle. “What do you call this?”

“Large communities were the first to fall in the Partial rebellion,” said Gianna. “Population centers make easy targets, and if the Partials, wherever they are, develop a new strain of RM that overcomes our immunity, guns aren’t going to do any good against it. A place like East Meadow would be the worst possible place you could be.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” said Brown. “I’m glad all my life-risking is so appreciated.”

“I’m not saying you’re not appreciated,” said Gianna. “I’m just saying . . . well, I just said what I’m saying. Obviously I chose to live in East Meadow, I’m just pointing out why he maybe didn’t.”

“He’s probably a Voicer,” growled another soldier. “Raising those kids to be spies or assassins or hell only knows what else.”

Private Brown cussed him out, and Kira turned away, ignoring them and feeling the wind on her face. She’d heard enough of these arguments to last a lifetime. It was a hot day, but the wind made it pleasant enough, and she always enjoyed the chance to snuggle up to Marcus. She thought about her night, and her morning, and the dead child and everything else. What was it my father used to say? she thought. “I am stronger than my trials.”

I am stronger than my trials.

It was hours later when they reached Asharoken, and the sky was already beginning to dim. Kira hoped they could finish the salvage quickly and camp somewhere farther from the shore. Asharoken was more of a neighborhood than a town, connected to the rest of the island by an unbroken mass of houses and roads and buildings, but Kira could instantly see why the grunt runs had avoided it for so long—it was a narrow isthmus of land stretching north from the island, the sound on one side and a bay on the other. One shore made people nervous enough; two was almost too much to handle.

The wagon stopped in front of a small veterinary clinic, and Marcus groaned.

“You didn’t say it was a dog clinic, Jayden—what are we going to find here?”

Jayden jumped down from the wagon. “If I knew that, I would have picked it up myself when I was here two days ago. Grunts tagged meds and an X-ray machine; go do your thing.”

Marcus hopped down to the street, and both he and Jayden held up a hand to help Kira. In a fit of mischief she took both hands, and smiled inwardly as they helped her down with sullen scowls.

“Sparks, Brown, you go in first,” Jayden barked, and half the soldiers began to pour out of the truck, hauling one of the generators with them. “Patterson, you and your team secure the area, keep it secure, and escort the medics to the next site. It looks like someone’s been through here since yesterday, and I don’t want any surprises.”

“Someone’s been here?” asked Kira. “How can you tell?”

“Eyes and brains and a shiny new haircut,” said Jayden. “It’s probably just a pack rat, but I’m not taking chances on the effing North Shore. If you find something good in there, honey-bunnies, prep it for transport and we’ll pick it up on our way back. I’m taking my team north to site three—Patterson, I want blips every fifteen minutes.” He climbed into the back of the wagon and called out to the driver, “Let’s move.”

The wagon lurched into motion and headed north. Kira slung her medkit over her shoulder and looked around; Asharoken was buried in kudzu, like most of these little cities, but the Long Island Sound was lapping gently at the shore, and the sky was clear and calm. “Pretty town.”

“Eyes up,” said Patterson. The other soldiers fanned out, slowly building a perimeter around the clinic while Sparks and Brown approached the broken building with assault rifles raised to their eye line. Kira was fascinated by the way they moved, their entire bodies turning and raising and lowering to keep that eye line as solid as a rock—it almost looked like the gun was on invisible rails, while the soldier moved freely around it. The front wall of the clinic had been mostly glass, now shattered and overgrown with kudzu, but a central pillar of concrete had been marked with the bright orange glyph of a salvage crew. Kira had done enough runs to recognize most of the glyphs, but this was the one she knew best: “partially catalogued, return with medics.” Sparks and Brown covered each other seamlessly as they entered, picking their way through the rubble and vegetation. Patterson climbed carefully to the roof, keeping to the edges where the footing was firm, and kept watch from elevation.

While they secured the building, Kira and Marcus tested out the generator. It was a heavy frame with two wheels on one end; the bottom held a massive battery and a hand crank, while the top held a small solar panel and coil after coil of cords and plugs. Medics came on every salvage run to keep the workers safe, but when the grunts tagged a piece of medical equipment, they brought these generators so the medics could plug it in, test it, and see if it was worth bringing back. The island was cluttered enough as it was, there was no sense filling East Meadow with salvaged junk they couldn’t even use.

The street was full of parked cars, the paint rusted, the tires flat, and the windows broken by years of neglect and exposure to the elements. One of them held a skeleton, grinning horribly in the driver’s seat—an RM victim who’d tried to go somewhere, tried to drive away from the end of the world. Kira wondered where he’d been trying to go. He hadn’t made it out of his driveway.

A full two minutes later, Brown opened the door again and waved them in. “All clear, but watch your step. Looks like some wild dogs are using this place as a den.”

Marcus smirked. “Loyal little fellas. Must have really loved their vet.”

Kira nodded. “Let’s fire it up.”

Marcus tilted the generator back on its wheels and slowly walked it in, but Kira noticed Brown had pulled up his mask, and she paused to prep her own: a folded cloth bandanna that she dabbed with five tiny drops of menthol. Any bodies left behind would have rotted years ago, like the skeleton in the car, but a pack of dogs would have brought in more carrion of their own, not to mention musk and urine and feces and who knew what else. Kira tied the bandanna around her nose and mouth, and walked in to see Marcus gagging and searching his pockets for his own mask.

“You should pay better attention,” she said smoothly, walking past him to the back room. “All I smell is the brisk scent of mint.”

The med room was well stocked and didn’t look like it had been hit yet—though someone had obviously been rifling through it recently, leaving prints and scuffs in the thick layer of dust. Probably the grunts, she thought, though I’ve never seen a grunt run actually sort through the meds before.

Kira started organizing the counter space, designating one area to keep and one to destroy. Salvage training was the first thing the interns learned: which meds could last, and for how long, and which were too far gone to be safe. Bringing expired medication back to East Meadow was even worse than bringing back broken machines, not because they took up space but because they were dangerous. The medics were the caretakers of the entire human race; the last thing they needed was for someone to take the wrong pills—or worse yet, for a vast stockpile of discarded medication to get into the water table. It was safer and easier to sort it out here; they’d even learned how to deal with animal meds, for exactly this kind of scenario—a dog antibiotic was still, at the end of the day, an antibiotic, and without extensive manufacturing facilities, the islanders had to take what they could get. Kira was already sorting the cupboards efficiently when Marcus staggered in, his mask finally in place.

“This place smells like a crypt.”

“It is a crypt.”

“And the animals are not the worst part,” he said, “though I swear there must be a whole dog civilization in here to have this kind of stink.” He opened another cupboard and started tossing medicines into Kira’s piles, knowing exactly which was which without even looking. “No,” he said, “the worst part is the dust. Whatever else we collect from this place, I’m taking a pound of it home in my lungs.”