Guns and Dust

Adina sat in the passenger seat of the bearcat, enjoying the breeze coming through the open armored window as they rolled across the blank plain, heading westward into what, according to Asher’s maps, was emptiness. There were hummocks of tough grass that created mounds that small animals that lived out here found shelter in. But other than that, it was a barren plain, scorched by the sun to a forty-five-degree celsius flatiron of dirt, scoured by dancing dust devils and grit-laden winds.

Caravans, and ‘normal’ folks avoided these areas. There just wasn’t anything in them that warranted anyone’s time to explore. Except apparently the longhunters. She drifted, dozing in the thirty-mile-an-hour wind created as the bearcat rolled over the open ground, glad to be out of the stifling heat of the urban landscape where they’d spent the last few days.

Asher was still as friendly and kind to her as he’d been in the rift, and the sex continued to be great, but the crease had reappeared between his eyebrows as soon as they’d left the rift. The hardness she’d all but forgotten that had scared her when they first met was back. It had slid effortlessly into place like him pulling on his armored long coat. He was once again as armored internally and externally as the bearcat they were riding in.

He’d led them to another cityruin in the quarantine zone. It was bigger than the one the rift had torn the heart out. Being in the quarantine zones still made her nervous, but Asher’s confidence was infectious.

He’d said, “Besides, you’re immune now to most things now. Any of the biological agents that might still be viable after this long don’t stand a chance against what’s running around in your bloodstream.”

“What about ‘survivors’?” Images of the deranged, terrifying hordes of radiation or toxin-twisted cannibals sent shivers up her back.

He smiled at her. It was playful, but felt half-hearted, held in check by the crease between his eyebrows, his returned armor. “If there are any,” he gestured to the towering ruins around them, “there aren’t many. They still need food and water to survive. Have you seen any rats? Rats are usually a good warning sign that people might be around. Dogs are even better, but rats are a stable source of protein. If rats can live there, that means there’s some kind of water. No rats – no people.” He grinned. “Usually. I’ve been surprised once or twice though.”

She’d sat up straighter, looking for indications of rats and any other telltale signs there might be human inhabitants.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve been through here numerous times. There’s no one home.”

They’d climbed up into groaning towers of rotting metal wandering through ancient rooms. He led her through some without even stopping to look for useful salvage, others he systematically searched, marking the locations with arcane-looking glyphs.

“What are you looking for?”

He checked a sign on a door and moved on. “Data nodes. Places where they used to store information on computers.”‘

She’d heard of computers – machines that stored information. She’d even seen pictures of the sleek devices.

“Data?”

“Data is sort of the ingredients that make up useful information. If you find a history, say of a place or time, the individual people it talks about and individual events that were going on would be the data that make up the history.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Does that make sense?”

She nodded, warily scanning the environment. Buildings like the one they were in were deathtraps. Entire floors would collapse from the lightest step and there was always the concern that there might be something or someone living inside, no matter what Asher said.

They’d been quietly searching a giant room filled with dusty, partially collapsed desks and rows of file and storage cabinets when she finally came back around to the subject.

“What kind of ‘information’ are you looking for?” She knew what the word meant in the most general sense, but she’d learned that assuming she understood what he was saying was usually the wrong thing to do. Everything in her chest warmed at the way he explained things to her. He never treated her like she was stupid for asking questions.

He’d shrugged. It was a resigned sort of gesture that spoke of a lot of searching with little to show for it. “Sometimes, I don’t know; information about the world before. Things that might help us fix what’s broken. Science, technical information, even farming tips that can help the city states.”

“Not just Cosanti? But I thought you said the city states fight each other. If you fight, why do you help each other?”

He nodded, sorting through stacks of the shiny silver disks that she only knew as common decorations.

