Partials

Kira followed, surprised; even she could tell that the tracks continued straight ahead through the saplings on the ruined road. The trees on either side were dark and ominous—what did Jayden hear in them?

The group picked their way carefully through a narrow gap that used to be a driveway, now cracked and broken by a decade of weeds. A large house loomed dark ahead, nearly as black as the night around it. Marcus crept forward to reach her, walking quietly beside her in a crouch. Kira leaned toward him to ask a question, then stopped abruptly as a flash of color caught her eye: orange light in the window, a tiny gleam here and gone in an instant. Fire. She froze in place, grabbing Marcus’s arm and pulling his ear up to her lips.

“There’s someone in there.”

Kira gripped her shotgun tightly, hoping it hadn’t grown so wet in the storm that it wouldn’t fire properly. Even with five armed soldiers around them, she felt exposed. She lowered her body slowly to a crouch, pulling Marcus with her. Jayden stopped abruptly, raising his rifle to his cheek, and a voice called out from the darkened house.

“That’s far enough.”

The voice was thin and raw, a wraith in the darkness. Rain drummed on Kira’s hood and back; she readied the safety on the rifle—a tiny button that turned it from a thick plastic club into a magic wand of death. Point and click, and watch the target explode. Water seeped down her collar, into her eyes, through the fabric of her gloves.

“My name is Jayden Van Rijn,” said Jayden, “sergeant second class, Long Island Defense Grid.” He kept his rifle trained on the same invisible target; he must have seen the man before he spoke. Kira still couldn’t see anything. “Identify yourself.”

“I’m nobody you need to have a problem with,” said the voice. “And nobody who has a problem with you.”

“Identify yourself,” Jayden repeated.

Kira imagined the trees around them full of Voices—men in dark shadows, formless under rain ponchos, gripping their weapons as tightly as Kira was gripping hers. It was pitch-black under the trees, the moon and stars lost behind a thick layer of storm clouds. If anyone started shooting, she wondered if she’d even dare to shoot back—how could she tell which shapes in the darkness were enemies, and which were friends?

“They might not be from the Voice,” Marcus whispered. His voice was nearly inaudible, his lips practically touching her ear. “They could be merchants, drifters, even farmers. Just stay low.”

“You have a very pretty name,” said the voice in the darkness. “You can take it with you when you go.”

“We’re on our way to East Meadow,” said Jayden, “just making sure the area’s safe before we make camp. How many you got in there?”

The voice laughed hoarsely. “That’s a mighty dumb piece of intel for me to give you, not knowing your intentions. What if you’re Voices?”

“We’re from the Defense Grid,” said Jayden. “I told you already.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone lied to me.”

Kira heard a noise in the trees—a rustle of leaves, a snap that could have been a twig or a cocking gun. She sank lower to the ground, hoping it was one of their own people.

“There’s ten of us,” said Jayden. “The Voice is a lot more subtle than that . . . like maybe one old man hiding out in a ruined house.”

“I suppose you’ve got a point there,” said the man. “Doesn’t seem likely we’re going to trust each other either way.” The voice paused, silent. Rain beat down through the leaves. After a moment the voice returned. “The name’s Owen Tovar. I’m on my way to East Meadow myself, though, as it happens, and I could use the good word with the border guard. If you don’t mind sharing the place with Dolly and me, you’re welcome to come on in.” Kira heard nothing, then the sound of a door swinging open. Jayden hesitated, just a heartbeat, then lowered his rifle to his hip.

“Thanks for the offer.”

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Owen Tovar turned out to be a tall man, thin and weathered, waiting just inside the door with a black plastic shotgun propped up on his shoulder. He smiled at Kira and Gianna.

“If that moron had told me you had women with you, I’d have let you in a lot sooner.”

Marcus stepped in front of Kira protectively, but Tovar chuckled and clapped him on the arm. “Nothing unseemly, son, just good manners. Soldiers I can take or leave, but I’m afraid my mama trained me a little too well to leave a lady outside in a storm like this.” He shut the door behind the last soldier and pushed his way through the group toward the dark interior of the house. “I gotta say, whichever one of you found me in here is a better tracker than most. You’re wasting your talents in the Grid.” He opened another door to reveal a brightly lit room—an old living room, maybe, with no exterior windows and a cheery orange fire in a stonework fireplace. The room was tightly packed with old couches and blankets, and a small wooden cart sat against a set of closed double doors on the far side. Kira turned to the right as she walked in, sizing up the area, and jumped back in surprise when she found herself nose to nose with a camel.

“Say hello, Dolly.”

The camel groaned, and Tovar chuckled. “Don’t be rude, folks, answer back.”

