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MooskiNet:
Zeb, until they enable likes in here, all I got is

This is good.  Keep going.  Please and thank you.

Zebediah:
Well, thanks for reading! Here's the next bit:


We set out at first light, Sarge leading the way, Arnold bringing up the rear, May and I in the middle. We said little to each other for the first hour or so as we marched east on old Route 9.

Then, out of the blue, something flew overhead, screaming "You witless fucksticks!"

"Man, I hate those things," May muttered.

Sarge turned to look at her. "There's more than one of those?"

I laughed. "The range of the North American Yelling Bird extends at least from upstate New York through Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire into southern Maine."

"Cocksuckers!" the bird added.

Sarge eyed it warily. "We've run into this one before. Thought it was the only one. A few people have tried killing it, but it's a waste of ammo. It seems harmless enough."

"Harmless? The little monster is every goddamned thing that's wrong with this world," May said with surprising  vehemence.

Sarge raised an eyebrow to that, so May continued. "Think about it. Some fuckin' idiot though it would be a laugh to create a virus that would reprogram a songbird's brain so that it shouted obscenities instead of singing songs. And then released it. It killed 98% of the birds that it infected. The rest..." May waved an arm overhead.

"Motherfuckers!" the bird opined.

"And it was a million and one stupid decisions just like that that killed the world," May said.

"Show me your fucking tits you whore!"

"Ignore it and it will go away. Eventually," I said.

"Fuck that," May said. "Ought to capture it and leave it in PT410x's office, just so it can tell the little dictator what I really think of him."

"Assfucker!" the bird shouted.

"Exactly," May agreed.

Sarge turned to look at her. "You have a problem with the Mayor?"

"Your boss is an asshole."

"He's letting you go, isn't he?"

"Yeah, well, he's still an asshole, and it's a nice little banana republic he runs."

Sarge merely shrugged. "Well, I didn't vote for him."

"I did," Arnold announced, the first words I'd heard him say all morning.

"You pathetic fuckspike!"

"You expect me to believe that PT410x was elected democratically?" May shook her head.

"Believe what you like," Sarge said. "Fact is, we had an election after the military junta agreed to relinquish control, and PT410x won fair and square. And he's a hell of a lot better than the hard-liner who came in second. So count your blessings. It was a close race."

"Huh." May was quiet for a couple of minutes. Then she said, "Well, maybe I ought to convince Momo to move here before the next election, then."

"That," Sarge said, "would be PT410x's worst nightmare."

"Lick my cloaca!"

"Really? You think Momo would have a chance?"

"Maybe. Momo was always a very vocal advocate of better human-AI relations. Hell, I'd heard of her even before the big crash. And the humanists in Worcester still hold her in high regard. I mean, where else are you going to find an AI in charge of a mostly-human community? I don't think Momo realizes how influential she is. She would certainly have a huge following if she came here."

"Now that is interesting." May got a wicked grin on her face. "Bet ol' Neckbeard would have an absolute fit."

"The Mayor has been able to convince a lot of the humanists in Worcester that he's on their side because he's friends with Momo. He needs Momo's support to keep power, but he needs her to stay away also."

"Go fuck a yeti!"

May gave Sarge a thoughtful look. "And you're telling me all this why, exactly?"

Sarge smiled back. "Like I said, I didn't vote for him."

"Huh." May shook her head. "Well, you can tell your Mayor he's safe for a few more years. Momo and I are staying in Northampton until our adopted son is grown up."

"Entering Northborough now," Arnold announced.

"We're heading up old US 20 from here," I said.

"You have whale shit for brains!"

"For once, I agree with the bird," Sarge said. "We'll escort you as far as Interstate 495. Not a step farther, though. East of there, there are... things... that will do worse to you than eat you."

We kept marching at a steady pace for a few more hours, accompanied by the bird's nonstop commentary. Northborough was totally deserted, and the east side of Marlborough was the same.

Then, in the early afternoon, we finally came to the interstate. I-495 had once been the outer loop around the Boston suburbs. Now...

"Stay on the overpass," Sarge cautioned. "Do not go down there."

The old highway was completely covered with the bumper-to-bumper corpses of old automobiles. The frames of most of them were still intact, but now covered with what appeared to be a dense overgrowth of thick, black vines.