“We do fight sometimes. But it’s not like it is out here in the wastes with raiders and tribes just going after each other like packs of dogs.” As he looked at disks, he sent them soaring out the open side of the building one after another with a playful flick of his wrist. They floated, spinning and glittering for a moment before turning and falling away toward the ground several hundred feet below. “There’s an understanding all the city states share. It isn’t something that’s written down or talked about in so many words. Everyone understands that we’re all that’s left. We don’t have to like each other or agree. Sure, sometimes disagreements boil over into fighting, we even go to war. But everyone knows there’s a bigger picture. We – the city states, exist to help humanity thrive again. That understanding changes things. We share what we know with each other whenever we can because we’ve seen what happens when information or skills are horded. It only takes one plague or catastrophe for those things to be lost, potentially forever. Disagreements or not, all the city states know that we need each other.” He gestured out the open side of the building at the cityruin. It seemed to shift and dance, the heat waves coming off the oven-hot buildings bending the air between them into shimmering curtains. “There are a lot of people out there in the world.” He pointed as if beyond the cityruin. “Or people that will be out there; that need us to work together. ‘Wise is the man who plants a tree knowing he will never sit in its shade.'”

Adina screwed up her face trying to figure out the analogy. “What’s that mean?”

Asher smiled and looked up from the disks. “You know the old saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket?”

“Yes.”

“It’s kind of like that. What we do now will have lasting effects that we may never live see, but they can change the world.” Shifting topics, he held up a disk. “These store information if you have a machine that can read them.” He handed it to her. “That one played music.”

“How? It’s just a piece of plastic.” She read the barely legible label. D…eche M…de – Antholo… She’d cut up or broken disks like this to make shiny, reflective decorations her whole life. They were common around gardens, used to scare away birds.

“The shiny surface is covered with little indentations that the player reads as it spins. Disks like this survive much better than magnetic tape or disks. The bombs destroyed most magnetic storage.”

“By blowing them up?”

Asher dropped the stack he was looking at, letting them clatter to the debris covered floor and looked around. “Nothing here.” He turned to her. “When a bomb like those that wiped out the world goes off, it puts out a pulse of energy. It’s like when you feel heat from the sun or a fire, but it’s a different kind of energy. It disrupts the magnetic alignment or destroys it, depending on what the data is stored on.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Like the way magnets attract and repel.”

He nodded, still scanning around. “Yeah. That’s probably an easier way to think of it.” He stepped close, watching her eyes and gave her a kiss. “You’re so smart.”

He’d done that a lot since her breakdown in the open hatch of the bearcat, telling her she was smart, complimenting her on her intelligence, and helping her navigate through so many things she didn’t understand. Where he’d found them still intact, he’d picked up books. Most of them crumbled to powder as soon as they were disturbed. The filing cabinets in this office were full of thick dust that had once been paper.

She could read, but it was only enough to read a ledger or the label on a crate, not pages on pages of words strung together. She’d heard about books and had seen a few which were always delicate and jealously guarded. Some were supposed to be nothing but stories, filled with descriptions and ‘painting with words’ as the man who’d owned some called it.

Asher was teaching her about physics. He’d shown her how it was spelled and some other pertinent details and told her they were on the lookout for something called a textbook. “Physics affects everything from how a gun works, to how to punch a man, to how the sun in the sky and the weather operate.” He’d taught her about reciprocal force, which was why a gun pushed back when it was fired even if the bullet was going the opposite direction. And every night he had her read from whatever they had. Mostly equipment manuals, but they had found some fragments of books. Some they found were useless for the purpose of improving her reading, filled with numbers and inscrutable lines of symbols Asher told her were called formulas. “Some formulas will be useful. Chemistry and physical science formulas, even accounting.” He tossed the book aside. “This is some kind of computer language. It’s useless unless you have a machine running that language.”

Later when they were back in the bearcat he’d reiterated, “It doesn’t matter what you read. You just need to read. That’s how I learned everything I know.”

To her surprise on the first night in the gigantic cityruin, he’d asked her to teach him what she knew. “You were a shoe maker, right? Show me how you make shoes.”

She knew what he was doing, but still appreciated it anyway. He took time to let her teach him things. He paid attention, got frustrated, laughed and made it clear that what she knew was as important to him as what he did. His willingness to let her lead made her heart ache – as well as other parts of her body. Their sessions of her teaching him invariably ended with them naked, reveling in each other’s bodies again. She liked being on top and riding him after these sessions. She liked the feeling of control.

