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  They were considered to be neands, but Harley knew better. They were too organized to not be on the Link and they were getting money from somewhere, so they were getting their right to income funds in one way, or another.

  Harley had known the Wrynd named Ralph before he was a zombie. He used to see him on the road to the Utah Hub from time to time. His family had been neand farmers on the outskirts of the Hub when a Wrynd tribe attacked. They had turned Ralph and eaten his parents. Before injected with ink, the boy had been harmless. Now he was anything but. Harley didn’t want to have to shoot him but knew it was a delicate thing. The first 12 hours after a Wrynd shot ink there was no reasoning with them. They were so caught in the flare that they would kill anything, even each other if there weren’t a more likely target. With these two he had gotten lucky, or they had. They were coming down from their flare, which meant Harley might get out of the McDonald’s without having to kill them.

  “Is Orrin still king?” Harley asked, taking a cup from the counter and filling it with water from the dispenser.

  “He’s still king.” Ralph said. The girl zombie named Nina stood beside him and her eyes were wild as she locked onto his. She was flaring more than Ralph. Harley drank his water and returned his hand to his sidearm, letting it rest there comfortably. This may turn ugly after all.

  “Where’s your base now?”

  “Now why do you want to know that Harley?” Ralph slid his hand under his shirt and rubbed his stomach. Harley could see what looked like a nasty gash in his side. He realized it was a tattoo.

  “I’d just as soon not be on the dinner menu, so I thought it might be wise to give your tribe a wide berth.”

  Ralph grinned. “Leathery thing like you Harley? Now who’d want to eat you?” Ralph took a step toward him.

  “I don’t know Ralphie. I like me some man jerky.” Nina said and she licked her lips. Her tongue was very pink coming out of parted lips painted in gore.

  “You might have a mind to make some jerky out of me. But I wouldn’t advise it. Go back to your happy meals and I’ll find myself something to eat along the trail.”

  “You think you could take us down Harley before we take you down?” Ralph asked.

  “I think.”

  Ralph studied him for a moment then laughed a loud, delighted laugh and grabbed Nina’s arm. “He’s right, let’s finish our happy meals. We can get us some man jerky anytime we want. Remember the old rest area on the other side of Soldier Summit?”

  “Tie Fork?”

  Ralph slapped his blood soaked shirt and pointed at Harley, grinning. “That’s the one.”

  “I know it.”

  “That’s our camp. Stop on by and say hello to King Orrin. He’d like to see you. He’s got himself a new queen. She’s something. She likes man jerky too.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  They turned their back on Harley and dropped back down on top of the dead cook and cashier. Harley considered killing them, but turned and walked out of McDonald’s and climbed back into his truck.

  Chapter Four

  Rages

  The Rages hadn’t washed away the road leading through the canyon, but years of neglect had taken its toll.

  State Route 6 was maintained longer than most highways because Price was going to be a part of the Hub. When plans changed the highway was left to nature and nature gobbled it up, one little section at a time.

  Harley drove by the shattered remains of Carbonville and Helper City and continued up the mountain. The road hugged the west side of the canyon, following the river. More than once Harley was forced to stop and find a way to go around or climb over slides that had all but pulverized the asphalt. On the other side of the river, the rail lines had fared better, but not by much. He counted himself lucky that the transportation he found had been a four-wheel drive pickup instead of a car. It had only been a year since his last visit to the Hub, but the road had deteriorated considerably in that time. In a few more years, he would have to walk to make it to the Hub or go over Huntington Canyon, which held more than its fair share of hazards, or south and the long way around. Civilian air travel wasn't a recognized human right and the Federation strictly enforced the no-fly zone over Wilderness areas.

  They called the migration of humanity to the Hubs the Exodus, but with the Rages, the no-fly zones and the Wrynd, those who chose to live in the Wilderness called it something else. They called it the Purge.

  The rest area stood abandoned for more than 30 years; the buildings were leaning like drunkards. The road passed dangerously close, but trees between the road and the rest area would obscure his view and the whisper of the truck would help. He might be able to skirt around the zombie tribe without any issues. Before he reached the Tie Fork Rest Area, he stopped and hiked to the top of a hill overlooking the site so he could look down on the tribe with a magnifier before he tried to pass.

  They were in the middle of what looked to be a Wrynd feast. Roasting on a spit were huge slabs of meat. It was unusual to see the Wrynd cook their food. They usually preferred it on the rare side. There were four massive elk heads hanging from what used to be the rest area welcome sign.

  “I don’t care for my elk steaks bloody either,” Harley muttered, squinting through his magnifier. They had taken down the elk as a tribe then, by teeth and claw. He couldn’t help but be impressed.

  There were close to 200 Wrynd in this tribe, which made it larger than most he had seen. They were probably growing their numbers from the population in Price. Kidnapping a few here and there and turning them to ink. As he watched them feast, he saw the Wrynd king walk out from what used to be the welcome center. He was a massive, shaven head, shirtless man covered in tattoos. Most of the tattoos depicted a part of his body either oozing something or rotting away. His shaven head was crisscrossed with jagged scars, most of them tattoo but not all of them. The right side of his head was blood red and looked as though he was melting on that side of his body. He was an imposing figure.

