Desperation by M.R. Forbes

Author:M.R. Forbes [Forbes, M.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-15T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

“How are you feeling, Wash?” Caleb asked.

Washington flashed his thumb and smiled.

“Good. What about you, Flores?”

“I’m good, Sarge. A little tired.”

“No pain?”

“Negative.”

Caleb’s eyes lingered on her face. He was tempted to ask her to show him her chest so he could see if the poison was spreading. But even if it were, what would he be able to do about it?

“Are you okay, Sarge?” she asked, her eyes meeting his. “You spend so much time worrying about us. Who’s going to worry about you?”

“I’m fine,” Caleb replied. “Thanks for asking.”

They were all sitting, gathered in three of the drone pilot seats rotated toward the middle to face one another. The ADC had been on the move for two hours already, picking a slow route through the thick brush. They had covered at least forty kilometers, the Deliverance was well out of sight but hardly out of mind.

He wondered how Sheriff Dante was holding up? Had she convinced the Governor to do the right thing?

He stood and moved to the front of the ADC. Hal remained nearly motionless in the driver’s seat, palms still pressed against the dashboard, tendrils reaching through the material to the control systems beyond. The AI never blinked, and it would certainly never get tired. Caleb sat down in the seat next to it, looking out through the narrow plasti-glass transparency. The canopy above them was so thick it left the jungle floor shrouded in darkness, illuminated primarily by a variety of phosphorescent mosses and plants.

“It’s beautiful,” Caleb said. Even in his narrow view of the world outside the ADC, he could see a range of light glowing shapes in an assortment of colors. He had been on a lot of missions to a lot of places on Earth. He didn’t think there was anything like this spot back home.

Home. He shook the idea out of his head. In his mind, he had only been gone a week. It still felt like he was on a mission, deployed to some other part of the world. South America, maybe. He had to remind himself this was home now, as strange as it was.

“It is interesting,” Hal replied. “Difficult to navigate and growing increasingly dense.”

Caleb could tell. The ADC was pressing on through the vegetation, crumpling plants, tearing away vines and bouncing continually over roots. The trees were spaced enough for the vehicle to get between them, but the gap between trunks appeared to be closing.

“How far to the mountains?” Caleb asked.

“If we maintain this velocity, ninety-four hours.”

“Four days?”

“At this velocity. I am unsure if we will be able to remain in the vehicle for the extent of the journey. Assuming that the alternate intelligence started from its origin at the moment the Deliverance entered the atmosphere, and using the recorded speed of its components in seconds before I was taken offline, the estimated distance to the source is eight hundred kilometers.”

“That’s not close.”

“No. But it is also nowhere near as distant as it could be considering the circumference of this planet.

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