Partials

It was hours later when they reached Asharoken, and the sky was already beginning to dim. Kira hoped they could finish the salvage quickly and camp somewhere farther from the shore. Asharoken was more of a neighborhood than a town, connected to the rest of the island by an unbroken mass of houses and roads and buildings, but Kira could instantly see why the grunt runs had avoided it for so long—it was a narrow isthmus of land stretching north from the island, the sound on one side and a bay on the other. One shore made people nervous enough; two was almost too much to handle.

The wagon stopped in front of a small veterinary clinic, and Marcus groaned.

“You didn’t say it was a dog clinic, Jayden—what are we going to find here?”

Jayden jumped down from the wagon. “If I knew that, I would have picked it up myself when I was here two days ago. Grunts tagged meds and an X-ray machine; go do your thing.”

Marcus hopped down to the street, and both he and Jayden held up a hand to help Kira. In a fit of mischief she took both hands, and smiled inwardly as they helped her down with sullen scowls.

“Sparks, Brown, you go in first,” Jayden barked, and half the soldiers began to pour out of the truck, hauling one of the generators with them. “Patterson, you and your team secure the area, keep it secure, and escort the medics to the next site. It looks like someone’s been through here since yesterday, and I don’t want any surprises.”

“Someone’s been here?” asked Kira. “How can you tell?”

“Eyes and brains and a shiny new haircut,” said Jayden. “It’s probably just a pack rat, but I’m not taking chances on the effing North Shore. If you find something good in there, honey-bunnies, prep it for transport and we’ll pick it up on our way back. I’m taking my team north to site three—Patterson, I want blips every fifteen minutes.” He climbed into the back of the wagon and called out to the driver, “Let’s move.”

The wagon lurched into motion and headed north. Kira slung her medkit over her shoulder and looked around; Asharoken was buried in kudzu, like most of these little cities, but the Long Island Sound was lapping gently at the shore, and the sky was clear and calm. “Pretty town.”

“Eyes up,” said Patterson. The other soldiers fanned out, slowly building a perimeter around the clinic while Sparks and Brown approached the broken building with assault rifles raised to their eye line. Kira was fascinated by the way they moved, their entire bodies turning and raising and lowering to keep that eye line as solid as a rock—it almost looked like the gun was on invisible rails, while the soldier moved freely around it. The front wall of the clinic had been mostly glass, now shattered and overgrown with kudzu, but a central pillar of concrete had been marked with the bright orange glyph of a salvage crew. Kira had done enough runs to recognize most of the glyphs, but this was the one she knew best: “partially catalogued, return with medics.” Sparks and Brown covered each other seamlessly as they entered, picking their way through the rubble and vegetation. Patterson climbed carefully to the roof, keeping to the edges where the footing was firm, and kept watch from elevation.

While they secured the building, Kira and Marcus tested out the generator. It was a heavy frame with two wheels on one end; the bottom held a massive battery and a hand crank, while the top held a small solar panel and coil after coil of cords and plugs. Medics came on every salvage run to keep the workers safe, but when the grunts tagged a piece of medical equipment, they brought these generators so the medics could plug it in, test it, and see if it was worth bringing back. The island was cluttered enough as it was, there was no sense filling East Meadow with salvaged junk they couldn’t even use.

The street was full of parked cars, the paint rusted, the tires flat, and the windows broken by years of neglect and exposure to the elements. One of them held a skeleton, grinning horribly in the driver’s seat—an RM victim who’d tried to go somewhere, tried to drive away from the end of the world. Kira wondered where he’d been trying to go. He hadn’t made it out of his driveway.

A full two minutes later, Brown opened the door again and waved them in. “All clear, but watch your step. Looks like some wild dogs are using this place as a den.”

Marcus smirked. “Loyal little fellas. Must have really loved their vet.”

Kira nodded. “Let’s fire it up.”