Chapter 31: The Wasteful Plain – Part 5

The consciousness did not bother waiting to see if one of the guards would get lucky as Vail had. It immediately set off back through the camp, eyes flicking from one person to the next as it went, searching for one face.

It found her stumbling from her tent, red bags beneath her eyes and a look of frightened confusion upon her face. When she looked up at the consciousness, somehow she must have seen its concern even in a mechanical face, for her expression settled to one of determination, as though she suddenly understood exactly what was happening.

‘They’ve arrived,’ she said, and it was not a question.

The consciousness relayed what it had seen on the edge of the camp as quickly as it could. Sky said nothing for a few moments afterwards, then looked around, spotted someone she recognised ― a tall, grizzled man with white hair ― and ran over to him.

‘Everyone has to leave,’ she said, the urgency plain in her voice. ‘I don’t think we can fight them. We need to run, make for the Scrap Heap.’

The grizzled man shook his head and picked up a handgun, pushing it into Sky’s fingers. ‘We head to the Scrap Heap, they’ll only follow us. We’re stopping them here.’

‘But you can’t aim at them!’ she shouted as he began to turn away.

He turned back. ‘You get enough bullets in the air, you don’t need to aim.’ His eyes moved to the consciousness. ‘Machine. Can you fight?’

‘I can,’ it said, with certainty, then paused and raised its hands to look at them. ‘I believe there are blades in my wrists, though I am not sure I entirely remember how to use them.’

‘Then try harder,’ the man commanded. ‘We might need you.’ With that, he picked up another gun for himself and hurried away in the direction of the fighting.

Sky looked down at the one he’d given her, then back up at the consciousness. Her eyes had gone wide again, and her fingers were trembling ever so slightly as they gripped the gun. Tell-tale signs of human fear, the consciousness knew.

‘Last time, in my world, I ran from them because I wanted to remember.’ She turned to face the gunfire and the shouting, but did not walk towards it. ‘And I did. Even when I came here, even though I lost almost everything, I remembered the things I wanted to. But these creatures, they don’t just kill, they make you forget. They tear who you are out of you. I met someone who…’ She gripped the gun a little tighter, then looked up at the consciousness and shook her head. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t face them again. I’m… I’m going to run away.’

It seemed like it was hard for her to do, as if an invisible force was pulling her towards the fighting, dragging her in the direction of the things she was so terrified of, but she managed to overcome that force. Slowly, she turned, set one foot in the other direction, then another, and began walking.

The consciousness stayed still for a while, swinging its head between Sky and the fighting. It was a war machine, and here was fighting. Here was an enemy. All that it had asked for only a few days ago was now right before it. If it deserted the people of this camp and then they died, would that be its fault? But then, if it stayed, what of Sky? Had she not come across it and reconnected the wires in its leg, given it the bandage that still clung tight to its metal skin, there was every chance it would simply have died out there in the wilderness… the same wilderness she was now fleeing into.

What was it she had said when it asked how to thank her for that kindness? She had said, ‘Walking by myself gets lonely.’

The consciousness caught up with Sky on the edge of the camp, the sounds of battle dwindling behind them far quicker than it would have thought. The wastes, it seemed, had an odd power to dull such noises. Sky said nothing when it caught up, but glanced up at it very briefly. The expression on her face then was not one it had come across before, but its wiring summoned the word ‘surrender’.

And so it was that after such a short time amongst people, Sky and the consciousness found themselves once more walking in silence amidst the barren hills of the Wasteful Plain.

‘Where are we going?’ the consciousness asked following a few minutes of quiet.

‘Away. Away from the camp, away from those things, and away from the Scrap Heap. I can’t bring them there.’

In the silence that followed, it didn’t take long for the consciousness to begin thinking of what would befall them next. It couldn’t help it. With a mind for war came a mind of analysis, a mind ever ready to calculate and assess all the merits and detriments of a situation, to sort through every scenario it could find and come up with a proper response for each of them.

The first thing that came to that mind was the realisation that if they were heading away from the Scrap Heap, they were heading away from where there was power. Its batteries would run out eventually. With some more thought, it realised the same was more or less true of Sky. She had both her bags with her, having emerged from her tent with them, and no doubt in them was at least a few days worth of rations and water, but beyond that?

Eventually, the consciousness decided that these were problems that should not go unsaid. ‘Our prospects look grim,’ it said, in as soft a voice as it could manage. Then it added, ‘Unless we are very lucky in the scrap we come across.’

Sky did not respond. Instead, she pushed the gun the grizzled man had given her through her belt and kept walking as though the consciousness had not even spoken.

‘Food must not be as rare all that,’ it ventured after a few minutes. ‘Nor water. Else the Scrap Heap would starve. Perhaps we will not need that much luck. Though… I wonder how much we will need to find something that can recharge me.’

‘Am I an awful person?’ Sky asked, stopping suddenly. She started walking again after only a second or so.

‘What makes you say that?’ was the consciousness’s counter-question.

‘I left everyone to die,’ she replied, without hesitation. ‘Everyone in that camp. They were all brave. They all went to fight my pursuers even though it was hopeless.’

