farm over there. I’m takin’ us off the interstate for a few hours while we sleep up. If anyone’s beenradioed about our departure, they’ll already be combin’ their way up and down I-80 lookin’ out for their breakfast pickin’s this mornin’.’
At the far side of the field Heywood hefted a weary leg and began to climb over a picket fence beneath the spreading skeletal form of a stripped maple tree. Maddy looked up through the branches above them. Bare. Like a tree in the middle of winter. Except it was June. She spotted just one or two green buds indicating the thing was still, somehow, alive; the slightest hopeful hint of green on a charcoal-grey tree.
She’d noticed that already: the trees, none of them seemed to be carrying any leaves. Instead they appeared to be nothing more than a constant procession along the highway of twisted Halloween scarecrows. A winter landscape in what should be the lush green of a summer.
‘Acid rain strips them all down like that,’ said Rashim, following her gaze and looking up. ‘Trees and grain crops are mostly affected by the rain.’ He cursed as he dropped down to the ground on the far side of the picket fence into a thick patch of weeds. ‘The nettles seem to cope with it OK, though.’
They emerged from beneath the skeletal branches into a yard at the centre of a loose cluster of weathered clapboard buildings: a farmhouse, a grain silo, two barns and a dozen rusting farm vehicles and machinery abandoned like a child’s Tonka toys in an overgrown garden.
Heywood approached the farmhouse, cupped his hands and called out to see if anyone was home. Becks waited, fully alert, her weapon poised. But it was silent except for the soft creaking of a shutter beside a first-floor window and the cawing of crows lining the bare boughs of the maple, like beady-eyed jurors patiently awaiting the pronouncement of a sentence.
‘Might as well send your support unit to go an’ take a look-see inside,’ said Heywood. ‘Make that thing earn its keep.’
Maddy nodded at Becks. ‘Check the coast is clear.’
‘Affirmative.’ She climbed the steps up on to the porch and tried the front door. It swung inwards easily. Her boots clumped heavily inside, weathered floorboards creaking beneath her weight.
As they waited, Maddy sidled up beside Rashim and sighed. ‘You know, I was sort of expecting a more future-ish world in 2070. I thought it would be, I don’t know … all flying-car things and shiny stuff.’
‘In the cities, some of them, yes. Denver was once like that, I suppose.’ Rashim looked around at the drab brown landscape. ‘But outside … everywhere, it is like a left-behind world.’
Left-behind world.
Those words fitted perfectly. That’s precisely how it appeared to her right now. This farm … with the exception of one or two more modern items – a discarded hydrogen fuel cell rusting away in some long grass – it could have been abandoned at the beginning of the century. A museum piece. A diorama of early-twenty-first-century rural life preserved in hardened amber.
Just then they heard Becks’s hard voice barking at something from within the farmhouse. They heard something crash and clatter on to the floor inside. A moment later, a stag emerged from the front door and out on to the porch. A pitiful sight. Its horns were stunted and broken, its coat patchy, thin and – in far too many places to be healthy – bare pale and sore-ridden skin was exposed. It looked malnourished, the sharp edges of a pelvis and ridges of its ribs starkly pronounced just beneath its hanging flesh. The beast snorted several times as its beady black eyes evaluated them for the briefest moment. Then its hooves skittered and scraped clumsily on the damp and rotting woodenfloor of the porch as it decided to leap down the steps and make good an escape.
Maddy found herself willing the beast to fly far away, hopefully to find some better place to try its luck at
At the far side of the field Heywood hefted a weary leg and began to climb over a picket fence beneath the spreading skeletal form of a stripped maple tree. Maddy looked up through the branches above them. Bare. Like a tree in the middle of winter. Except it was June. She spotted just one or two green buds indicating the thing was still, somehow, alive; the slightest hopeful hint of green on a charcoal-grey tree.
She’d noticed that already: the trees, none of them seemed to be carrying any leaves. Instead they appeared to be nothing more than a constant procession along the highway of twisted Halloween scarecrows. A winter landscape in what should be the lush green of a summer.
‘Acid rain strips them all down like that,’ said Rashim, following her gaze and looking up. ‘Trees and grain crops are mostly affected by the rain.’ He cursed as he dropped down to the ground on the far side of the picket fence into a thick patch of weeds. ‘The nettles seem to cope with it OK, though.’
They emerged from beneath the skeletal branches into a yard at the centre of a loose cluster of weathered clapboard buildings: a farmhouse, a grain silo, two barns and a dozen rusting farm vehicles and machinery abandoned like a child’s Tonka toys in an overgrown garden.
Heywood approached the farmhouse, cupped his hands and called out to see if anyone was home. Becks waited, fully alert, her weapon poised. But it was silent except for the soft creaking of a shutter beside a first-floor window and the cawing of crows lining the bare boughs of the maple, like beady-eyed jurors patiently awaiting the pronouncement of a sentence.
‘Might as well send your support unit to go an’ take a look-see inside,’ said Heywood. ‘Make that thing earn its keep.’
Maddy nodded at Becks. ‘Check the coast is clear.’
‘Affirmative.’ She climbed the steps up on to the porch and tried the front door. It swung inwards easily. Her boots clumped heavily inside, weathered floorboards creaking beneath her weight.
As they waited, Maddy sidled up beside Rashim and sighed. ‘You know, I was sort of expecting a more future-ish world in 2070. I thought it would be, I don’t know … all flying-car things and shiny stuff.’
‘In the cities, some of them, yes. Denver was once like that, I suppose.’ Rashim looked around at the drab brown landscape. ‘But outside … everywhere, it is like a left-behind world.’
Left-behind world.
Those words fitted perfectly. That’s precisely how it appeared to her right now. This farm … with the exception of one or two more modern items – a discarded hydrogen fuel cell rusting away in some long grass – it could have been abandoned at the beginning of the century. A museum piece. A diorama of early-twenty-first-century rural life preserved in hardened amber.
Just then they heard Becks’s hard voice barking at something from within the farmhouse. They heard something crash and clatter on to the floor inside. A moment later, a stag emerged from the front door and out on to the porch. A pitiful sight. Its horns were stunted and broken, its coat patchy, thin and – in far too many places to be healthy – bare pale and sore-ridden skin was exposed. It looked malnourished, the sharp edges of a pelvis and ridges of its ribs starkly pronounced just beneath its hanging flesh. The beast snorted several times as its beady black eyes evaluated them for the briefest moment. Then its hooves skittered and scraped clumsily on the damp and rotting woodenfloor of the porch as it decided to leap down the steps and make good an escape.
Maddy found herself willing the beast to fly far away, hopefully to find some better place to try its luck at
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