“I like you like this,” he’d told her as she slid up and down on his hard cock, sweating in the back the bearcat. She pushed her breasts forward squeezing them between her arms, her hands together on his scarred, tattooed chest as she rolled her hips, to work every inch of his cock inside her.

“Like that?”

He smiled and leaned up, kissing her nipples, sending a thrill through her as he pulled her ass cheeks wide and pushed her down onto him again. “Just like that.” She squeezed his cock with her muscles, gripping it. She’d been practicing working her sex muscles. Her belly still ached from it, but it was worth is as she watched his face. “Mmm… I like you inside me…” She took a shivering breath as he sucked her nipple. “…like this.” She arched her back, feeling the first tightening of her orgasm. He smiled up at her from her breast, his hand running up the back of her neck and gripping her hair, pulling her down onto his thrusting pelvis.

“Me too.”

The night before they’d left the cityruin, they’d been in the midst of lovemaking in their open camp. She was on top again, lost in the feeling of him inside her, grinding her clit hard against him, pumping her hips fast, when there had been a noise. Before she’d recovered from the ecstatic feeling, she was sitting on the tarp and he was on his feet, pistol in hand, naked in the contending firelight and moonlight. That image seared itself into her mind. So erotic and… It was a snapshot she wasn’t sure how to describe. So fierce, ready to face down anything, so protective, his spread hand held out to ensure he knew where she was. So loving.

A bump woke Adina from the sensual memory dream. She blinked and looked outside from her seat in the bearcat. They were slowly thumping over hummocks, the whole vehicle pitching side to side. The flat ground had turned rocky in places, parts of the landscape now littered with giant boulder-like hills divided by small canyons and washes.

“You’d better hold on,” Asher warned from the driver’s seat.

She wiped her mouth in case she’d been drooling and sat up. But her eyes were pulled back to him as he looked out, picking a path for the bearcat. The image from the last night in the cityruin filled her mind.

“I love you, you know,” she said loudly.

He only glanced at her, then turned his attention to the ground outside. “I know that.” He smiled.

She waited and when he didn’t go on, she did. “Well, that usually means there’s supposed to be an answer.” She grabbed the canteen from its safe storage spot and lifted it to her lips. They hit a bump hard and she spilled water all over herself. She turned and narrowed her eyes, glaring at him.

“You did that on purpose,” she hissed.

“Don’t look at me, I’m just over here driving.” But she could see the barest smirk on his face.

She watched the ground and then took a drink carefully, so he couldn’t make her spill, then stowed the canteen again. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

She clambered over the console between them and squeezed in between him and the steering wheel.

“Adina! I…” He tried to look around her. “I can’t see.”

She settled down onto his lap straddling him, her knees off the sides of the driver’s seat. “Well, I think I’m a lot more interesting to look at than what’s outside. Don’t you?”

He looked past her and stopped the bearcat, then turned his attention to her as he shifted it out of gear and set the brake. “That’s a certainty.”

“Well?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re all wet.”

She sandwiched his white-bearded face between her hands, watching his lapis blue eyes and squeezed his cheeks together, forcing him to make pursed lips face. “Do-you-love-me?”

He watched her eyes for a long time, then his eyes shifted off past her shoulder. The crease between his eyebrows deepened and his eyes narrowed, his look intensifying.

“Well?” She bent to kiss him, but he stopped her, still watching past her. The stony expression he’d held when they first met slammed down on his face like a visor he’d suddenly pulled down. She turned, following his gaze. “What is…”

In the distance she could see a line of dust rising in the sky. Vehicles, moving fast. Moving in their direction.

“You said there wasn’t anyone out here.”

“There isn’t supposed to be.” He lifted her hips. “Move.”

She did and he put the bearcat back in motion again. As she clambered back into her seat, he was maneuvering them into the canyons. She grabbed the binoculars from the cubby between them. “Who is it?”

His tone was deadpan cold. “I don’t know.”

He pulled them up behind rocks that hid most of the bearcat’s silhouette. He turned out of his seat, took the binoculars and climbed up into the cupola, pushing the hatch open and stepped up just enough that his head and shoulders were outside.