‘You cannot know for certain that they were your pursuers,’ the consciousness interrupted. ‘It may only be coincidence.’

She gave it a bitter look.

‘We cannot say that it was hopeless either,’ it continued. ‘There is a chance that the man you spoke with was right, and all they needed was enough bullets that aim did not matter. A good chance, even. Perhaps they will come after us to tell us of their victory.’

‘They’re dead,’ she said, in a dull voice.

The consciousness was quiet for a few moments. Then it said, ‘If so, then you would also have died had you stayed. Instead, you have the chance to live, and in doing so to remember them.’

‘Of course,’ she said, softly. ‘That’s what I do. Remember people.’

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She didn’t seem to want to explain what she meant by that, even when the consciousness pressed her on it. Instead, she looked at it in silence, with a sad smile, and it thought it understood some of what that meant.

That day dragged on for many hours. Sky’s head was down as she walked, watching her feet, but the consciousness kept its eyes moving. It looked ahead, it looked up, it looked to the horizons, and it looked back over its shoulder, ever hoping that someone would appear there, a survivor from the camp, perhaps hazy through the heat the way some things were in the far distance. But even if anyone had lived, how would they know which direction to go in?

As dusk descended, they stopped at the top of a ridge and looked out over the flatland that lay before them, cast in the last fading glimmer of daylight.

‘No tent,’ Sky said, suddenly. ‘I didn’t have time to take it down.’

‘Can you sleep without it?’

‘Of course. It’ll just be uncomfortable.’ She sighed. ‘Last time these things came after me, I broke into another world to escape them. Do you think I might be able to manage that again?’

It looked down at her.

‘I’m serious,’ she insisted. ‘I wasn’t even trying to get here back then, I was just trying to get away. Who knows how many layers there are to creation? In my world the way out looked like a window. Could be anything here.’

‘You do not even know that there is one.’

‘No, but it’s better to live in hope. Come on, we can still go a bit farther before we stop for the night.’

The consciousness nodded and glanced back over its shoulder, down the ridge the way they had come. It heard Sky descending ahead, but did not follow, for its eyes rested on something far away, near the pink of the horizon. Somehow, just as it had hoped, a figure was approaching.

It called out to Sky and she came rushing back to stand by its side and squint at the newcomer. She could not tell who they were, only that they were not one of her pursuers, but the consciousness could see better. Before long they were close enough that it could make out greying hair tied in a bun, a lean body, a gun in one hand, and a limp.

‘Harna,’ it realised aloud. ‘She is hurt.’

At that they set off down the ridge towards her. She looked up at them as they approached, and stumbled as she did, falling to her knees. Sky sped up to a run at that, skidding to a halt to kneel by her side.

‘What happened?’ Sky was asking as the consciousness caught up.

‘Everyone’s dead,’ Harna replied through clenched teeth. ‘Those figures… kill one and you’ll look up to find two more you didn’t see before coming right for you. I think they multiply. They got everyone.’

‘But not you,’ the consciousness observed. ‘How did you escape?’

‘Luck and a gun.’ She touched a hand to her leg, just above a bloody bandage. ‘Got some bad luck, too. Stray bullet.’

‘You caught up,’ said Sky.

‘You walk slowly,’ Harna retorted. ‘Pain’s a bastard but it’s only pain. It’ll take more than that to slow me down.’

It was evident from Sky’s face that she did not like that. ‘Wounds should be rested,’ she said, her tone firm, and then flipped open her bag and began pulling things out. ‘More importantly they need to be cleaned. Get that bandage off. You don’t want it to fester.’

Harna did as she was told, slowly.

The consciousness studied her for a while as Sky treated the wound. There was purpose in her grimacing face. ‘This is not coincidence,’ it said. ‘You came after us. How did you know which direction?’

At first the only reply it got was a snort. Then, Harna added, ‘I know Sky. If she’s running away and these things might be following her, then she’s going in the opposite direction from the Scrap Heap.’

Sky paused, then resumed her work. ‘I ran away to save myself.’

‘I never said you didn’t. But you saw the chance to save other people too and you took it. Just a shame it didn’t extend to the rest of the camp.’

Sky let go of the new bandage she was wrapping around the wound and put her hand over her mouth. There was a hint of tears in her eyes before she bowed her head to hide them.

‘I was wrong, wasn’t I?’ she said through the hand.

‘Don’t be childish.’ Harna spoke the words with more than a little disdain. ‘No one’s wrong and no one’s right. You’re only a coward.’ She reached out and put her hand on top of Sky’s head, as though Sky were indeed a child. ‘I’m a coward too. Took me longer to run away but I did it in the end. All the people like Latch and Vail, the ones who weren’t cowards, are dead.’

The consciousness knelt beside Sky, its metal joints creaking a little as it did, a nasty sound that it had not heard before and supposed was probably a sign of some fault.

‘We live because we ran,’ it told Sky, placing a hand on her shoulder, as gently as it could. ‘Having life where others do not does not make us bad people. In surviving, we may remember those who did not.’

Sky gave a stiff, almost mechanical nod. ‘More people to remember.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘I always have more people to remember.’

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