Occasionally, a Malignant would skirt along one of the buildings and the group would pause in their work, only to resume when the creature moved on, careful not to touch anything wet. I raised my gaze and froze.
“Fawke, look.” I pointed to where a plume of smoke drifted above the faraway mountain. Malignants didn’t build fires. The question of more survivors had been answered.
7
“That would take weeks to get to. Most likely months. Hordes of Malignants and who knows what else to get through.” Ezra shook his head. “But orders are orders, and we can’t deny the fact we aren’t alone anymore.
“You’re the only one who knows about such orders,” Dante said. “How do the rest of us know you aren’t leading us from safety into danger for a purpose of your own?”
Ezra’s eyes narrowed. “For what reason? I’m a lifer here. What do I care where we go or stay?”
“Finding survivors gives you a chance of escaping this place, doesn’t it?” Now that no rain remained on my leather suit, I peeled it off. “These survivors could be rebels against Soriah, am I right?”
“Maybe. My orders weren’t very clear.” He grabbed a protein bar from a box. “We couldn’t leave anytime soon, anyway. It would be stupid to leave all of our supplies behind which means we need a way of transporting them.”
“A wagon.” Fawke folded his rubber suit. “We could have one built by the time the rain dries.”
“Which means we dug a pit for nothing.” Dante put an arm over his eyes and fell dramatically back onto his bedding.
“It gave you something to do.” I laughed and dressed in my usual clothing of mis-matched pieces scavenged from the room in Soriah. Then, sobering, I asked, “Is there a way to communicate with the leaders of Soriah?”
“I have a radio, but we have a limited amount of calls.” Ezra pulled a rectangle box from his pack.
“I think this warrants a call. We need to know what they want us to do. Messing up out here has consequences I don’t like.” I took the box and set it on a cabinet. “How does it work?”
Ezra fiddled with a knob on the side of the box. A stern-faced woman in black appeared after a few minutes of nothing but a white wall. “Hello, Ezra. It’s been a very long time.”
I stepped in front of the screen. “I’m Crynn Dayholt, leader of the Stalkers. We’ve found a plume of smoke rising above a mountain in the distance and want to know our next step.”
The woman looked taken aback at my appearance, then gave a cold smile. “Finally, a leader with a backbone. Young, too, I see. I will relay this information to President Cane and get back to you tomorrow.” The screen went black.
“President Cane?”
Fawke shrugged. “I’ve only heard the name a couple of times. He or she is the phantom leader of Soriah. From what I know, the president never leaves the hill and only a select few have ever seen the president’s face.”
“Who was the woman we spoke to?” I turned to Ezra.
“Sharon. She’s the president’s voice. Her words, not mine.” He plopped into a cross-legged sitting position. “I haven’t spoken to her since the day before I got here, and she gave me that box. She’s as old and sour-faced as she was then. Said not to call unless we found other survivors. I really didn’t think we would find anyone.”
“How many calls do we have?”
“I don’t know. She only said a finite number.”
It could be that she didn’t want Stalkers bothering her. I stepped to the doorway and stared out at an afternoon barely brighter than it had been during the rain. I had no idea how to build a wagon or even how to get out of the city. Other than making decisions I wasn’t sure were the right ones to be making, I felt useless.
I turned back to the others. “Can we get what we need to build a wagon without venturing outside?”
“The tunnels and buildings should have what we need.” Fawke grabbed a charred piece of wood from the firepit and wrote on the side of a wall. “Six to eight tires, a metal bottom, sides, rope or straps to pull it with…Yeah, we can get this. Do you want to do that today or wait until after we hear from the president?”
“We’ll need a way to build a quick shelter,” Kira pointed out. “Once we leave the city, we won’t have a roof to get under when it rains.”
Fawke added shelter to the list. “Some kind of quickly erected tent or we sleep in the wagon. Maybe Soriah will send us one.”
“Doesn’t hurt to ask when Sharon calls back tomorrow,” Ezra said. “They’ve supplied other things that meant life or death to us. Like the rubber suits.”
“Which means our real purpose here isn’t to kill Malignants, but to find survivors.” I sat on my blankets. “Why? Are these people rebels or were they kicked out of Soriah and left to fend for themselves?”
“If kicked out, then why would Soriah care anymore about them?” Kira opened a can of unidentifiable meat and dumped it into a pot over the fire. “They’re way up in the mountains so they can’t be of much harm to anyone.”
“What if Soriah wants to move back to the city? There are a lot more places for people to reside here once the place is cleaned up.” Moses glanced from one face to the other. “There aren’t enough eighteen-year-olds landing on black
