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The storm hit seconds after the gate snapped shut. A jagged bolt sent brilliant forks sizzling down the rows of solar collectors, while hail hammered their panels in relentless torrents. A second lightning strike connected with one of the solar collectors further afield, toppling it with a screech that sounded like a wounded animal. The distressed human cries it raised in the distance stopped me in my tracks. Were those frightened refugees or Kufugaki? I expected to encounter both, eventually, although until this morning, thought the latter's hunting parties stalked their prey further from the holodome.
Hunched low, I took a diagonal course through the field, careful to avoid contact with the metal structures. Slip-sliding, I struggled for purchase over ground made slick as ice by the downpour, and on a path that was taking me straight into the eye of the storm.
As I reached the lightning blasted collector, a group of contorted, rag-clad women emerged from behind its wreckage. The largest of them, nearly bald but for a few soaked strands of long black hair, rushed at me gibbering, while her companions lumbered into flanking positions.
One slash from my naginata opened a geyser in the leader's neck. When she sank to her knees, gurgling, her hunting buddies fell on her hungrily.
So much for honor among cannibals.
A few more short swipes finished off the others.
I skirted the downed collector, intending to resume my westward path. The mist was so thick, I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me. The toe of my boot caught something hard-edged, and as I pitched forward, the naginata flew from my hand. Face-planting in a heap of sodden canvas, I found the reason for the distress cry I'd heard earlier.
I'd landed smack between his legs in prime sniffing position. Luckily for me, death came before he'd had time to shit himself. Judging from his camo field suit, he was one of Mazawa’s lackeys.
The Kufugaki who'd intended him for lunch was not amused. He sprang at me with a low snarl, ropes of bloody spittle trailing from his chin. I rolled clear, right before he landed on the body. As I groped for my weapon in the mud and sodden grass, he launched himself again, clawing at my legs with ragged fingernails that left deep scratches in their wake.
"Bastard!" I screamed. "Those were my best leathers!"
I kicked for all I was worth, but even after driving what was left of his nose into his brain, he still kept coming. Maybe the abundance of fresh refugee meat around here made these Kufugaki stronger and meaner than the ones back home. Although I'd never seen one so tenacious, I'd had my fill of flesh-eating mutants for the day.
I unholstered my laser pistol.
A blast to the face put the bastard out of his misery.
Certain our skirmish would draw out more of the damned things, I crawled through the mud and snatched up my naginata. Silent as the dead, I waited in the downpour.
When no more shambled out of the mist, I set about doing what I always did after a kill: searching the body for valuables. I liked to think of them as a bonus. Besides, if I didn't take them, someone else would.
I started with the soldier. He'd been wearing a pack, which now lay a few yards from his body. A quick search yielded a canteen, a couple of badly smashed protein bars, and a camouflage poncho-hooch, a body heat conserving tarp. Beneath it, I found a pair of field glasses and a small tablet. Thinking I'd struck gold, I let out a whoop. Finally, I could contact Satoshi!
But the moment I withdrew it, it fell to pieces in my hands.
Then I saw the soldier's black wristlet. The military-grade ones had shockproof casings. Although badly cracked, the soft, green glow of its face told me it was still working. I began fiddling with the buttons on its sides, hoping to warn Satoshi and the others, but no matter how many combinations I tried, couldn't get past the security log-in. Thinking I might have better luck later, when it and I were in drier surroundings, I stuffed it in my pocket.
As I stood, wiping the mud from my pants and torn anorak, I spied a pair of handlebars in the long grass. When I saw what they belonged to, my heart leapt. The soldier had been riding a TerraCycle when the Kufugaki picked him off. Jackpot!
If it worked.
I righted it for a better look. Like the soldier's uniform, it was painted in dull colors and abstract camo shapes. Dents covered its chassis and mud clogged the deep treads in its thick studded tires. Its headlamp hadn't survived the crash, so I'd have to rig something for night driving—
Again, if it worked.