“What are we doing?”

He didn’t answer. Adina peered up into the cupola. He was very still, scanning the dust cloud that was now obscured to her by the rocks.

“It’s an attack, but it doesn’t concern us,” he finally answered. “We’ll let them pass and then keep moving.”

Adina just stared at him from below in the cab. “What do you mean it’s an attack?” She climbed up the step, squeezing into the cupola with him and grabbed the binoculars. Through the red amber lenses, she could see a small group of vehicles in the thick dust clouds racing at what looked like top speed. And three other vehicles chasing them – raiders.

“Two scouts and an assault truck.” Asher’s tone was cold. “It’s already over, they just don’t know it yet.”

Watching the scene, Adina’s heart fluttered like a terrified bird trying to escape the cage of her chest. Even at this distance she could almost feel the terror of the people in the vehicles as they pushed them to the breaking point trying to escape. The awful helpless feeling that had torn through her when the raiders attacked her town was there again. The terrifying understanding of what was going to happen to her… She heard their panicked calls to one another in her mind. The same as they had been before Asher had saved her. One of the fleeing vehicles suddenly careened sideways, flipped and rolled, shedding parts, equipment and to Adina’s horror, at least one passenger. Her chest felt like a metal band tightened around it. She couldn’t take a full breath. “We have to help them.”

“This isn’t our fight.” The finality in Asher’s voice was almost more damning than his utterly cold pronouncement of their fate a moment before.

She turned and punched him in the chest. “You have to help them! We can’t just stand here and watch while the raiders…” Her words fell off abruptly. “We have to help them!”

Asher was looking her hard in the eye. The lapis of his eyes had never felt so cold. She could tell her hit had surprised him, but his hard expression hadn’t changed.

“We can’t save them, Adina. We have limited resources, that are now being shared by two people. Anything we expend we can’t recover. This isn’t our mission. Those people aren’t our problem.”

She punched him again. “BASTARD! Do something! Those people are going to die!”

“People die out here, Adina. That’s the wasteland.”

The horror of what was happening and her remembered terror tore through her like a fire, destroying everything in its path.

“Is this what the people in the city states do?! Just let people be taken as slaves, raped and killed?” She punched him again. “What’s the matter with you!”

He just watched her eyes. Everything that she loved about him seemed to have vanished, locked away behind the cold curtain in his eyes.

She lifted the binoculars again and her horror turned to tears as she watched helplessly. She lowered the binoculars and turned to him again.

“We don’t have to save everyone,” she choked, tears rolling down her cheeks as she grabbed his jacket, sobbing. “Just these people. Asher – Please. I… can’t just watch and do nothing. Please.”

He watched her eyes for a long moment as she listened to the distant sound of roaring motors and echoed shrieks from the raiders.

He suddenly climbed down out of the cupola. She followed him down, but he didn’t move for the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to help them?!”

He opened a compartment on the top left of the bay and withdrew the largest rifle she’d ever seen from it along with a small, squarish instrument.

She gawked at the huge weapon. “What is that?”

Again, he didn’t answer. He pushed past her and climbed back up into the cupola. He disappeared out and onto the top of the bearcat. She climbed up after him.

He threw a side of his coat out of the way and dropped to his knees on the bearcat’s sloping top and popped the bipod out on the front of the big gun, then laid down behind it. He set the little device next to it and open the protective cover. There was a spindle with little cups, that immediately began to spin in the breeze.

“What are you going to do?”

He watched the read out on the little instrument making adjustments on the scope without answering. She raised the binoculars and watched.

“Cover your ear.”

“What?”

“Your ear closest to me, cover it.”

He was blowing out a long, slow breath. She covered her ear like he said, and as soon as she had, there was a boom that was as much concussion as sound. Dust on top of the bearcat leapt up around them as the shock wave from the big rifle firing hit her in the side. She jumped and yelped in surprise. Even her uncovered ear was now ringing painfully.

She watched the raider vehicles, but nothing happened. She expected to see at least one of the raiders fall.

“You missed.”

Then the assault vehicle careened suddenly, sloughing wildly, the front tire disintegrating and throwing debris as it came apart. Then it was tumbling, hurling raiders and equipment skyward.

