CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Preserve sat against the base of the Rocky Mountains, on the outskirts of the Denver ruins. Before the Break, the sprawling city had become a megalopolis stretching all the way from Castle Rock to Fort Collins, from Boulder to Bennett. In the years since, it had become an acid-drenched hell, the western edge of the vast poisonous Badlands that consumed the Midwest. Every gutter and depression was filled with cracking salt pans, smoldering phosphorus, or the scattered dust of crystallized bleach. Not a single living plant or animal remained.
Samm and his group set out early in the morning on their journey back to East Meadow—back to bring the humans the cure, and the incredible news that the cure was self-sustaining. He worried about how, if at all, they would convince the humans and Partials to work together, but he supposed their group was a good demonstration: himself, Heron, Ritter, Dwain, and two more recovered Partials named Fergus and Bron; Phan had come with them as well, and Calix on one of their two horses. The Preserve had no horses of its own, just the two that Samm and Heron and Kira had brought with them from New York. Kira had named them, and Samm allowed himself a brief, wistful moment to think of her. The other Partials looked at him, immediately aware of his thoughts through the link. He thought of the horses again, worried about their ability to find food in the Badlands. Calix was riding Bobo, Kira’s horse, and following behind her on a lead was Oddjob, Afa’s curious, disobedient mount, now relegated to a pack animal. He’d always hated being ridden, stubbornly going his own way and ignoring their commands, but he seemed content to follow Bobo. Samm hoped it would last.
Thinking of Oddjob made him think again of Afa, the childlike genius they’d brought with them through the wilderness, the only human on their journey out—and, not coincidentally, the only one who hadn’t made it. He’d been injured in Chicago and finally died in the toxic fields of Colorado. Samm still didn’t know if any human could survive the journey, and Calix was particularly at risk. Her injury made her slower and tied up her body’s resources in healing; if anything happened to her it would slow down the entire group, making them all more vulnerable. Worse still . . . I would miss her, he thought. Afa was my responsibility, but Calix is my friend. If it becomes a question of abandoning her or dying myself . . . I don’t know if I’ll be able to make that choice.
He glanced at Heron as they walked through the corroded city. Several times during the Isolation War he’d envied her detachment, her ability to let all her pain, both physical and emotional, slide off her like she was changing clothes. She had lived through the worst that war had thrown at them, and the worst times since; she could face any problem they came up against, and could make any decision she needed to survive. Even if all of them died crossing the Badlands, she would live. She would make it home, because that was the mission. She was frightening, even to Samm sometimes, and she was hard to understand and even harder to befriend, but she was the group’s best hope. He would have to talk to her in private and put together a contingency plan.
It took them three days to cross the city, and when they reached the eastern fringe, the Badlands spread out before them as far as the eye could see: flat, featureless, and dead. Here and there a bone-white tree twisted up from the poisoned soil, murdered by the rain and baked brittle by the sun. No longer forced to weave between buildings, they were able to pick up speed, and their first day east of Denver they traveled nearly as far as they had in the first three days combined. Heron took the lead, ranging far ahead to scout out the territory. Phan kept up admirably, not quite as resilient as Samm but still managing to show more endurance than the four Partials still healing from their comas. The horses were the slowest, built not for speed but for distance; they fell behind in the morning, Calix and Dwain staying with them, but then gradually caught up again as night began to fall. The group had been traveling northeast all day, following I-76 as it curved to follow the path of the South Platte River, and Samm couldn’t help but notice that the night air was abnormally cold. Calix caught up to the others along the side of a foul-smelling river. She was shivering.
“We need to camp soon,” said Dwain, accompanying the statement with a silent link message: THIS HUMAN’S NOT DOING WELL.
“It’s cold,” said Phan. “Much colder than usual. We’ll need shelter.”
“We’ll need shelter from more than just cold,” said Heron. “If we’re caught outside when it rains, we’ll be dead in minutes.”
“It’s not going to rain,” said Calix. “I’ve been reading these skies since I was four.”
“Color me unconvinced,” said Heron. “We go forward or we go back; we’re not staying outside.”
Now that he’d stopped walking, Samm felt the chill air creeping through his arms and chest. “Is it supposed to be this cold?”
“No,” said Phan. “The last few weeks have been cooler than usual, but this is like nothing I’ve ever felt. Is this always like this out in the Badlands?”
“It wasn’t when we came through here before,” said Samm.
“The horses need to stop,” said Calix. “They can’t keep this pace much longer.”
“We should have stopped in the last town,” said Ritter. He looked at Heron sharply, his displeasure strongly evident on the link. “Too bad our scout led us into the middle of nowhere.”
“This is the Midwest,” said Heron. “Everywhere is the middle of nowhere. The next town is only another two miles, maybe less if we can find an outlying farmhouse.”
