But she couldn’t close her eyes.
The faces that came to her were much more disturbing than what she saw on the depressing walls. She imagined her brother and her father. She blinked and saw David smiling at her. She pictured Austin and the way the corner of his mouth would turn when he had a secret.
Madelyn screamed her frustration and hurled her coffee mug at the wall. It shattered when it hit a rusty pickaxe. The dregs of her coffee dripped down the planks.
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She stormed towards the stairs. Once in the compartment, she stabbed the button to take her underground. She could feel the dirt pressing in on the sides of the chamber. The lights came on. She stopped at the control panel and activated all the outside cameras. Most of them still worked. There were a few in the woods that showed only black. One was obscured by mud and twigs. Some bird had built its nest against the lens.
Madelyn took herself to the lounge and flopped down in her chair.
The display was still on. They had forgotten to power it down after the repair cycle.
Madelyn frowned and shook her head. She flipped through the view from the cameras again. She searched every image for a sign of Jacob. He was long gone from their limited range. Madelyn sighed and worked her way through the list of available movies. She had seem them all. Even the ones that sounded terrible had a little green check next to the title. Back when she was new to the idea of living alone, she had used up all the entertainment bundled into the system. Those rations were depleted.
She hovered over the option to query the ether. In the distant past, she had made a resolution—she would never pull anything down into her system. There were viruses out there. Electronic pathogens could take over her entertainment system and render it useless.
“What do I care?” she asked herself. She never used the thing anymore. It was spent.
She hit the button.
The list populated slowly at first. Once it gained steam, it exploded. People—the few who were left—had been busy. Madelyn put a sort on the list so the system would predict which of the movies she would like the most.
A title bubbled to the top—“Cause for Desperation.”
She clicked.
The movie began to stream from the ether into her screen. The notion was unsettling. Invisible hands were reaching out from the world and meddling in her business.
The screen went blank.
It opened to a beautiful field, filled with wildflowers.
The camera narrowed its focus to a single purple and yellow blossom. Everything else became blurry and then faded to black, until only the flower and its stem were visible. The music swelled and then turned menacing. The flower transformed into the shape of a child, huddled down in the dark. When the clicking started, the girl raised her eyes and looked every direction.
On the screen, the girl ran.
Madelyn pulled her legs up and gathered her knees to her chest. She had never seen a movie like this before. All the movies on her system showed happiness and young love.
The girl pressed herself against a brick wall. The camera swung around and Madelyn saw the long alley. There was nowhere to hide. The clicking rose in volume and sped up. Suddenly, Madelyn saw the world through the girl’s eyes. The camera swung around and shook as the girl ran. She dodged around a dumpster and under the metal ladder of a fire escape.
The clicking became a buzz. The buzz became a low tone. The tone broke into harmonics that seemed to play a rudimentary song. Madelyn wanted to close her eyes. The girl was just seconds away from death and Madelyn didn’t want to watch it happen.
A door slammed open and bright light spilled out into the alley. The girl ran for the light.
“No!” Madelyn yelled at the screen. Going towards the light was the perfectly wrong thing to do. If the girl got lucky, the light would distract the Roamers and she could sneak away. Instead, the girl was converging on the exact spot where they would go.
The camera pulled back and the girl kept running. Madelyn’s heart thumped in her chest as she watched with fascinated horror. Just as the girl ducked in through the doorway, two adults popped out. It was a man and a woman. They each held black boxes.
At the same time, the man and woman opened their boxes. Green light flooded out from each box. The edges of the light flowed like mist, curling and rising from the heat. The clicking tune of the Roamers climbed until it sounded like a scream. The sound was deafening. Then, at precisely the same time, the man and woman slammed shut their boxes, cutting off the sound of the Roamers.
The couple looked at each other and nodded in satisfaction.
The little girl appeared in the doorway.
“Can we make dinner now? I’m hungry,” the girl said.
The mother laughed.
Madelyn watched the rest of the movie without moving a muscle. She was transfixed as the family worked their way through the city, clearing out all the danger and leaving behind peace. At the end, with the city safe, the family retired to the countryside and their beautiful field of wildflowers.
When the screen went blank again, Madelyn reached up and wiped away her snot and tears.
Her heart felt too big to fit inside her ribcage.
She made her way upstairs and opened the front door.
The rain had cleared. The day was bright and beautiful. The breeze from the forest was rich and clean.
Madelyn smiled. She was full of energy and knew exactly what she needed to do.
She left the door open as she went to gather her things.
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Madelyn stopped at the edge of the stream and filled her lungs. It felt good to jog. Even with the pack, she felt light and lively. She stepped quickly across the stones and crossed without even getting her feet wet. Madelyn smiled and then turned back. She hadn’t been across the stream in forever. There was no need.
The wall of trees climbing the hill looked like a different world. It was the closet that she had locked herself in for so many years. Somewhere back in there, along the path and under a canopy of fall color, her little cabin sat.
She scanned her memory—had she remembered to lock the place? Patting her pockets, she discovered the key, but she couldn’t remember actually turning the lock. It pulled at her. The cabin wanted her back.
“No,” she whispered. She shook her head and turned away.
Just over the hill, the land flattened out into a brown meadow. There were no wildflowers here—this wasn’t the meadow from the movie. Still, the open space challenged her eyes. She traced the ridge and wondered what she would see from the top.