“You… You shot the truck?”

He was breathing out slowly again. She took the hint and covered both ears this time.

BOOM! Dust that hadn’t fully settled was thrown up into the air again. Adina coughed. It wasn’t just from the suddenly airborne dust, but the pressure wave hitting her chest.

She pulled up the binoculars just in time to see one of the scout vehicles suddenly decelerate, flames erupting from the front, skidding to a stop.

Asher abruptly snapped the cover closed on the instrument, folded the bipod against the front of the rifle and got up, then marched to the cupola, stepping down through it with the big gun.

“But there’s still another vehicle out there!”

He didn’t answer.

She looked back through the binoculars. The other raider vehicle didn’t seem to realize that the others weren’t with them. Another of the fleeing survivor vehicles was belching smoke. It rapidly slowed, falling away from the rest.

She climbed down through the hatch after him.

“Close the hatch,” he instructed, stepping from where he’d stored the big rifle again, digging in a box. He tossed her a mask, goggles and gloves. “Put those on and don’t take them off until I tell you to, then strap in.”

He slid into the driver’s seat and the bearcat roared to life. They were already in motion by the time she got into her seat.

“There’s a five-point harness connection on your belt. Put it on.” She looked over her shoulders, searching for the other belts. Asher seemed almost unaware of her as the bearcat rolled out from the rocky ground. They hit open ground and she was thrown her back in her seat as they accelerated powerfully, tearing up the ground between them and the fleeing convoy.

“You do exactly what I say, when I say and don’t ask questions until this is done,” he hollered over the motor. “And you don’t take off the mask, gloves and goggles until I tell you. Do you understand?” His tone was harsh, harsher than it had ever been.

She felt tiny against the fierce energy that rolled off of him like heat from a fire. “Yes.”

They spent minutes with the only sound the bearcat’s motor and the crashes and rattles of them barreling over the baked desert. She watched the convoy and the raider get bigger. One of the convoy vehicles suddenly caught fire.

“Fuel bomb,” Asher told her.

The burning vehicle skidded, and Adina could see people jumping off of it to escape the flames. They tumbled like sacks, raising small dust clouds.

The raider vehicle suddenly turned – toward them.

Asher pulled a lever on the center console. Loud hydraulic groans and the clunk and rattle of metal suddenly filled the cab. Heavy louvers slid up over the windshield and the side windows. She heard and felt metallic clangs as armor plates dropped over the wheels.

Asher drove straight at the raider. It grew bigger with terrifying speed.

“You’re going to ram them!?” she hollered over the noise. The scars on the bearcat’s side and nose suddenly filled her mind. He didn’t answer.

The bearcat’s motor roared with fury as he accelerated again, driving straight at the other vehicle. He pulled a lever over his head and a terrifying, demonic howl split the air. The air siren filled her ears and the bearcat’s powerful roaring motor shook her body. The giant machine seemed to have suddenly become alive, charging down on the raider like a relentless predator. The thought of Asher and the bearcat coming off the assembly line next to each other was in her mind again. He and the machine were one being now.

She could see details of the raider vehicle. Skulls and bones decorated the pitted, rusting hulk, splashes of paint adorned its brute armored nose with the raider’s arcane looking symbols marking the exterior. Most of the markings she’d ever seen were eyes within twisted animal skulls. The animalistic totems were something the raiders seemed to try and emulate. But these were different. Stylized, misshapen, terrifying human faces and skulls surrounded huge, freakishly large white eyes that glared from the front of the vehicle like ghastly specters.

And she could see the raiders, painted red, black and white with their terrifying masks and headdresses. Their faces and masks were painted with the misshapen, oversized white eyes too. They looked like demons spat from some holocaust underworld.

“Hold on.”

She looked from the raider to him and back, gripping the arms of her seat and pushed herself as far back as she could. Asher’s face was nothing but a grim mask.