“Keep moving,” said Samm, and the group fell back into step. They kept an even pace with the horses now, tired and thirsty and rubbing their arms in the cold. The temperature seemed to plummet even further as they walked, and when they finally saw a row of low houses, they left the road eagerly, numb and exhausted. The highway was on a slight elevation, and the hill running down to the buildings was covered with dry, brittle grass that crunched like eggshells under their feet. It was an old farming community, like Heron had predicted, the fields now barren and desolate. The first house in the row was too ruined to serve as a proper shelter—a sliding glass door in the back had broken years ago, and a decade of windstorms had filled the interior with toxic dirt and dust. The next house was better, but too small to house them all. Samm left the Partials there, telling them to seal the doors and windows as well as they could, and took the horses and humans to the third house down. Heron followed him, and he sighed. She was never good with orders.
“You need to show them how to cover the gaps,” said Samm. “I can show Calix and Phan.”
“They’re big boys,” said Heron. “They can deal with it.”
“So you want to deal with the horses?”
“I want to see if this godforsaken hole has anything resembling a downtown,” said Heron. “We’ll use almost all the water we packed just on the horses, and we need to find more.”
“Take Ritter,” said Samm. “We shouldn’t go anywhere alone.”
“I’m taking you.”
Samm glanced at Calix, but she was apparently too tired to have been paying attention. Even Phan seemed ready to collapse. “I need to take care of the horses.”
“So take care of them,” said Heron. “Just don’t take all night.”
Samm linked his frustration, but said nothing and got to work. If Heron wanted to get him alone, it was almost certainly because she wanted to talk, and given how rare that was, he decided it was a good idea to know what she was thinking. He took Phan and Calix inside and set them up in the basement storage room—there was no food or water, but more important there were no exterior windows, and the surfaces were clear of toxic buildup. The horses he set up in the living room, doing his best to cover the floor with plastic tarps—not to keep them from fouling the carpet, but to keep them from eating it. He found some metal pans in the kitchen and filled them with the water they’d brought with them, then wearily unloaded their packs and saddles while they drank. It was more than half an hour later when he trudged back outside; the sky was dark and starless, and the freezing air bit at his nose and cheeks.
“This way,” said Heron, hopping down from the hood of the rusted van she’d been sitting on. “There’s a school about a mile down the road, with three big plastic jugs of water in the teachers’ lounge.”
“I told you not to go anywhere alone,” said Samm, walking beside her down the road. “What if you’d gotten injured and nobody knew where you were?”
“If I get injured in an empty town a thousand miles from any possible enemy, I deserve to die.”
“Well . . . we wouldn’t leave without you.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Samm linked his exasperation. “I assume I’m here because you wanted to talk about something.”
“Interesting,” said Heron. “What do I want to talk about?”
“I have no idea,” said Samm. “Since you’re playing coy, I’ll start with the items on my own agenda. I need to know how dedicated you are to this mission.”
“I’m here,” said Heron simply.
“Here for how long?” asked Samm. “Here until something flips your loyalties backward again?”
“The Third Division survived for thirteen years because something in that Preserve kept them alive,” said Heron. “Whatever it is—maybe Williams, maybe their life support system, maybe the microbes in the dirt that keep the plants healthy—could keep me alive as well. The secret to my survival is back there, in the Preserve, along with all the food and water and shelter I could ever need. And yet I’m here.”
Samm understood. Survival was all she cared for, and for her to leave that behind was more meaningful than he’d given her credit for. “You’re here,” he agreed. “You wouldn’t have left the Preserve if you weren’t truly dedicated to something even more important.” His emotions wrestled inside him, guilt and etiquette warring with the importance of his mission, until finally the latter won out. “Heron, I doubt it comes as much of a surprise to you when I say that I rarely have any idea what you’re thinking and what you are trying to accomplish. But I still trust you, and most of the time that’s good enough. Right now, though, I need to know what you’re trying to do by accompanying us. Maybe you want to help us on our mission to save the species, or maybe you just want to get back to Dr. Morgan. Maybe you’ll use us to get through the Badlands and then abandon us as soon as we’re back on safe ground. Maybe you’ll do something else I haven’t thought of yet. But . . . this is important. The information we have might save the human species, and you might be the only one strong enough to deliver it. What I need to know is if you will.”
Heron was silent a moment, and Samm sensed nothing through the link. He marveled once again at her ability to hide her emotions so completely. Why would the espionage models even need to do that? Why give them the power to deceive their own companions, when they were designed to deceive humans? Only after she turned a corner, and they started eastward down a long, bare stretch of road, did she speak.
“Badlands is a Preserve term,” said Heron.
“Excuse me?”
“We called it the toxic wasteland before,” said Heron. “That’s what Afa called it, and it’s the most descriptive term. Badlands is the term the humans in the Preserve use, and now you use it.”
“Are you saying I’m becoming one of them?” asked Samm. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
“I never said anything was bothering me.”
“Then why are you acting so strange?” asked Samm. “You wanted me to hurry, but you wouldn’t help me with the work; you brought me out here alone, but you don’t want to talk.”
