The Moreau Quartet: Volume One: 1 by S. Andrew Swann
Then, above him, Nohar heard the sound of his cabin reaching its flashpoint, a roar that shook the ground beneath him. Nohar had no time for planning, his reflexes took over.
He rolled away from his house, across the three meters of exposure, dropping over the bluff and into the wooded area. He felt dirt spray him as shots from the woods missed him, thudding into the ground.
Even in the woods, he was way too exposed. The exploding fire lit everything like a spotlight and the bluff’s shadow was still rosily lit by reflected light.
He rose with an arrow fully taut in the bow. In a single fluid motion, he raised the bow to position, loosed the arrow, and began a scramble along the bluff toward the sniper’s position.
His action assumed that his arrow would find the gunman.
The assumption was valid.
He heard other gunshots, but none connected with him. They were coming from places that weren’t covering his escape route, and the distraction of the cabin blowing up gave him a little leeway as he ran along the cover of the bluff.
He landed next to the rifleman. The man had taken a header backward after being struck by the arrow. An arm and a leg were bent at ugly angles. The rifle had spilled another four or five meters down the slope.
Nohar stopped next to him. He was human, dressed in black combat gear. He’d been wearing night-vision equipment that the fall had knocked askew. He wore an armored vest, from which Nohar’s arrow pointed up at the sky. While the armor might have prevented impalement, the man didn’t seem much better off. He was gasping for breath, and his lips were flecked with blood.
Nohar bent over the man, intending to shake some answers from him, find out why this attack was happening. But a look at the man’s face told Nohar it was hopeless. The man’s eyes didn’t track, and the pupils were fixed. There was no reaction when Nohar leaned over him.
“Shit,” Nohar whispered, the first time he’d spoken since awakening. The word tasted like smoke.
Even as he bent over his would-be assassin, Nohar began sensing movement in the woods. They moved quietly, but not quietly enough. Whatever was going on wasn’t over yet.
Nohar dropped his bow and sidestepped to pick up the fallen man’s rifle. It wasn’t designed for hands his size, but it was manageable. He kept moving, quietly and low to the ground.
They were getting too close. The first time he’d had surprise going for him. Now, if these bastards got a clean shot at him, he was dead. He could hear them in front of him, closing. Between the light coming from the fire, and these guys’ night-vision equipment, Nohar gave it a minute or less before someone had that clean shot.
Nohar put a tree between him and the sounds, putting his back to it. He checked the rifle over. It was a Colt Special Operations rifle—Nohar had heard the thing called the “Black Widow.” It was American military issue, designed for covert operations. It was matte black, light, fired caseless ten-millimeter rifle ammo. It was made mostly of composite carbon fiber, and carried a combination silencer/flash suppressor that was built into a barrel that was almost as thick as the body of the gun. Even with the silencer, its shots could punch through the bad guy’s body armor as if it were balsa wood.
It had a digital scope with a night-vision setting. Nohar adjusted the sight, and flipped the Widow from single-shot to full auto.
He took a deep breath, and when he felt ready, he dove, flattening upon a bed of pine needles as he brought the rifle to bear.
Someone saw something, because Nohar could hear bullets whizzing through the trees above him. The silencer-muffled gunshots sounded like a fist slamming into wet concrete.
There were two of them, their motion—lit by the fire—was unmistakable to Nohar’s eye. Despite the flash suppressors, to the scope, every shot was an obvious flare. Nohar let go with two bursts.
He got up and ran toward the hole he’d made in the encircling enemy. He stayed low, using as much of the cover as he could. He avoided firing again because any more shots would be a signal flare to the Bad Guys, and he could hear the others closing on his location.
The world became a blood-tinted chaos as his engineered reflexes took over. Somehow he made it through the hole before the others closed on him. He jumped over the corpse of one human in a commando outfit and didn’t pause.
He could feel the presence of others in the woods around him, but he couldn’t stop to determine where they were. Instinct told him that if he ever stopped moving he was dead. He dodged tree after tree as the slope steepened on its way downward.
The forest floor was covered with pine needles that slid as he ran. Soon the slope was difficult enough that every third step was a near stumble down the side of the hill. In the distance he heard the humans, their pretense at silence gone. He heard their radios, their running steps through the woods, and eventually he heard the fans and smelled the ozone exhaust of an aircar somewhere above.
The aircar was unlit, and eventually it left Nohar’s hearing. If he was lucky, that meant that the canopy was too thick for whatever video equipment that was installed on it.
He ran for miles down the mountain, adrenaline fueling exertion far beyond what his body should have to endure. It was shortly after the aircar left his awareness that Nohar realized that he no longer felt the pursuit of the heavily armed humans.
He slowed, the panic fueling his muscles draining away with every step. The beast the genetic engineers had designed into him, the instinctual combat machine, confused his sense of time; minutes could be hours, or vice versa. It was sinking into him that what had seemed like a few minutes of panicked escape had been a run down the side of the mountain. The sky above him was lightening, and the slope was flattening out.