She shrieked at the instant she was sure they were going to hit, but the raider turned. But not quickly enough. The bearcat crashed into the rear corner of the vehicle, throwing her against the straps as the bearcat’s great weight sent the raider spinning, all but ripping the smaller vehicle in half. Adina was thrown forward as Asher stomped on the brakes, then left as he spun the wheel, the air siren’s pitch dropping as they decelerated. The bearcat skidded over the hard ground with far more grace than she would have believed the brutal machine capable of. The engine shrieked again as Asher stepped on the accelerator, fishtailing the bearcat’s back end around. The shattered raider was stopped in a cloud of dust. She could see the left rear wheel had been folded completely under the back half of the torn vehicle by the collision.

Asher brought the bearcat to a stop and reached into a storage bay behind his left shoulder. He pulled on a hood, tucking it into the collar of his coat.

Adina jumped at the sound of bullets bouncing off the bearcat, but Asher continued calmly, seating a helmet and mask combination over the hood. Like everything else he had, it was well made, but a large gouge had been taken out of one side of the helmet and mask along with several other cuts and dings. It made him look more machine than man. He pulled his saber from its storage place and attached it to his belt, then turned his masked face to her. “You stay in the bearcat no matter what happens. And you don’t open the doors for anything unless you hear my voice, or I bang three times. Three times, got it?”

She wasn’t sure if she should be terrified, grateful or if she was just in shock. He seemed otherworldly in his mask as he watched her, intense, but otherwise, utterly calm.

“Say it,” he demanded.

“I’ll stay in the truck no matter what happens and won’t open the doors unless I hear your voice or three bangs.”

Then he turned back forward and drove head-on at the five raiders who had abandoned their wrecked vehicle. She could hear their war shrieks as they leapt out of the way. She was thrown against the straps again as Asher brought them to a skidding halt once more. The vehicle had barely stopped before he was out the door and had slammed it shut behind him.

Adina clambered out of her seat and went to his door, trying to see out through the armored louvers of his window, but there was nothing there. There were gunshots and the feral shrieks from outside, then an agonized screech. She climbed up into the cupola looking through the small ports trying to see what was happening. She caught a glimpse of Asher; he was near the back of the bearcat. A raider appeared from where he was, crawling and holding his throat, then collapsed. Another ran and Asher stepped into the open. His left arm came up, he aimed for a moment then shot the fleeing raider down. He turned and walked to the fallen raider and stood over him for a moment, then walked to their wrecked vehicle. He looked inside. She could hear someone screaming. He raised his sword and thrust into the interior. As he walked back to the bearcat, she was shaking. Fear or adrenaline, she couldn’t tell which. Asher walked around the bearcat, as if searching for something.

“No, please! We was…” she heard from outside. Then there was an awful animalistic cry and a terrible whistling, choking gag. She covered her ears, but it seemed to go on and on.

Adina jumped at the three loud bangs from the driver’s door. It was pulled open and Asher climbed in. He looked for her, craning his neck to follow her legs up into the cupola. His mask was turned ghoulish by a thick coating of dust broken by blood splashed across it. The blood carved little snail trails down over his mask and helmet. “Get back in your seat. We’re not finished.”

She was shaking violently as she climbed down, having to take careful steps to not fall down. She’d never witnessed violence like what was happening now. Even in the raider attack and other times there had been fighting, she’d never seen so much of it. Her hands shook as she buckled in again. Asher spun the bearcat with a powerful roar of the engine and them back the way the convoy had come.

They drove past the surviving vehicles that had fallen out of the convoy. She watched the survivors. Some watched them or even waved for help, others hid.

“We need to stop and help them.”

He just kept driving. “We need to finish what we started.”

There had been time for the intensity of her emotions to lessen. The awful fear she’d felt for the people in the convoy had fallen away and a cold stone was growing in her center. There was no passion in what was happening now, no racing to help people who were in danger. Asher drove straight to the second scout vehicle. Three raiders huddled in the shade of the vehicle while two more gestured fiercely at them. He took the binoculars and scanned them. “No guns, three of them are wounded,” he catalogued, handing her the binoculars and driving directly to the two who were ready to fight. She turned the binoculars to the three in the shade. They were wounded, burned black from the fire Asher’s bullet had caused.