“We’re talking.”
“Does this count?”
“I don’t know.”
Samm’s link crackled with frustration. “What is that supposed to mean?”
They walked a moment in silence, the dark clouds blotting out the moon. “You’re cold,” said Heron. “Let me help you stay warm.” She put her arm around him.
Samm was too surprised to speak, and faltered a step as he walked. He was acutely aware of Heron’s body against his, her arm around his shoulders, the side of her breast pressed softly by his arm. The cold breeze lifted her hair, black strands wafting across his face and ear. He slowed to a stop.
“What are you doing?”
She curled around in front of him, keeping one arm behind his back and encircling him with the other. She pulled him close and kissed him, her lips soft and moist, her fingers twining gently in his hair. He froze, too stunned to move, then grabbed her arms and pushed her away.
“What are you doing?” he asked again.
“It’s called a kiss,” said Heron. “You did it to Kira once, so I know you know what it is.”
“Of course I know what it is,” said Samm, his link data a jumbled mess of confusion and shock and arousal. “Why are you doing it to me?”
“I wanted to know what it felt like,” she said. Her link data was as blank as ever. “Calix said you kissed her, too.”
“Calix told you that?” Calix hated Heron; that was almost as unbelievable as the kiss.
“I can be very persuasive.” She turned east again and started walking. “I was trained to use whatever means I could to extract information from humans—male or female. None of those techniques even work on Partials, because you never developed the ability to read the same cues.”
Samm ran to catch up. “Heron, tell me what’s going on.” He grabbed her arm. “We’ve known each other for almost twenty years, and that . . .” He looked at the clouds. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Your decisions are stupid,” said Heron. “Our only operational goal is survival, by any means necessary, and you’ve had that in your hands a dozen times now just to throw it away. Your plans don’t lead toward that end; your tactics don’t support it. You’re dying in seven months if you don’t do something, and yet you’re leaving behind your best chance to stay alive. Now Calix says you’re in love with Kira, and that’s the only thing that explains anything you’re doing. They taught us in our training that love makes you stupid, that we could use that against our enemies, but you . . .” She turned to face him. “You’re not even happy. You’re throwing away your own life because you love someone who’s not here anymore, and you hate it, and it’s killing you. Love is the worst thing that ever happened to you, but you still love her.”
She paused just long enough that Samm thought she was finished, and then spoke again.
“I . . . ,” she began. “I wanted to see what that felt like.”
Heron fell silent, but her eyes never left Samm’s, and his mind swam. He didn’t know how to respond or where to start, or even what he felt about Kira or Heron or anyone else.
“Kissing isn’t love,” he finally mumbled.
“Crossing the wasteland is?”
“Maybe,” said Samm. “Heron, love isn’t a weapon.”
“Everything’s a weapon.”
“Everything can be used as a weapon,” said Samm, “but that’s not the same thing. Love is when you have the opportunity of turning someone’s feelings or trust or vulnerability against them, but you don’t. You make promises you don’t want to keep, but you keep them because they’re right; you help people who can’t help you back.” He turned up his palms, trying to describe something he could only barely define for himself. “You . . . call it the Badlands instead of the wasteland.”
“You kill yourself,” said Heron.
“You lose yourself,” said Samm. “Love is when you find something so great, so . . . necessary, that it becomes more important to you than your own goals, than your own life—not because your life has no meaning without it, but because it gives your life a meaning it never had before.”
“Life is its own meaning,” said Heron. “We live because otherwise we die. There is no meaning in death, no hollow gestures, no glorious sacrifices. Love ruins your ability to make those decisions properly.”
Samm shook his head. “Do you realize I used to envy you? I used to think how great it would be if nothing ever got to me, and I never got sad and I never lost anything I loved, and my heart never broke over any of the stupid, meaningless tragedies that have defined our entire existence. Did you know ParaGen built us to love? To empathize? They gave us emotions specifically to make us value human life, to love them. All it did was make it hurt that much more when we finally realized they didn’t love us back. And you . . . you never let that or anything else ever bother you. I used to think that was something to strive for. But you’ve pushed your emotions so deep inside that I can’t even feel them on the link. Tactical data, health data, location and combat, that’s all there, but your emotions are gone. You’re like a black hole, Heron, and that’s not good. That’s not healthy.”
“The espionage models were built differently,” said Heron. “You don’t feel my emotions because I don’t feel them either. And you’re right about me—I’m a black hole. I’m a hollow shell. You think I’m being mysterious but I’m just . . . confused. I thought that maybe if I kissed you, if I felt what Kira felt, or Calix, then maybe . . .” She turned away. “It didn’t work.”
Samm stood in shock, trying to process what she’d said. “Why would anyone do that?” he asked. “Why make a person, and then take away everything that makes them a person?”
Heron’s link data was as empty as always. “Because it helps us survive.”