The Rains

ENTRY 43

The mirrored glass of the Drone’s helmet threw back my terrified reflection. The glow from the mask illuminated him sitting just like me, directly across the tree’s hollowed core.

A computerized rendering of his view blipped up on his mask, which appeared to me in reverse. It was similar to the one I’d seen in Ezekiel’s eye membrane. Except now the thing being outlined was me. Strands of my hair. The contours of my face. My cells pulled apart and analyzed.

“We have found you, Chance Rain,” a digitized masculine voice said. The mask flickered with the words, a blue fizzle for each consonant, like amplitude waves. “We finally found you.”

My brain whirred into overdrive, but unlike whatever program ran in his mask, it was offering no analysis. I was stunned, my body awash in adrenaline.

The figure spoke again. “Do not cry out,” he said. “You will give away our position.”

Beneath his armored glove, my mouth remained open in terror, the scream sealed in my throat. I managed to clamp my jaw shut. Then I gave a nod.

The hand released me.

He came clearer now in the bluish light. I blinked a few times, my night vision kicking in, helping the picture resolve.

He looked a lot like a Drone, but a closer examination revealed some differences. His space suit was charcoal rather than black, matte instead of shiny, and it looked scuffed and battle-worn. His powerful appearance may have been enhanced by the flexible armor that formed his suit. His position, slouched against the inside of the tree, one hand pressed to his gut, indicated that he was hurt. And he sounded hurt, too, light bars flickering with each labored breath, altering the volume of some of his words.

My breathing couldn’t have sounded much better, my chest still lurching from the scare. It took a moment for me to find my voice. “Who are you?”

“My name will make no sense to you,” he said.

As I watched the amplitude bars flicker, I understood the helmet to be translating.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

He raised a sheathed arm and pointed through the hole in the tree toward the dagger of blue sky. “Same as the Harvesters. But we oppose them.”

I shook my head, half expecting him to disappear as if he were a hallucination. “So you’re, like… rebels?”

“You can call us that.”

“How… how did you get here?”

“We travel by asteroid. Like them. And, like them, we have to prepare the way.” The glow from his mask flickered. “We are not as good at this nor willing to be as ruthless.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“We are capable of mapping and identifying-”

“No, I mean how do you know my name?”

Outside, the screeching started up again, scaring birds from the treetops.

“There is no time for that right now,” he said. “Listen to me carefully.” The glowing contour lines in his mask fuzzed, then regained their clarity. “You and your brother are the key to everything. Is he alive?”

“Wait,” I said. “What?”

The words came through the helmet, more intense than before. “Is your brother alive?”

“Yes.” Even as I answered, I wondered how much longer that would be true.

The head tilted back, a gesture that conveyed great relief. “It was all I could do to try to reach the nearest Hatch site to look for you two amongst the cages. I scanned them and searched the Husks as well.”

Husks. The kids floating on slabs, their bodies stretched beyond recognition.

But I was still stuck back on the prior revelation. “What do you mean, Patrick and I are the key to everything?”

“For the planet. For survival.”

“We’re the key? Us and who else?”

“Only you two.”

My head buzzed. “What are we supposed to do?”

“A mission. That only you or your brother can carry out.”

“A mission?”

“You have accomplished something extraordinary. You killed a Queen and shut down a Hatch site. That’s never been done before-”

“Wait-before where?”

“-but that is only the beginning. The next stage is about to commence. After the Hatch nothing will be the same. And it will all come down to you.”

I coughed out a laugh. “What are you saying? It’s up to us or everyone’ll die or something?”

“Not ‘or something.’” He leaned forward, his grip tightening around my arm. “If you fail in your mission, everyone on the planet will die.”

I had no idea what to do with that information. Not right now. There was too much to consider. So many ramifications.

He continued, “You cannot fall into the hands of the Harvesters.”

“Or what?”

“You cannot imagine what they will do to you.”

After what I’d seen already, that sent a chill up my spine.

“Be careful whom you trust with this information,” he said. “Anyone who knows about you will be tortured if captured. Now that the Harvesters have landed, they will be looking for you and your brother everywhere, to stop you before you can carry out the plan. By now they will have used your adult male population to map your entire planet. They know every inch of your terrain. They had to inspect it to see if it would work.”

“If what would work?”

“The Hatch.” The Rebel’s breathing grew more labored. The glow guttered, then glitched. It seemed he was shorting out. “They had to know that they could habitate here.”

“Why?” I asked. “Their planet is dying?”

The mask stared at me blankly for a moment. “No,” he said. “They just want more.”

I was shocked into silence.

The wind carried the sounds of marching boots, the Drones taking to the hills.

“Please listen to me now,” he said. “There are others like me, searching for you and your brother the planet over. Of course we concentrated our efforts here near your place of birth, but we could leave no stone unturned.”

“How many are you?”

“Now we number merely in the dozens. The Harvesters took over our planet as they are trying to take over yours. They nearly succeeded in destroying us all.” The glow fizzled out, then came back online. “They are stronger. But we are braver.”

The screeches grew closer.

“I will relay to the others that you are intact and viable,” he said. “That there is still hope. They will find you. Or you must find them.”

“Why don’t you just stay with me?”