Marcus smiled and bowed to the camel. “Pleased to meet you, Dolly. Mr. Tovar failed to mention how lovely his companion was.”

“I don’t know if every camel’s as ornery as she is,” said Tovar, “but we get along more or less. I figure she must have escaped from a zoo or something; I found her a few years back, just wanderin’ around.” He ushered the group through the doorway and closed it behind them. “I went through a lot of trouble to keep this fire invisible from outside,” he explained. “Chimney still works, too, so with a storm like this to hide the smoke, you can’t even tell I’m here.”

“We followed the tracks,” said Marcus, pulling off his coat.

“The tracks don’t lead here,” said Tovar. “At least not directly.”

“I heard you,” said Jayden, a small smile creeping through the corner of his mouth. “Dolly needs a few lessons in stealth.”

Tovar shook his head. “She wanted more sugar. Figures you folks’d be passin’ by for the two seconds she decides to argue the point. Most folks—meanin’ those folks nosy enough to be lookin’—never find this place at all. They just follow my tracks down around the next house, back through the woods, and then give up when they hit the creek. Turns out the bridge is fallen down, if you’ll believe it, and the planks I use to get across are pretty well hidden on the wrong side.”

“You’re a drifter,” said Jayden.

“I’m a salesman. That makes me a target for all kinds of unsavories, but that doesn’t mean I have to be a target of opportunity.” He moved a pile of blankets from the couch nearest the fire. “Best seats to the ladies, naturally. This place is pretty cozy with just me in it, but we’re going to get downright neighborly with this many people trying to sleep.”

Kira watched the man as he sorted out the blankets, squeezing between the dusty couches to arrange sleeping space for ten people and a donkey. Is he a part of the Voice? There was no way to tell, not unless he tried to blow them up.

The drifter handed a blanket to Brown, who stared at him suspiciously before yanking it gruffly from his hands. Tovar smiled and stepped back.

“This is going to be an awful long night if we keep not trusting each other. You really think I’m a Voice?”

Brown said nothing, and Tovar turned to Gianna. “How about you?” He turned again, stopping in front of Jayden and opening his arms. “What about you, do you think I’m a Voice? Is risking my own life and sharing my dry blankets all part of some larger plan to destroy the last human civilization?”

“I think you’re ex-military,” said Kira, inching closer to the fire.

Tovar cocked his head to the side. “What makes you say that?”

“Some of the words you use,” said Kira, “like ‘intel’ and ‘target of opportunity.’ The way you stowed your gun when we came in. The way you and Jayden are standing with absolutely identical postures right now.”

Jayden and Tovar looked at each other, then at themselves: feet shoulder-width apart, back straight, arms folded loosely behind them. They moved away from each other awkwardly, shifting their weight and shaking out their wrists.

“Being ex-military doesn’t mean he’s not in the Voice,” said Brown. “A lot of them are soldiers, too.”

“If being a soldier is proof of guilt,” said Tovar, “seven out of ten people in this room are looking awfully guilty.”

“So tell us about yourself,” said Marcus, settling into a couch. “If I’m going to spend the whole night waiting for you guys to stop flirting and shoot each other, I want to at least be entertained.”

“Owen Tovar,” he repeated with a bow, “born and raised in Macon, Georgia. I played varsity football for two years, graduated, joined the marines, and blew off four of my toes in the war—this would be the Iranian war, not the Isolation War, the one with the Chinese that you kids are probably thinking of, the one we sent the Partials to fight for us. Though I suppose most of you are what, late teens? Two or three years old when that war ended, five or six when the whole world ended a few years later? No, when I say ‘war,’ you’re probably thinking of the Partial War, things bein’ what they are, but I hate to break it to you that that wasn’t no kind of war at all, just some fightin’ and some dyin’ and some ‘that’s all she wrote.’ War, see, is when two sides fight, maybe not evenly, but at least they both get a few swings in. What we call the Partial War was mankind gettin’ mugged in an alley.”

“I remember the Isolation War,” said Gianna. “We’re not all plague babies here.”

“Not my place to speculate on a lady’s age,” said Tovar, sitting down by the fire. He looked relaxed, but Kira noticed that he was still in quick, easy reach of his shotgun. Jayden sat across from him, but most of the soldiers stayed standing. Kira sat by Marcus, pulling his arm over her shoulders. He was warm and reassuring.

“Doesn’t matter which war it was, I guess,” said Tovar. “I lost four toes, left the marines on medical leave, and went home to Georgia to play hockey.”

“They couldn’t have played hockey in Georgia,” said Sparks. “That was one of the southern ones, right? Georgia? Hockey was an ice sport.”