Its battery indicator wasn't reassuring, the needle teetering at less-than-half-mast, but then, beggars couldn't be choosers.
It took a ton of coaxing and more than a few false starts. I was completely soaked by the time the bike sputtered to life and stayed that way. I stashed the soldier's pack in the underseat compartment, clambered astride, and with hail pinging off my goggles, roared westward.
Unpaved maintenance accessways ran the length of the Solar Fields, each bordering a long row of solar collectors. Those closest to the citadel were well-maintained, but the further from the holodome I traveled, the more derelict its equipment and narrower the passages between them became. Once on a diagonal path, I now had to ease the bike over hillocks, across waterlogged ditches, and around fallen equipment. More often than not, I had to pivot and pull the bike where it needed to go, which wasn't easy. Though fairly lightweight, the TerraCycle was too large for me, and thanks to some truly awkward maneuvering, threatened to pin me beneath it quite a few times. I was almost grateful for the rain, the lack of witnesses to my stupidity it afforded. What few travelers I met this far from New Edo looked like drowned rats and averted their gazes as I passed.
The Solar Fields ended in trampled weeds and more mud. Just beyond them, however, a set of tire tracks leading into the brush looked like they matched my bike's.
Though tempted to follow them—I was heading roughly in that direction anyway—whetting my curiosity could end badly. Soldiers, like Kufugaki, always tended to travel in packs, and any woman traveling alone was fair game. Though more than capable of handling myself, I wanted to get through the rest of the day with as little hassle as possible.
Then again, I reasoned, my soldier had been alone and dressed to meld with his surroundings, which suggested he might have been on some kind of reconnaissance mission. Although his were the only machine-made tracks here, there might be a village nearby. I needed supplies, and the TerraCycle’s battery wasn't going to last indefinitely. Hassle or not, I decided to take my chances.
The mud ended in hard pack: the remains of an old road. Vines sprawled across its cracked pavement and itadori encroached in thick hedges from either side. Behind them, stretching into the distance, trees intertwined in a dense canopy.
Hoping the knotweed might still be tender enough to eat, I left the bike idling while I went to examine the bamboo-like shoots of the wild greens. I found a few handfuls still small enough to steam over rocks later. Not much, but fresh anything beat freeze-dried—or in my case, nothing—any day. My fists clenched at the thought. How the hell did Mazawa expect me to do this in one week with no food! Of course, he'd also threatened surveillance for the duration of my journey, but so far, the storm had hindered the progress of any monitoring devices, manned or otherwise.
I continued on for what felt like days instead of hours, signs of crushed vegetation and bark torn from fallen trees my only guideposts. In some places, entire sections of the road had collapsed, forcing me to wheel the bike down steep embankments or over precariously narrow paths littered with rocks and rotting logs in the misty woods. Finally, I spotted tracks and the land rose to meet the ruined highway once more.
By the time the first rooftops came into view, shadows were suffusing the already-gloomy day with singular intention. It looked like I might have an hour of daylight left, if I was lucky, but I couldn't just ride into town—not if more of Mazawa's men were down there.
I pulled the field glasses from the underseat compartment. A quick scan of the nearest buildings revealed collapsed roofs and crumbling walls. Profusions of ivy clambered over the charred shells of abandoned outbuildings and fissures patterned the street in a jagged mosaic, before ending in a large crater. Further into town, some of the smaller surviving buildings showed more signs of life: wan light flickered in one's window and thick smoke curled behind another. A scrawny cat pounced in the witchgrass that lined both sides of the street, raising indignant calls from a pair of nearby crows, but I saw no hovercraft or TerraCycles bearing New Edo's sigil. No conveyances of any kind.
More tracks and tamped grass marked the way into town. Reassured by the lack of military presence, I pushed onto the trail, which led me through the woods to a weed-choked lot behind a cluster of buildings with shattered windows and buckled walls.
My presence did not go unnoticed, however...