He tried to lift the hand from his stomach, but his arm slid limply to the dirt. “I am going to expire soon. My landing was not successful. I was injured in the crash.” A glitch appeared in the rendering lines in his mask, then intensified. “We are not well suited for this environment.”

“Then why did you come? Why did you all come?”

He reached his other hand forward weakly and set it on top of mine. “To find you.”

Again I gazed at my own stunned reflection floating in the digitized lines of his mask.

The sound of footfalls grew even closer. Then there came a loud whirring noise and a thunderous cracking from downslope. I shot a nervous glance through the hole in the trunk and saw a few treetops vanish abruptly from view as if sucked into the earth.

“You have to go,” he said.

“I need to hide here-”

“They are taking down the trees and anything in their path.”

“How?”

“Listen to me.” The glow flared, the digitized voice even louder now.

Outside, more trees vanished. The screeches of Drones echoed through the valley, cries of rage.

His grip on my hand tightened. “No matter what, they must never find out who you are. Do not let them take you. We will contact you when we can and tell you of your mission. Until then you have one job: Stay alive. At any cost, stay-”

The glow vanished, the mask turned instantly to a lifeless black sheet. His fingers released their grip on my hand. He remained in exactly the same position.

Through the narrow hole in the trunk, I watched another row of trees below shudder and topple. The Drones were literally clearing the hillside. And the tree I was hiding in was right in their path.

I reached for the rifle, then remembered the Rebel’s words. I couldn’t take myself out, not now. I had to stay free and stay alive. I started for the hole, then paused.

Gathering my courage, I reached for the helmet. And twisted it off.

It was empty.

A wisp of smoke curled lazily from the space suit’s neckhole, floating up the hollow core of the tree. Grabbing the rim of the collar, I tilted the semi-rigid suit forward and peered into the torso. Nothing inside.

Like the Queen, he’d turned to gas.

I didn’t wait around to contemplate this impossibility. Charging through the hole in the tree, I yanked on my backpack and shot to my feet. Through the netting of the branches, I saw the nearest pair of Drones hurtling upslope.

Between them they carried a massive whirring blade. It took a moment for me to recognize it as a backhoe undercutter that had been removed and retrofitted to be carried at either end. It was basically a giant chain saw designed for cutting rock and ballast. The armored carbide plates moved in continuous 360-degree rotation. I watched with amazement as the Drones came straight at a tree, the blade held between them. The teeth buzz-sawed through the trunk, and the massive pine slid away. The Drones barely even had to slow their pace.

Bursts of mist shot out of valves around the necks of their helmets, producing the ear-rending screeches. Were they caused by gas expanding with the heat of rage?

Several more screeches cut through the leaves all around me, leaving me disoriented. I turned in a full circle, assessing my options. Up at the ridgeline where Patrick and Alex had crashed the truck, trees nodded furiously, then dropped from view. Another Drone team must have moved ahead of the vanguard to pursue them. That left me a course to the west.

I ran.

Pine needles whipped across my body. My boots slid through mud, and several times I went down. I ran until my breath fired through my lungs, until my legs almost gave out. Eventually the sounds of crashing trees receded, but I could still hear the Drones among the trees, pursuing me. Several times I thought I’d gotten clear of them only to have a screech fly out of the foliage right beside me, nearly stopping my heart.

I braced myself for the sound of a gunshot signaling Patrick’s or Alex’s death but heard none. They might have been cornered and taken their own lives already. The screeches would easily have drowned out the noise of a bullet or two.

Somehow I got out of the valley.

Running blindly, I kept to the woods. I didn’t stop, didn’t slow. Trunks flickered past me, the landscape strobing by. I made it to the fork in the road, barreling into that ring of Rocky Mountain Douglas firs where we’d camped so many nights ago. Leaning over, I vomited twice, then dry-heaved more times than I could count.

I couldn’t catch my breath.

I didn’t have time.

Wiping my mouth, I kept on, winding my way down toward the cabin. Just before nightfall I saw the straight line of the roof appear through the brush. It took everything I had not to collapse with relief.

Dead on my feet, I staggered through the front door.

“Patrick? Alex?”

A sweeping glance told me that no one was there.

Were they dead? Captured?

I remembered the Rebel’s words: You have one job: Stay alive.

We’d thought it was a one-way mission, but there was so much more at stake now. I closed the door behind me, then drew all the blinds.

I drank down three glasses of water, then kicked off my boots, sat on the bed, and stared blankly at my toes. I stayed that way for a long time, fighting back tears. Patrick could be dead. Alex could be dead.

I could do nothing but wait and wait some more.

Alex had kissed me right here in this very spot. I remembered how she’d leaned in. The softness of her lips.

I wondered how I’d feel if she came back without Patrick.

Or if he did without her.

What if they didn’t come tomorrow? Or the next day? How long would I wait before heading back to Creek’s Cause?

I was too exhausted to sleep. At the slightest sound outside, my heart leapt with hope, but every time I peered through the curtains, it proved to be branches rubbing together or the barn roof creaking.

I tried to process everything that the Rebel had told me, but it all seemed too huge, and it made me miss Patrick and Alex even more. I took solace in the fact that I’d heard no gunshots. What if something happened to me but Patrick remained alive out there somewhere? How would he ever know what he meant for our survival?

Sometime after midnight, sick with worry, I sat on the floor, pulled out my notebook, and started writing.