Asimov's Science Fiction by Penny Publications

too," he mumbled, too sleepy to ask about the unfamiliar tone in her voice: reluctant regret.
    The weather did not hold out. The bike did not hold out. No one in any of the towns they passed through had the parts to fix it. America had become adept at conserving and jerry-rigging anything manufactured, but the bike was just too old. Isobel kicked it hard, bruising her foot even through her boot. They walked, in rain.
    She tired far more easily than Zed. Sometimes the rain was too heavy, or the road too potentially dangerous, to risk a fire. Then she shivered in the tent while Zed tried to warm her with blankets and sex. Usually it worked, or she said it did.
    On the fourth day, the weather cleared. Isobel sent him to buy food in the largest town they'd come to yet. When he returned, laden with packages and triumphant with a rabbit he'd shot to roast, Isobel sat before their tent with three men. Zed dropped his packages and reached for his.22. But she saw him, rose, and beckoned him forward.
    "Zed! Look—my cousins!"
    They didn't look like cousins. Older, unsmiling, faces closed as rock, they reminded Zed of his father. The oldest, maybe forty, held out his hand.
    "Hi, Zed. I'm Gary. Isobel radioed us that you two were here."
    Radioed? Isobel had a radio? Zed knew that once there had been a whole system of phones you could hold in your hand, of televisions and computer stations (or whatever they'd been called), of satellites in orbit that made communications instantaneous even across oceans. Then the nerve centers for these things, the TV stations and cell towers and servers and launch sites, had gone. The artifacts remained and some had been gotten working again, for local TV and rerouted cell networks and small servers. The problem, as with the dirt bike, had been parts. The factories, American and foreign, no longer existed. A few electronic geniuses, mostly young, had concentrated on cannibalizing computers and some still worked. Zed had heard that in some places factories were producing TVs again, and TV shows. Everybody else made do with crystal radios. Even his father had had one, so he would know when the aliens made their second assault on humanity. Once a month, he tested the radio.
    "Isobel, why didn't you tell me that—"
    "Gary says there's trouble ahead. Outlaws. He and Luke and Dave came to take us the rest of the way to the dome. They have a truck."
    Zed saw it, then, parked just under cover of the trees, seventy years old and still running due to fanatical care and parts cannibalized from other vehicles. It ran on corn alcohol now, but it ran. He and Isobel had passed a surprising number of cars on the road. Small towns were more likely to have spare parts for cars than for cell towers or orbital satellites.
    "Get in," Gary said. "Isobel already loaded your gear. We can be there before morning."
    "I—"
    "Come on, Zed!" Isobel said happily. "We're almost there!" She took his hands and smiled.
    He couldn't resist her. Maybe these guys were her cousins. They must be, or why would they be so eager to help? Jealousy was silly; she was his, all his, she'd risked her life, practically, to be with him. Anyway, they were too old for her.
    Zed climbed into the back of the truck. He held Isobel close and fell asleep. When he woke just after dawn, the truck had stopped and he was alone. He got out, holding his.22, calling for Isobel. And stopped cold.
    A few feet from him stood the alien dome.
    It wasn't what he had expected. He'd vaguely imagined his mother's mixing bowl turned upside down, only made of tingling energy instead of ancient plastic. This wasn't clear, wasn't curved, didn't tingle. Opaque and black, it rose straight up into the air taller than all trees; it stretched as far in both directions as he could see. Any curve must be really gradual, which meant the dome enclosed a huge area. When Zed touched it, it felt solid, slick, and hard.
    It was real. He was here. He, Zed Larch, touching the alien dome