Asher brought the bearcat in fast, but in a strange arcing course. It wasn’t until he skidded sideways in front of them that she realized he’d maneuvered upwind, his skid creating a dust cloud that blinded the raiders as he once again leapt from his seat.

This time it happened right in front of the windows. By the time the dust cloud thinned enough for her to see, one of the raiders was down, kicking and thrashing, his guts spilled red and wet onto the parched ground. Asher stood waiting, bloody saber in his hand. The second raider seemed uncertain what to do. Asher said something to him, but she couldn’t make it out. The raider charged. It happened so fast she wasn’t sure what happened. The raider joined the first, thrashing and kicking, blood spraying from his neck, staining the ground red. Asher walked to the three cowering in the sun. She wanted to turn away but couldn’t. He killed each in turn with an efficient thrust of his sword.

Adina was now shaking violently, the whole world tunneling as he climbed back into the truck again. He turned to her, watching her violent tremors. “You’re in shock. You’ll be alright.”

He turned the bearcat back along the convoy’s route again. Her belly spasmed tighter and tighter as the black smoke pillar from the crashed assault vehicle grew larger and visions of what was going to happen filled her mind.

“I… I’m going to be sick!”

Asher stopped the bearcat and she nearly fell out in her hurry to get down. She stood bent over, her body see-sawing with nausea. He stepped around the front of the bearcat, his head moving side to side as he scanned the area around them. “We’re not safe here.”

All she could see was the blood glistening on his gloves and sleeve, the stench of the burning assault vehicle blew over them with the billowing smoke. She threw up hard. The violence of the expulsion brought her to her knees. She wretched again and again, her body heaving, soaked in sick sweat.

She jumped at a gunshot. When she turned a raider was collapsing to the ground twenty yards away. She wiped the vomit from her chin then wiped her hand on the gritty earth.

“We need to go.” His pistol was still trained on the fallen raider.

She turned to him, trying to see the man she loved in the blood splattered killer standing there. The image of him killing the three cowering raiders wouldn’t go away. The ruthless sword thrust that killed each played over again and again.

Confusion swept up everything in her like a whirlwind. His posture was so much like it had been when he stood naked, protecting her in the cityruin. But here, he stood like a statue, an inhuman presence, his mask giving nothing away. She wiped her mouth. “Don’t you feel anything?”

“This isn’t the time, Adina. It’s not safe here. Put your mask back on and get in the cat.”

She shakily pushed up and pulled her mask back on, staring at the man he’d just shot. You begged him to do this. He offered a hand to help her in, but she knocked it away. “Don’t touch me.”

He slowly lowered his hand and stepped back. Confusion roared in her. She couldn’t hear anything but her hammering heart. She was furious with him, loved him, was afraid of him, and so many other things. All she wanted was space away from him.

Almost more than she had the first time she’d set foot inside the bearcat, she suddenly felt like a prisoner.

What did you think all that training was for?

The schism between the man she loved and the machine of war that she’d set in motion refused to mesh in her heart and mind. Back in her seat, she caught a glimpse of her eyes in her reflection. She could see the lapis blue flecks there.

You’re becoming like me…

As he drove to where the assault truck had crashed, its scattered remains were strewn recklessly over a wide area. The truck itself was engulfed in flames, billowing thick black smoke. Armor, pieces shed from the truck, bodies and parts of bodies lay all around. As they circled the wrecked vehicle, Adina was glad for her mask. Not just because of the smoke. She’d been around fires where people had died. The sickly smell wasn’t something she wanted to remember. A corpse appeared and disappeared in the flames, melted to the vehicle’s structure as if to illustrate the point.

Asher didn’t say anything as he drove the perimeter. Half a dozen battered raiders were still standing, ready to fight. He pulled the truck away as bullets pinged off the armor then turned back running straight toward the densest group of them.

“Are you just going to run them down?”

He didn’t answer. Again, turning the bearcat at the last moment and sliding sideways, he kicked up a huge cloud of dust amidst the black smoke. And once again, he was out of the truck the instant it stopped moving.

Adina couldn’t see anything, the thick smoke billowed over the bearcat blacking out everything, including the sun.