  Harley hadn’t known Orrin before he was a Wrynd, but whatever he had been before he succumbed to ink and became a drug addicted cannibal, had to be better than what he was now. Harley narrowed his focus on the sight glass and was surprised to see the blackness of the veins and eyes was not nearly as distinct as usual. They were out of ink.

  He started to climb to his feet when something hummed over his head and he dove back to his belly. A stork skimmed over the treetops, its electric rotors whirling softly as it descended to the old rest area and floated above the Wrynd king. Beneath the drone’s rotors, a large box dangled from a wire. Orrin walked to where the drone hovered and raised his hands and Harley zoomed in closer. Before the drone released the package Harley detected the slightest of involuntary blinks from the big Wrynd’s eyes and then the drone released the package and flew away. Orrin took the box and raised it high above his head and the rest of the Wrynd moaned their battle cry triumphantly. He opened the package and Harley recognized the vials of ink inside.

  He rolled onto his back and stared at the sky. “Zombie blinkers. Now ain’t that cracked?”

  The Wrynd were not only on the Link, some of them were blinkers. They were connected to the Link and they were getting their drugs by stork, just like you would a pizza. How was that possible? If they had a linktag, the Federation could find them and stop them with little more than a thought. So why hadn’t they?

  He backed down the hill to his truck and drove by them slowly. They never looked his way, but they were understandably busy.

  Harley was forced to abandon his truck eight miles past the zombie tribe. The cliffs of the canyon had crumbled as if some great bubble of destruction had broken through from hidden depths and laid waste to the mountain. The road lay buried beneath tons of rubble. The river itself had backed up and created a small lake before it finally found a way to snake through the rock and dirt. The only way around was up and over, on foot.

  There were the shattered remains of what once, years b
efore, may have been a gas station and campground just off the highway. Whatever dreams the builders of such a place may have had were faded away to lost memories. The building wasn’t far behind. But the four walls still stood and most of the roof. Harley parked his truck behind the old store, strapped the pack on his back, threw the saddlebag over his shoulder and continued on foot. It took him more than an hour to cross the slide. When his boots once again touched the old asphalt, he was tired and hungry and ready to call it a night. The sun had already dipped below the mountain peaks and he faced a night in the Wilderness without shelter on a mountain teaming with wildlife that wanted him dead.

  He made camp on the road itself. He considered the wisdom of making a fire because it would attract every form of wildlife in the area, but in the end decided he’d rather have a fire than not. Firewood was easy to come by and before long it was popping happily in the middle of the deserted road, taking the bite off a night that was quickly growing chilly.

  He drank the last of his water and finally relented on ordering food. His only meal for the day had been the steamed vegetables at the hotel. He would need more energy to make it through the night. He retrieved his eyeset from his pack and placed an order for a large Mexican pizza, six pack of beer and four liters of water and waited impatiently for the stork. When it arrived it skimmed over the treetops and dropped down into the canyon, hugging the old road as it hovered to a stop above him with hardly a whisper of its rotors. It deposited the still steaming pizza, cold beer and water on the ground in front of him, recorded his acceptance of delivery and drifted away. Harley opened the box and took out a slice of pizza pie as he popped the top on a beer. Roughing it wasn’t what it used to be.

  He leaned against a pile of wood he had collected as he sat on the ground and ate his pizza and drank his beer, his thoughts on the Wrynd he had met earlier in the day and the young woman he had killed. A man with gray eyes had come to her and somehow removed the nanobots that connected her to the Link. Before she died, she had whispered that the end was coming. An end to what, he wondered. His mind whispered back “an end to everything.”

  He had started on this trip to the Hub for no particular reason, just for the company of humanity really, just to go somewhere and watch people live. A mall, or park, anywhere where people still gathered to be people. He just wanted to be part of that for a moment. It had been a path to point his boots along and perhaps a chance to eat a good meal in a nice place, not order his meals by stork and eat them in the dirt and dust of the Wilderness. But now he considered another reason to visit the Hub. The Americas Legion was missing a legionnaire and he knew what had become of her. It might make a visit to the Utah Hub Marshal worthwhile. Of course, explaining that he had shot a hole through her chest might get a bit complicated, but there were ways around the truth if it became necessary.

  He finished his pizza and drank his beer and was on the verge of nodding off when he heard something skipping toward him down the highway. He climbed to his feet and quickly stepped away from the fire toward the edge of the road with the slope of the canyon leading to the river. The deer charged into the light of the camp with its head down, blinded momentarily by the light and Harley quickly drew his blaster and put the buck down.