He could feel it in every muscle in his body. He looked at the weapon in his hand, the rifle he’d taken. It was empty. Somewhere during his escape he’d emptied the thing. He didn’t quite remember, the whole episode was a blood-tinged blur in his memory.
Who the hell are these people? Nohar thought. What the hell do they want with me?
Empty, the Widow was useless to him, so when he passed a fairly deep creek, he ditched it.
• • •
Nohar stumbled down the rest of the way to the highway. He didn’t leave the cover of the woods when he finally reached the roadway; a naked moreau would attract too much unwanted attention. Enough people were giving him that kind of attention.
After dawn had passed, and Nohar was walking in full daylight, he came in sight of a small rest stop off of the highway. There was little there but a scenic overlook and a set of restrooms, but what attracted Nohar’s attention was a public comm box.
He crouched in the woods across the highway from the rest stop. There was one blue Plymouth Ariel minivan sitting in the parking lot. Nohar stayed crouching, fatigue dripping from every pore of his body. Every muscle ached, all the way down to the base of his tail. He felt as if all his muscles had been torn off of his body and then reattached at random.
Staying awake was a major effort, but he kept his attention focused on the little family van. Eventually its little family returned. Two adults and a pair of kids. As he watched them, Nohar felt an irrational wave of enmity toward them, the two middle-class pinks and their children. The parents were probably his age, but with nearly half their lives in front of them. Their kids, happy, smiling, safe. . . .
Nohar felt sick watching them, sicker at his own reaction.
Eventually the Plymouth and its family drove off, leaving the rest stop deserted. Once the car had disappeared around a bend in the road, Nohar dashed across the street to the comm box.
He hoped Stephie was still willing to talk to him.
Chapter 3
The comm box was in working order, which was a plus, It was off to the side of the rest area, boxed in what tried to look like a tiny log cabin with one side open to the outside. The roof was nearly half a meter
He spent ten minutes keying in old account numbers, hoping they were still valid. Most belched out error messages at him, and one telcomm company that he used to use seemed to have gone out of business.
In the end he had to try calling collect and hope that his ex-wife would accept the charges.
The screen fuzzed and went blank after he keyed in Stephie’s old apartment. The blackness lasted a long time, and Nohar began to fear that either Stephie had seen his face on her comm and disconnected, or that she’d moved and some poor pink was looking at the ragged moreau on their screen wondering what the hell was going on.
After a few long moments, Stephie’s face came on the comm. Nohar saw an office in the background, and he realized that the call had been forwarded. It must be a weekday.
“Nohar?” Her lips mouthed the words almost soundlessly. She was still the same person he remembered. The same golden skin, same lithe neck, same raven hair.
Nohar realized he must look like hell. “I’ve got a problem,” Nohar said, “Do you still have the keys to my locker?”
Anything that might have been tenderness leaked out of Stephie’s expression. “Still as curt as ever, aren’t you?”
“Something happened—”
“God forbid you just want to talk to me.”
“You wanted me to leave,” Nohar said quietly.
They stared at each other through the video screen for a few long moments. Nohar thought he saw her green eyes moisten, but it could have been a trick of the light.
“Seven years,” she said finally. “That’s a long time.”
“I know.”
Stephie looked at him and shook her head as if she was disgusted with herself. “Of course I still have it. I still have your damn cat. What happened to you? You look like hell.”
“Someone tried to kill me.”
“I wonder why.” After a pause, “I suppose you don’t have any way back to the city . . . ?”
• • •
Standing, partially hidden at the edge of the scenic overlook, Nohar began to realize exactly how alone he was. What would he have done if Stephie hadn’t been willing to help him? She had all the right in the world to tell him to fuck off.
A part of his mind, the same part that hunted in the mountains above him, told him that he would have managed, he was a survivor. There was another part of him, the part that had married a woman named Stephanie Weir, which seemed ominously silent on the subject.
It took two hours for her to arrive. There were two false alarms during that time. One when an old Antaeus started turning into the rest area, and when Nohar stepped out of the woods, it accelerated out of the lot leaving the smell of rubber behind it. The other when an old pickup truck, the back filled with morey rodents, the cab belching Spanish music, stopped by long enough for half a dozen rats to gather at the rail and piss over the side of the overlook. The truck left a dozen empty beer bulbs in its wake.
Stephie finally drove up in a metallic-gray Mercedes. The windows were tinted, so Nohar didn’t know it was her until the car rolled to a stop and she opened the door.
When he saw her standing next to the new car, he felt an impulse to stay hidden. He ignored it and stepped around, in sight of the parking lot. As soon as she saw him, standing there naked, she shook her head and muttered, “I knew it.”
As he walked up, Stephie reached in and tossed him a bundle.
Nohar caught it as Stephie said, “I don’t know what it is with you and clothes, but you’re going to put those on before you get in my car.”
The bundle was a pair of sweat pants and a matching sweater. The sweater had the logo of the Earthquakes, the Frisco morey-league football team. Nohar was surprised to find the sweats cut for a morey, and one his size. The pants even accommodated his tail and digitigrade feet.