When the smoke blew away four bodies lay dead or writhed on the ground. Asher was fighting the last two remaining raiders.

Five yards from the bearcat, a burned and bloodied raider was propped up against a chunk of debris. She thought he was dead – until he moved.

He rolled over with a rifle, and carefully took aim at Asher’s back.

Adina was moving before a thought could form. She’d snatched her pistol from its holster and pushed open the door. Her boots hit the ground before she realized she’d jumped out of the bearcat.

She shouted, “HEY!” her pistol fixed on the raider.

He turned and she saw his eyes. Even through the filth and blood, she could see he was young. There was fear in his eyes – and pain. She’d seen that look so many times…

Part of her wanted to yell, to warn him not to move. But he brought the rifle around and her finger squeezed the trigger. There was no thought.

Three loud pops. They sounded so different in the open air than they had in the rift. Pop! Pop! Pop! Like something being dropped onto a metal plate.

The raider slumped against the debris, the rifle falling. But instead of fixating on him, feeling lost and confused as she had since she’d set the terrible sequence of events in motion, everything had become crystal clear. She pivoted to where Asher and the two raiders were fighting. He’d turned to the sound of the pistol shots and was already moving toward her. Before she could do anything, one of the raiders brought a heavy bladed club down across his back. The blow nearly knocked him off his feet. He staggered forward but didn’t fall. Adina raised the pistol, but Asher was between her and the raider who’d struck him. The other raider shrieked victoriously and charged at him.

Like when she’d climbed the wall above the rift, things suddenly went fuzzy. Everything was slightly out of focus, but she was completely aware of it all this time. The charging raider was clear; a cut-out standing against a faded background, the only thing that existed in the world. Even as she aimed her pistol, Asher turned back to the man who’d hit him and relief washed over her. The pistol went off in her hand.

Pop! It was like watching something happen in slow motion. She saw the bullet hit the raider in the left shoulder. Pop! A bullet struck him in the belly. Pop! His head jerked oddly as the bullet tore through his neck. Then he fell like a marionette that had its strings cut, his arms and legs flailing as he crashed to the ground.

Everything snapped back into focus. It didn’t ease back in the way it had at the wall. It was like a switch inside her flipped and the world was in real-time again.

Asher grabbed the raider by his weapon arm and threw himself forward, smashing his helmet into the raider’s face. The raider staggered back and before he could recover, Asher’s saber slash all but cutting his head from his body. The raider’s head tipped strangely onto his left shoulder at a sickening angle as blood sprayed from his opened arteries. Then the raider dropped making a small cloud of dust when it hit the scorched, baked earth.

She was still staring at him when she felt Asher’s solid grip on her arm. It pulled her attention away from the dead man.

“Adina! Are you alright?” The unforgiving mask covering his face couldn’t hide the concern in his voice. “I told you to stay in the cat!”

“He…” She had to swallow before she could talk.

“What!?”

“He was going to shoot you!” she said more loudly to be heard through her mask, nodding to the dead raider with the rifle. She was gripping his bloody sleeve hard, but she wasn’t shaking the way she had been. “He was going to kill you.”

Asher’s masked and helmeted head turned to the dead man, but only for a moment. Then he pulled her tight against him. His armored coat was hot from the sun and she felt the blood on it, but she didn’t care. He crushed her against him. “I told you to stay in the damn cat! No matter what!”

She felt out of her body, encircled in his violent, bloody embrace, her arms wrapped around him, the pistol in her hand. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, confused by the reassurance she felt in his strong embrace after what she’d seen. “I’m alright,” she said into his armored shoulder.

Asher pulled back, holding her at arm’s length, she could see his eyes searching hers through his mask. “Are you sure?” He ran a bloody glove over her masked cheek.

There was blood on her hands when she drew them back – Asher’s blood. The raider hitting Asher in the back with the bladed club suddenly rushed up in Adina’s mind. “Earth and Sky, you’re hurt!”

As she tried to see his back, he held her arms. “You can look at it when we’re finished here.”

She watched his eyes, the lapis of his irises seeming a deeper, more penetrating blue than ever before. She took a deep, shuddering breath. “We need to finish what we started…”