“These are Astoria and Dirk.”
Dirk offered a quick nod, while Astoria stared her down as if thinking how best to gut H124 so she could eat her for dinner later.
“Be nice,” Byron told Astoria.
The brawny woman relaxed her shoulders. “Always.” Her chestnut eyes narrowed on H124. Again it gave her the shivers.
“Twins who couldn’t be more unalike,” Byron told her. “Astoria will shiv you in the gut for your shoes, and Dirk will weep over a swatted fly.”
Indignation flashed in Dirk’s eyes. “That’s not entirely true.”
Byron smiled ruefully. “Yeah. Not entirely.” He patted Dirk on the arm. “But he knows his way around tech, and can sneak into anything.”
“Glad I can be of some use,” Dirk huffed.
Byron gestured toward the car. “Pile in.” He handed back H124’s bag, sans the knife and Willoughby’s PRD. But it still had her MREs, books, and water bottle, now empty.
Astoria and Dirk got in the back, as Byron opened the door for H124. He closed and locked the door, and got in.
He pulled away from the encampment, weaving between randomly parked cars. They pulled out onto a main road, H124 staring out at the desolation. She leaned forward, looking up at the sky. The asteroid was out there, and she was losing precious time every minute she was with them.
She turned to Byron. “Please,” she said. “I have to finish my mission.”
“Our people are getting killed.”
“I know, but a hell of a lot more are going to suffer the same fate if I don’t get out of here.”
Dirk leaned forward from the back seat. “What’s she talking about?”
Byron waved him off. “Nothing.”
“Nothing!” H124 yelled. “Nothing?”
Byron gave her a soft gaze. “Tell you what. You get us in, you’ll have an opportunity to warn people.”
“How? You know how to do some kind of pirate broadcast?”
Astoria chuckled in the back seat, as if that were the stupidest question she’d ever heard.
“I see you already thought of that option,” Byron told H124. “I’ll show you when we get there.”
“And then?” she asked, raising a brow.
“We let you go.”
The back seat erupted in laughter. “Yeah, we’ll let you go,” repeated Astoria.
Dirk was still leaning toward the front seat. “Warn them about what?”
H124 turned to face him. “An asteroid.”
“An aster what?”
“It’s a space rock,” Byron chimed in, “and supposedly it’s going to slam into the planet.”
Dirk’s eyes widened. “And you didn’t think to tell us?”
Byron closed his eyes and shook his head, waving it off. “We don’t even know if it’s really coming.” He looked to H124. “You said that lab you found was ancient. It could have been malfunctioning.”
She turned to him. “Is it worth taking the risk?”
Byron pressed his lips together. “You’ll have the chance to warn people in Delta City,” he assured her. “That’s all I can do.”
“And then let me go,” she added.
“Yeah,” he said. “And then let you go.”
She didn’t believe him at all.
Chapter18
Long before they reached the city, H124 could smell it. “What is that?”
Byron wrinkled his nose. “Methane.”
She fought the urge to gag. “Where is it coming from?”
“The infrastructure of Delta City can’t handle the population. A long time ago, they started pumping the sewage outside the city. They have sewers within, but outside . . .”
“It just runs off like rivers?”
“Rivers of shit,” Astoria said from the back seat.
H124 pulled her shirt up over her nose. It didn’t help. She could feel the back of her mouth start to water, a precursor of what was to come. Digging around in her bag, she pulled out the scarf she’d found in the weather shelter. She tied it around her face, covering her nose and mouth. It didn’t help much.
“It works well for us,” Dirk said.
She looked back at him incredulously. “What do you mean?”
“It’s where we bottle all the methane that powers our cars.”
She looked away in disgust. “Ugh.”
Byron wrinkled his nose. “It’s dangerous, though. The methane runners can get blown sky-high sometimes. The gas is extremely volatile. Just a spark. and whamo! You’re bottling methane for the angelic choir.”
“The angelic choir? Who are they?”
Byron looked at her. “You know. Checking in at the pearly gates?”
She gave him a blank stare.
“Wow. You really don’t get out much.”
They drove on, storm clouds gathering above. Late afternoon changed into evening. Soon it grew so dark she could see the dim glow of the distant city.
All around them the ground glistened and squished as far out as she could see. The scent of urine stung the inside of her nose. She tried to breathe through her mouth and think about something else.
The radiance grew brighter and brighter. She could see a wall looming before them, the same orange glow that her own city let off, the same bright pinpoints from the floating lights. But the atmospheric shield was different. It rose straight up, stretching across the horizon. She leaned forward in the passenger seat, trying to gauge the top of it, but couldn’t. “Is that a wall?” she asked.
He shook his head. “A dome. So big it just looks like a wall.”
Her mouth fell open. “How big is this city?” She didn’t know what Lake Michigan or the Mississippi delta were.
“More than seven hundred miles long, if you can picture that.”
She tried to imagine how big that was and how many people lived there. He gauged her astonishment. “I’m guessing you might be from New Atlantic. This place isn’t tucked away and orderly like your city. This is going to be rough.”
Just out the window, waves of fecal matter flew up from the wheels. She was sickened that this was her car plowing through the muck. It wouldn’t take long for the panels to get caked.
Still they drove on. The dome kept growing. She kept thinking they’d reach the edge at any moment, but instead it just loomed larger. Soon