We stopped in the middle of the overpass to take a closer look. "Fuck," May said softly, almost reverently. The "vines", upon closer inspection, were clearly metal cables, branching and weaving through the remains of the cars. A faint hum emanated from the traffic jam.

"Shit," May said. "Those things are carrying power!"

"It's like an electric fence around the whole Boston metro area," Sarge explained.

"But why? What does it do?"

"Damned if I know," Sarge said. "But if it's meant to warn us to stay out, it's effective. We don't cross it."

"I guess this is where we say goodbye, then," I said.

"Yeah, well..." Sarge actually looked a bit embarrassed. "Good luck, Marten Reed. I hope you find what you're looking for in there. And if you don't... I hope your death is quick and painless."

"I'm gonna skullfuck each and every one of you!" the bird added, although from far away.

"Huh. Bird's smarter than we are," May said. "It's not coming with us."

"Can you blame it?" Sarge asked.

"You're all right, Sarge," May said. "Do yourself a favor, get yourself a new boss, okay?"

"Roger that," Sarge said. "Come on, Arnold. Let's get out of here."

We watched them march away, and then turned to face east.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Nope," May said. "Never will be. Let's get going."

We started ahead, leaving the overpass and crossing into the wild lands of Outer Boston.

BenRG:
If May and Marten run into an implausibly friendly and healthy Alsatian that they can persuade to do things like pick up wrenches and kill predatory rats for them, I'm going to know Zeb is a Fallout fan. :wink:

Seriously, it's nice to see Yelling Bird. I wonder if they'll run into the idiot who did all this and, if so, what they'll do to him/her? I'm still betting it's Beatrice Chatham. Killing off the human race in a "Step 3 = Profit" plan that was never adequately thought out does seem to be her sort of thing. I wonder is he knows she's as good as murdered Hannelore by doing it?

Zebediah:
May and I walked east down the road for over a mile without saying a word to each other. I, for one, was too stunned by what I saw to know what to say.

The trees, instead of being the ragged, acid-scarred barely-living skeletons I had become accustomed to, were large and healthy, towering seventy feet or more overhead and arching their branches over the highway, bearing a thick growth of leaves that left us in dense shade. The buzz of insect-like creatures filled the air, and occasionally unseen things moved through the underbrush. And, everywhere, vine-like cables snaked along the ground and wound their way up the trees.

Then something large and slow buzzed past my head. "Shit! I thought bumblebees were extinct."

"They are," May said. "There was something weird about how that one sounded." Another one flew past, and May's hand shot out to snatch it out of the air. She held it tightly in her fingers as she examined it.

"Oh, shit," she muttered.

"What?"

"Look at it. It's got artificial wings."

I leaned in to get a better view. "Yeah, it does. And that thing on the end of its abdomen looks more like a power jack than a stinger."

"Yeah. And I'm getting a wi-fi signal from it. I didn't mention it earlier, but I've been getting both wi-fi and cellular data network signals ever since we crossed 495."

"So... Robot bees with wi-fi. That's weird."

"It's worse than that," May said. "It's got robot parts, but the abdomen and legs look organic. It's a fuckin' cyborg." She opened her fingers, releasing the insect into the air. It hovered for a moment to get its bearings and then flew off.

"Cyborg bees? Who would do that? And why?"

May had no answer, so we continued down the highway. I noticed she was now staying as close to the center of the road as possible, warily eyeing the vegetation to either side.

"What's got you so spooked?" I asked.

"Marten, look at the trees."

I looked around, and shrugged. "They're trees. If you ignore the power cables hanging on them, they look perfectly normal."

"No, they don't. Look how big they are. How long does it take to grow a tree that size? Forty years? Fifty? These trees weren't here fifteen years ago."

"Oh." I went up to a tree that was growing by the side of the road, and put my hand on it. "It's warm. Is that normal?"

"No," May said. "And look at those cables. They don't grow on the trees, they grow out of them."

"So... what, then?"

"Solar power collectors. Think about it. That's what trees are anyway, pretty much. So make each leaf a solar power cell. One tree could generate a shitload of electricity."