The clothes still had the receipt tags on them. Nohar tore them off with his index claw.
“Come on,” Stephie said. She looked impatient. “I’d like to get this done and get back to work.”
Nohar nodded and walked around to the other side of the Mercedes. He touched the gray surface, seeing the reflection of his hand as if it were some dim pool. “Nice car,” he said.
“Yes, damn it,” she said. “I did manage to get a life for myself after you left.”
After you asked me to leave. Nohar resisted the urge to voice the thought.
The door opened for him and he slipped into the passenger seat. There was a hydraulic whine as built-in motors began adjusting the seat to his weight and height. It actually accommodated him without making him hunch over his knees.
Stephie slipped back into the car and slammed the door. She slid a cardkey into the dash and the windshield lit up with a soft green headsup display overlay on the scene outside.
Nohar was silent for a while as she drove the car back out on the road. It had been a long time since Nohar had been in any vehicle. He had never been claustrophobic. But there seemed to be a dull fear in his gut, now that he was thrust back into the world he left seven years ago.
He didn’t know if it was the Mercedes, or the fact that Stephie’s familiar smoky smell was dredging up unpleasant memories.
“What do you do now?” Nohar asked.
She stared at the windshield, avoiding any eye contact with him. “I work for Pacific Rim Media.” On the windshield, lines of green light sketched their speed, the charge in the engine, and the route they were traveling. Nohar looked at Stephie’s profile and realized that she didn’t want to talk anymore. They fell into a sullen silence.
• • •
She pulled up next to a small warehouselike structure on the edge of what used to be an airport. She popped the locks, tossed him a cardkey, and said, “Get out.”
Nohar took the key and slid out of the car. The passenger seat underwent another series of hydraulic gyrations while it settled into its default configuration.
Something made Nohar ask, “Why?”
She looked at him and he could smell a cold anger wafting up from her. “Why bother with you at all, you mean?”
Nohar nodded.
“Because I was naive enough to think seeing you might help me get over it. I was wrong.” She pulled the car door shut with a slam. “I don’t think we’ll see each other again,” Nohar heard her say through the door. He didn’t know if she intended him to hear it.
The Mercedes pulled away, leaving him across the street from the dull cinder-block complex.
A dented, rusty sign stood above the front gate, saying “Saf-Stor.” It sported at least five bullet holes. The gate was rusty chain-link and opened into a parking lot of cracked, weedy asphalt. A dull-gray metal box stood next to the gate, while above it a dented security camera panned across the empty driveway.
Nohar slid the cardkey into the dented box and hoped that both the reader and the card still worked. The reader made a grinding noise and spat out his card. After a few seconds, the gate began sliding aside for him.
When he stepped through, ducking under a bar that said “Clearance 2.5 Meters,” a buzzer sounded. As he crossed the path of an electric eye, the gate began rattling shut behind him.
Saf-Stor wasn’t the epitome of security storage lockers, but it had allowed long-term storage and had been willing to do business with him. The latter was always a rarity, no matter how enlightened things were supposed to be.
The place was fully automated, and from the empty parking lot, he was the only one here. He looked back through the chain-link and out at the decrepit turn-of-the-century neighborhood. The streets were lined with boarded-up storefronts, many with unrepaired earthquake or fire damage. The only movement came from the cars shooting by on the street between him and the buildings. The only noise was
That was Los Angeles, an empty shell populated by automobiles.
Nohar passed a series of outbuildings, video cameras tracking him from every corner. The buildings were low, one-story cinder-block structures that smelled of concrete dust, stagnant water, and mildew. On each one, two opposing sides held ranks of rolling steel doors; the remaining walls were covered by huge painted letters, black against flaking yellow—A through G.
Nohar’s locker was in E.
It had been dry lately, and each step Nohar took kicked dust off the broken asphalt and deposited grit under the claws of his feet. He hadn’t worn shoes in ages, but the city made him want some.
Nohar stopped in front of building E, identical to its siblings except for the painted wall, and looked for his locker. It was four doors down. The seams of the steel door had rusted, little trails of rust descended from every bolt. At its base, small piles of windblown debris had gathered against the frame. It looked as if the door hadn’t been opened in years.
It hadn’t. Nohar had not come here since he and Stephie had separated. In here was everything else he had left behind. His entire material world.
He slid the card into a box next to the door. This one sounded worse than the one by the entrance. This time it didn’t spit out Nohar’s key.
Above the door, an old grime-covered light flashed red. Inside, Nohar could hear the strain of a motor, and smell electricity and burned insulation. The door began to shake as the motor tried to pull it open. Nohar could hear the tension in the mechanism, until something gave way with the sound of shearing metal. The door shot up about a meter and a half and stuck there. Nohar could hear the motor inside suddenly rev and he heard the sound of a chain striking something.
The motor stopped running, and the grime-streaked light changed from red to green. The box spat Nohar’s card back.
The door stayed frozen in place. Nohar shook his head and ducked under it and into the darkness beyond.