  Another one came at him from the opposite direction and he shot it before it had completely entered his circle of camp light, seeing it more by shadow than anything else. He didn’t see the one behind him until it was too late. The doe raced past him, kicking out with her back legs as she passed. Her legs caught his blaster and ripped it from his grip and he rolled on the ground and came up with the cutlass in his hand. The doe charged at him again and he swung out, catching the deer in the neck and the sword neatly parted the hide and flesh and ended her life.

  He scrambled on the ground and found his blaster where it had skidded to a stop by the fire. He gripped it tightly and pivoted with the sidearm in his right hand and the sword in his left, breathing heavily and wondering if this was just a random attack or the Rages. The answer was quick to come as a flurry of bats swarmed around his head and something impossibly large streaked past his face. He caught a glimpse of a large wing and hooked talons of an owl, when a dozen more deer descended down the mountainside and attacked his camp.

  Something small scurried across his boot and up his pants leg and he felt the bite of tiny teeth on his leg as he shook the mouse free and stepped on another. There were hundreds of them on the roadway now, coming his way and he cursed and stomped. He hated mice. He shot one deer after another, their bodies piling up around him. From the flickering firelight he saw dozens of raccoon scurrying toward him, hissing and growling and he fired blindly in their direction.

  He thought he might be able to make his way toward the slide, where at least he would have the high ground and the animals would not have the cover of the forest, when he heard the roar of something very large behind him. He turned to see a brown bear racing toward him and he fired at it several times before another deer hit him in the back and threw him to the ground. The mice were all over him then and a raccoon dove at his face, teeth bared. He flung it away and scrambled to his feet as the bear drew closer.

  A vehicle’s headlights cut through the night and a ball of light whizzed past his head and rolled down the length of the bear’s hide. He smelled burning hair and the bear roared and ran back into the forest. A truck skidded to a stop in front of him and the passenger’s door opened. Harley scrambled inside and more deer trampled through the fire and slammed into the truck. Outside, the glowing ball of light danced from one deer to another, hitting them hard, burning them, killing them.

  Harley looked at the big man behind the wheel and nodded thanks. The driver nodded back.

  “Looks like its venison for dinner tonight,” the driver said.

  Chapter Five

  Tabasco and a Side of Fries

  The deputy marshal’s name was Victor Shelley. He was a hulking nanobot enhanced, medprint junky who prowled the Utah Wilderness to keep the peace, rape, pillage and hunt, not necessarily in that order. He was horribly untrustworthy and without scruples. Harley liked him. With him were a young man and two small children who Harley did not know.

  Harley was going to open a window and assist in killing the animals of the Rages, but in the end there was no need. The ball of light dancing in the darkness took care of things nicely and after the herd of deer was either killed or ran away, the rest of the creatures – owls, mice, raccoon, bats, faded back into the night. They waited for another half hour and then got out of the truck and wove through the carnage of dead animals toward the fire.

  While Harley fed the fire Deputy Shelley butchered a deer and put half a dozen steaks on a spit over the fire. The younger man drug a couple of the larger logs Harley had scavenged closer to the fire and sat down with his children. Harley could feel them looking at him as he sat on another log. He ignored them. From what he could see of the man he was a soft blinker, completely out of his element in the Wilderness. The two kids looked on the verge of tears. Terrified, Harley wondered what in the world could these children be doing out in the night with the likes of Deputy Shelley? He waited to hear from them before he asked any questions.

  The big deputy knelt by the fire and removed the deer steaks from the spit and placed them on metal plates he had taken from a kit in the back of his truck. He bit into one and smiled. “Now that’s good eatin’. You’re not going to have any of this Harley?”

  “Had pizza for dinner.”

  “Counting on the storks for your food now? You’re getting soft.”

  “May be.”

  The deputy removed a cooler from the back of the truck and fished out two beers. He offered one to Harley with an arm that looked a mile long. “Me too.”

  Harley accepted the beer, popped the top. “You print yourself even longer arms Vic?”

  “Longer?” Victor flexed massive biceps. “No. These are the same ones I had last time I saw you.”

  Afte
r Victor Shelley accepted a position as a deputy marshal he printed himself new, larger arms at a medprint and once he recovered from the surgery he had nanobot enhancements to increase his strength. He now was a wild caricature of a human being, with oversized arms and shoulders. With his extra-large and long arms if he wasn’t careful with his posture he would drag his knuckles on the ground. Rumor had it that his arms weren’t the only medical enhancement he had ordered at a medprint, but Harley wasn’t going to be foolish enough to ask him about it.

  “Well, you look like a damn orangutan.”

  “Maybe so.” Victor smiled and rubbed his bald head with one massive hand. “But I could reach across this fire and squash your melon like a bug.”

  Harley wasn’t going to argue with the truth, so he didn’t, but he did turn his attention to the young man and the two children.

  “What’s their story?” Harley asked, not bothering to talk to them directly.

  “This,” Victor took the three of them a plate of venison steak that they accepted halfheartedly. “Is Quinlan Bowden and his son Noah and daughter Raizor. Noah is eight and Raizor here is six, is that right Raizor?” The girl nodded as she picked up the steak and tore a piece off with tiny white teeth.