Under the Empyrean Sky by Chuck Wendig Page B

of rumors—Blight! Hobos! Treachery by the Sleeping Dogs!—the Empyrean swooped in and quarantined it. All the people disappeared, and the Empyrean sealed up the town beneath a giant plasto-sheen bubble, the plastic fabric pinned not just to the ground but deep below it. (
As though to prevent roots from growing
is the thought that suddenly strikes Cael.)
    A town like Martha’s Bend is a scavenger’s bread and butter—that is, after about fifty years pass and the Empyrean “opens” it, lancing the plastic blister and letting scavengers in to pick the bones. Martha’s Bend has more time on its clock, though—the town’s been concealed for almost thirty years now. Which means it’s a long way from being opened back up to the likes of them.
    “How’d we miss that earlier?” Cael asks.
    Lane shrugs. “We were in the corn. Can’t see squat from down there.”
    The glimmer Cael sees is a shaft of moonlight reflected off the metallic sheen of the bubble. “The trail,” Cael says.
    “It leads to Martha’s Bend.”
    “Coincidence?”
    Cael grips the deck rail, looks out from the boat. It’s then he feels something in his hand. A slight vibration. A vibration that’s getting stronger.
    He grabs Lane’s hand, presses it against the railing.
    “You feel that?”
    “Listen,” Lane says. There, beneath the vibration, beneath the whisper of pollen and the rasp of cornstalk against cornstalk, is another, deeper sound. A rumble.
    Like from a machine. Like from a motorvator.
    Cael holds his hands over his eyes, trying to block the flying pollen. Sure enough, in the distance off to starboard, a pair of lights.
    Coming right for them.
    “Pull the boat back!” Cael says. “We’ve got a visitor.”

 
    OF BLIGHT AND BOUNTY
     
    THE RUMBLE GROWS louder. Headlights in the pollen grow brighter.
    Soon the shape begins to resolve: It’s a motorvator, all right. An old harvester by the look of it. The pollen whispers against the machine’s metal side as it trudges through the corn, the thresher bar silent, stalks crushed underneath instead of sucked up and processed. Cael thinks it looks like a trundling beast: mouth open, teeth forward, haunches high in the air.
    Lane keeps the pinnace off to the side as Rigo and Wanda stabilize the boat with the oar-poles. The harvester churns slowly forward, perpendicular to them. Before too long it’ll cross over the garden trail, crushing the plants beneath.
    “Spotlight,” Cael says.
    The spotlight flicks to life. Lane points it at the motorvator, letting the weak circle of light drift over the whole robot.
    Cael had figured this was another harvester gone off the grid—prime pickings or, if it belongs to someone from Boxelder, something for Poltroon to fix. But in the light Cael sees this old harvester is looking pretty cleaned up already. No grime stains. Fresh paint job, red as a barn door. It’s an older Thresher-Bot model, a 2400 series, but upgraded by hand.
    “Take us over there,” Cael says.
    Lane hops over to an oar-pole, and Cael picks up one himself. They push with the oar-poles so that
Doris
will intersect with the harvester’s path. As soon as they get close enough, Lane grabs a towrope and loops it around the Thresher-Bot’s antenna box.
    It begins to pull the pinnace along.
    Cael yells, “Steady the boat. I’m gonna go over.”
    Wanda clutches at him, but he shakes her free.
    “You sure?” Lane asks. “This isn’t why we’re out here.”
    Cael shrugs. “
You
want to turn down the ace notes?” The look on Lane’s face answers that question. “Me neither. Besides, this might belong to someone from town.” If so, the paperwork inside the cabin—which is generally unmanned,but still a place a field shepherd could sit if he wanted to ride along—should tell them.
    They use the oar-poles to nudge the pinnace closer. Cael’s about to take the leap across when Rigo mans the light and again shines the beam—
    Something moves inside the motorvator.
    A