The excitement left over from the movie robbed her of patience. Madelyn broke into a jog again.
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The sun was falling fast behind her when she reached the lake. She hadn’t anticipated being outside and alone when the sun set. She began to remember something that was once obvious—excitement was a close cousin of panic.
Madelyn hurried along the bank of the lake.
She saw the first camp and began to rush. In her haste, her feet went out from under her and she slid towards the water. She recovered only after her right foot was soaked and muddy. Madelyn clawed her way back up to solid ground and took more care as she worked through the woods towards the place.
It was completely impractical. Giant windows faced the lake. The big deck didn’t even have a roof. She didn’t even bother to look inside. Nobody would be stupid enough to take refuge in a place like that.
Madelyn slogged on to the next camp. A million years ago, the places had been vacation refuge for the wealthy. Some people arrived by float plane. Others trekked in on four wheelers. Those days were long gone.
The camp she walked to was better, but not great. It had reasonable windows that could be blocked with some of the furniture she spied through the door. Even better, she saw stairs that must lead down to a root cellar or utility room. That could be a safe place to spend the night. The door was locked. Madelyn knocked and waited. She cupped her hands on the glass and wondered where Jacob had gone.
After a minute, she got moving again.
The movie had filled her with such hope and purpose. She felt the energy draining from her as she walked through the woods and saw the next derelict camp. These were places of happy getaways, but they had been abandoned. To Madelyn’s eyes, they were starving dogs, tethered to a tree and forgotten by their owners. She had the impulse to burn them down and put them out of their misery.
That was a thought for another day—her nephew was likely hiding in one of the structures.
She had one more camp to investigate. Compared to the first two, this one was a mansion. It had three floors towering above the lake and a big balcony over the front porch. She pictured bankers sitting up there, drinking laced coffee as they looked out at a chunk of nature they had yet to spoil. Jacob could do worse than pick this place. It had a good lookout from the upper floors and escape routes on all four sides. It had a vented stack through the roof, which wasn’t great, but it meant that the place was at least equipped for modern services.
Madelyn climbed the steps and knocked. When there was no answer, she glanced around and tried the door. As it swung inwards, the lights ramped on and she heard the environmental systems come to life. Stale air rushed by her. She left the door open a few centimeters. The place had positive pressurization—giving it a leak to contend with would help cycle the air faster.
When she let go, the door shut on its own.
The first floor was wide open. The lights twinkled in the ceiling like little white stars. They were brightest in the kitchen. Madelyn headed that direction.
“Intrusion detected,” the kitchen said.
She searched her memory for the word to use. It came with sadness.
“Greetings,” she said.
“Welcome,” the kitchen responded. It was a woman’s voice—mature and confident.
“Mode?” Madelyn asked.
“Our mode defaults to hospitality after ten years,” the kitchen said.
“Last occupancy?”
“Last visitor, eighteen years.”
The time meant nothing to Madelyn. She had stopped counting the years. She hated talking to the kitchen. It was like having a conversation with a haunted house.
“Where’s the control panel?” she asked.
“We offer the following interfaces—voice control, ether, and biofeedback.”
Madelyn shook her head. It figured that there would be no physical control. They expected that the user would have an ether-enabled controller. Even if there was one around, the drive would be long dead by now.
She sighed.
“Just tell me—is there anyone else in the area?”
“Please define area of interest.”
“On the property—as far as your sensors reach—can you detect anyone else aside from me?”
“Eleven sensors in the requested area are currently malfunctioning. We detect no other human activity.”
“Great,” Madelyn said.
“You’re welcome,” the kitchen replied.
“Aunt Maddie?” a voice asked from the door.
She turned. “If you’re going to call me anything, call me Mac.”
Jacob nodded. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to find you. I have an idea.”
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They sat on the porch and looked out over the lake. As exposed as it was, she had to admit that it was pleasant to sit outside and look over the water. It brought peace to a part of her that she didn’t realize was unsettled. Still, her mind worried about the camp. Since the kitchen and the environment had been activated, there was probably heat pouring out of the stack.
Jacob finally replied to her idea.
“You realize that it was just a movie, right?”
“Of course.”
“There is no green box of light that can trap or kill those things. To suggest that a city could be cleared out is pure fiction.”
“That
depiction
might be fictional, but that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t clear out a city. They’re physical things, are they not? Why would we assume that they can’t be destroyed?”
“Well,” Jacob said. He rubbed the top of his head with his hand and glanced at her with a sad look. “You’re older than I am, but I’ve studied history. Lots of people tried to kill them, drive them out, round them up, and take back the cities. Until the collapse, the Civi in Oslo was constantly looking for ways to beat them back. I’m not sure what you’re proposing that would make things any different.”
“You don’t understand,” Madelyn said. She waved her hand at him.
“Explain it,” he said.
Madelyn thought about it for a second. There had to be a way to convey to him what she had felt. She opened her mouth and then closed it again.
When she finally spoke, her uncertainty was growing.
“We have to bring them to us. We have to make them chase us and then turn the tables. It’s not about waging war with them, it’s about using their aggression against them. I’ve barely heard them the past few years. That has to be because they’re getting weaker. Now might be the time to strike.”
“Is it possible that you haven’t heard them because you’ve gotten better at avoiding them? Your cabin is set up like a fortress. If you’re not going out at night, then that might explain why you haven’t had any trouble.”
“But they used to be around even during the day,” Madelyn said.