Frozen

Part the Second

LILACS OUT OF THE DEAD LAND

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

—MASON COOLEY

11

NAT HAD NO IDEA HOW WES HAD SURVIVED that hit. She was burning with adrenaline, fear, and excitement. His heroics were no joke, not like the show he’d conjured up at the casino. For the first time, she allowed herself to feel optimistic—maybe there was more to this cocky runner after all.

“Get someone to help you and choose wisely,” Manny had advised grudgingly. “Runners will swear up and down they can take you to where you want to go, but instead most of them end up dumping their passengers or selling them to slavers. Or they’re overtaken by slavers, which is almost the same thing. Or they give up when the food runs out. You want someone who can think on his feet, who’s fast, who’s brave.”

She had chosen Wes, and while she still wouldn’t put it past him to ditch her if a better opportunity came along—and she sure wasn’t ready to trust him with the treasure she carried: the stone she wore on a chain around her neck—she was on her way now, and he had gotten her this far.

But still a long way to go, the monster in her head reminded. Thankfully I am patient.

Her happiness faded a little at that—to know each step led her closer to fulfilling the darkness of her dreams. For a moment, she saw the face of her former commander again. You are not using the extent of your power, he had told her. You do not even try. She wondered how much harder he would have tried to break her, if he had known what her dreams bore, if he knew about the monster in her head.

“You okay?” she asked Wes.

He gave her quick nod, but his face grimaced in pain. “It’ll pass. It’s just the shock. You?”

She shrugged. “How far to the fence?”

“Couple of blocks, we should be clear,” he said, as the truck made its way far from the glittering lights of New Vegas and the snowy terrain became harder to navigate.

“Good.”

Even though there was no physical barrier that kept the city from the borderlands, the fence was as real as the invisible electric volts that killed anyone who breached it. Nat noticed the group in the LTV hold their breath as they crossed silently into the darkness. But Farouk had done his job, and they made it through without incident.

Beyond the fence was a mountain of junk. A century of trash tossed over the border, forgotten and left to rot in the endless cold. “No wonder they call it the Trash Pile,” Nat said, a little awed by all the strange electronic equipment, rusted, burned-out cars, and mountains of plastic, cardboard, and glass.

“My family was from Cali,” Wes said, peering out the window over her shoulder. “My dad said his dad’s dad used to talk about it—how pretty it was, how you could go from the mountains to the desert to the beach. They’d moved after the Flood, of course, and did the March down the Ten. Vegas was the only city left standing. Family legend had it they went straight to the casinos.” He leaned back and gave her a wry smile. She could see that he was still in pain, but trying to make light of it.

“What’s that?” Farouk interrupted suddenly, pointing at the twinkling lights far in the darkness and what looked like distant figures moving through the frozen garbage landscape.

“Don’t mind that,” Wes said curtly. “There’s nothing to see out there. Nothing we want to see, anyway.”

Nat kept silent, staring at the moving lights, wondering how much Wes had told his crew about what they would face out here.

“How’s that second fence coming along?” Wes asked.

The boy turned back to his device, working furiously. The LTV was barreling through the rocky roads and the next barrier was coming up soon. They had to disable it or they would fry.

“There’s some code on it I can’t figure out. It’s got to be one of the German ones—those are the hardest,” grumbled Farouk.

“They must’ve changed it since the last time we did a run,” Shakes said.

“German codes?” Nat asked with a frown.

“The army recycles codes from the old wars. No one can make up new ones. They were lucky to find these,” said Wes.

Nat knew it was the same story for everything. The generation that had come up with the heat suits and discovered cold fusion were long gone: survivors from Before, who remembered a different time, when the world was still green and blue, and who’d marshaled their resources and knowledge to figuring out how to survive the cold. But there were very few scientists these days, and the only books that remained were the physical ones that dated back to the early twenty-first century.

“Can I try?” she asked Farouk.

He handed her the device, a small black phone with a tiny keyboard. “It’s talking to an old Enigma machine, using radio signals. The fence is locked by a certain transmission, but I can’t figure it out. I need to send a message to the machine that’s holding the wall. But this is all it’s giving me,” he said, showing her the screen of numbers.

She stared at the sequence, at the pattern it made, and typed out an answer. “Try it now,” she told Farouk.

He studied her work, then hit the send key. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered.

But a few minutes later, Shakes called excitedly from the driver’s seat. “Fence is down!” he whooped, checking the electromagnetic sensor.

“How’d you do that?” Farouk asked.

“I just saw it.” She shrugged. Numbers came easily to her. Patterns. She’d been able to break the code, and read its simple request. TO OPEN GATE SAY HELLO. She’d simply typed the word “hello” in the code and the fence had opened for her.

“Good work,” Wes said. “You’re almost part of the team.” He smiled. “Hey!” he said, noticing that Daran and Zedric had opened the food packs. “You boys better share.”

Zedric threw him a foil-wrapped object and Wes caught it deftly. “Mmm. Curry pizza burroti.” Wes grinned. “Want a bite?” he offered. “Best McRoti in Vegas. And looks like the boys picked up some McRamen, too.”

“No, thanks.” Nat shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll leave you a piece if you change your mind,” he said. He offered her his chopsticks. “Pull for luck,” he said.

She took one side and the sticks broke off, leaving her with the bigger half.

“You win.” He grinned. He was such a Vegas boy, superstitious about everything, including the chopsticks- wishbone game. He began to unwrap his food, whistling a melody that sounded familiar.

“What is that?”

“Dunno. My mom used to sing it,” he explained, and his face pinched a little.

“Listen, I know you from somewhere—don’t I? I feel like we’ve met before,” she asked him suddenly. She was certain of it, she just couldn’t place him, but it would come to her soon enough. That tune he was whistling . . . if only she could remember, but her memory was gray like her lenses, cloudy; she could put together bits and pieces but not the whole thing, not her whole life.