I stepped back from the tree and looked up and down the road. Suddenly I saw May's point. "Shit. And there are thousands of them."

"At least," May said. "If everything inside 495 is covered with trees like this, that's something like fifteen hundred square miles of solar collectors."

"What the hell could use that much power?"

"Boston," May said.

"Yeah. Boston." I shook my head. "The guys I knew who had been there – they said the whole city was like one super-sized cybernetic network. Everything was connected. But it didn't reach beyond the city limits."

"Well, it looks like it does now. It's growing. And that scares the shit out of me, Marten." May's eyes grew wide. "Cyborg trees, cyborg insects – wouldn't surprise me if all the animals we've seen were borgs too. Probably everything between here and Boston harbor is part of one giant borganism. Except us."

"So far it seems to be ignoring us."

"So far, yeah. But it's eventually going to notice us. And when it does, it either destroys us or eats us."

"You want to turn back?"

"Fuck yes I want to turn back." May was visibly shaking by now. "I want to run screaming all the way back to Northampton until I'm safe in Momo's arms again, and then delete all memory of this trip so that I don't have nightmares for the rest of my life."

I nodded. "All right, then. But I'm still going on. I can't come this close and then give up. If I don't make it back..."

May shook her head. "No."

"What?"

"No," May said again. "We've made it this far together, I'm not going to cut out on you now."

"You sure about this?"

"Hey, I have a history of making incredibly stupid decisions, all right? I have a reputation to maintain."

"All right then, let's get moving. Something this big, it may not be able to react too quickly. If we move fast enough it might not be able to find us."

By sundown we were in what had once been the town of Wayland. It was now... something else. An irregular structure that looked like a cubist interpretation of the Eiffel Tower constructed by drunk orangutans towered forty stories over what had once been the center of town. As the sky grew dark, multicolored lights began to come on all over it, blinking on and off in seemingly random patterns.

"Merry fuckin' Christmas," May muttered. "Somebody ought to tell that thing it's July."

I pointed towards something beside the road that looked like it had been a house, once. Now it was covered with more of the ubiquitous power cables that crisscrossed everything in Greater Boston. But it looked intact, and there were even lights on inside. And the front door was unlocked.

"Shit," May said as we entered. "It even has air conditioning."

"Looks deserted," I said. "Can't for the life of me imagine why this place is still in working order, but nothing we've seen all day has made sense."

"I think it's safe enough," May said. "Wouldn't surprise me if there's even hot water."

There was, although there was no soap and no towels. Still, I hadn't had a hot shower in years. I felt much better afterwards.

"You take the sofa," May said. "I'll be on watch. No way am I going to sleep in a place like this."

"Still spooked?"

"You don't understand, Marten," May said. "I told you I'm getting network signals. I'm not crazy enough to try to log on. But something keeps trying to log on to me."

"Oh."

"And I don't dare try to recharge. Even an ordinary wall socket would be risky."

"That going to be a problem?"

"I'm sitting on 82% charge. These new batteries I got in Worcester are a godsend. I'm good for now. But do me a favor. Pintsize is shut off, isn't he?"

"What? Yes, of course. I can't get him to boot up."

"Disconnect his battery, okay? I may be just paranoid, but..."

"Yeah. Good idea." I dug him out of my pack and pulled his battery pack out. "Sorry, old buddy."

"Thanks," May said. "You sleep. I'll be okay."

My dreams that night were horrible, like every night. But morning came without incident. "Saw a few really weird things out the windows during the night," May told me. "The bioluminescent skunk was probably the craziest."

"What, you didn't wake me for that?"

"So sue me," May said with something approaching her normal good humor. "Eat your breakfast and let's get the hell out of here."

"Breakfast" was a handful of peanuts, but better than nothing. "Let's go," I said.

We walked out the front door and stopped dead in our tracks. The first thing I noticed was the rifle pointed at my chest. The second thing was the woman holding it. She was of tall and painfully thin, with dark red hair streaked with gray and a hideous scar on the left side of her face.

"Stop right there," she said, in what sounded like a Russian accent.

"Just who the fuck are you?" May challenged.

"My name is Tortura," the woman said. "And I am very happy to meet you."

Loki:
 :laugh: Oh my, this is gonna be fun.

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