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Chapter 1 · Slaves to the Metal Horde

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  Chapter one of Slaves to the Metal Horde by Stephen Marlowe. This is a
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  LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
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  or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox DoD org. Chapter one. Johnny Hope
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  backed off, warily, retreating toward the sun dried creek bed, a jagged
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  brown scar across the parched grassland. He carried no weapon, and as the
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  others closed in about him in a tightening semicircle, his eyes darted furtively in
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  all directions, but all the faces were stamped as from a mold with uncompromising
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  hostility. Johnny licked his lips and said, I want to bury them.
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  Let me bury them, and then I'll go. I promise. De Reggio.
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  The mayor brandished his club, which was an old rifle stock with half
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  the jagged corroded barrel forming a handle. Go, he said. He took
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  a long stride toward Johnny, then changed his mind when the youth held his
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  ground. They cannot be buried, Johnny Hope, you know your parents must
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  be burned, as the law dictates. Blinking sweat from his eyes, Johnny
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  felt the sun scorching down through the glaring midsummer heat haze. It was the
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  last wish of my father, he said softly, his voice heardy more than
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  a whisper, that I should take them forth from the village and bury them
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  with a prayer for their Christian souls. No de Reggio bellowed. He was
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  a great chested man, with sloping shoulders and almost no neck. We cannot
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  deliver their bodies to you. We cannot let you come back into Hamilton Village
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  and take them, for you comforted them in their last hours, and are
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  there for a victim of the plague yourself. He pointed with the rifle stock
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  toward the far hills purple with distance go. Johnny shook his head, planting
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  his feet firmly, wiping sweat dampened hands on the worn fabric of his denim
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  trousers. Then he held his palms up and said, where where is the
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  plague? You've been contaminated. Nearly the entire village had gathered behind their mare
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  now, and the mutterings were angry when Johnny began to walk toward them,
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  his hands outstretched to show no plague scars marked their skin. Some one hurled
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  a stone. Instinctively, Johnny hunched his shoulder and caught the missile on his
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  collar bone. It jarred him and left an angry red mark where the capillaries
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  had burst beneath the skin. Staggering back toward the creek bed, Johnny was
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  felled by a fusillade of stones. He crouched on all fours at the edge
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  of the dry, brown earth head, spinning, vision blurring with pain.
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  He expected more stones to usher in the final blackness. But when he could
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  again and see clearly, De Reggio's muscle corded legs straddled him, and the
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  mayor cried enough let Johnny hope to part with his life. It was a
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  brave gesture de Reggio had made, approaching within inches of Johnny, whose parents
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  have been slain by the plague. But de Reggio and Johnny's father had been
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  close friends all their lives, and had fought together in the last days of
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  World War IIIE before the plague brought warfare and civilization to an abrupt halt.
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  Johnny forced himself upright on trembling legs. I thank you for my life,
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  he said, but not for how you treat your dead companion in arms,
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  the color drained from De Reggio's olive skinned face. Think what you will,
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  Johnny, think it, but go while you still can, and remember that
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  our first concern is with the living. The dead are beyond recall, and
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  the plague victims can spread carnage in their wake. You know, I loved
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  your father like a brother, and your mother. De Reggio and Johnny's dead
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  mother were cousins, had been raised together under the same roof in the long
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  gone days before the war. Except for Johnny himself, the death of his
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  parents could have disturbed no one more than de Reggio. All Right, said
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  Johnny, I'll go. There was a loud sucking in of breath relief from
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  the crowd. But first I have this to say. I have visited the
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  old, ruined cities. I have seen Philadelphia on its river, and once
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  I went north as far as New York, the great stumps of its buildings
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  coming right down to the water's edge on the island called Manhattan. I have
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  seen these things, and although I am young, I tell you this.
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  We will not return to our greatness unless we strike out boldly. Instead of
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  sitting huddled in fear at the thought of the plague. It is what his
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  father always said. Someone whispered from the edge of the crowd. The robots
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  will cure the plague. Someone else, a woman, declared. Johnny laughed,
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  and had never heard such a sound before from his lips or any others.
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  The robots will cure nothing, he said, Has anyone here ever seen
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  the robots? The faltering wave of sound from the crowd was in the negative.
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  I have seen them, Johnny told his people, with whom he could
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  no longer live. My father wanted it that way. He sent me to
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  the cities, and to the mysterious places between the cities, the gleaming,
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  white surfaced roads, which we use no longer, to see the robots.
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  And I tell you this, they will not cure the plague. If anything,
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  they'll spread it. A hushed signs fell like a pall on the assembly.
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  None of them had ever seen the robots. But that was because it
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  was not proper for a mortal to see a deity. This was the truth
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  my father could not tell you in his lifetime, Johnny went on. He
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  knew you would have laughed and mocked, or worse in his death. I
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  tell it to you for him. Along with his wish to be interred in
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  the ground. It was his final thought to Reggio, did not look Johnny
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  squarely in the eye. I think you had better go. Lad you have
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  no right to talk like that. Johnny shrugged, feeling the weight of a
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  knowledge and wisdom beyond his years. I am twenty three, he said.
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  I was an infant when the war ended. Yet my father could teach me
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  certain things, and other things I could see for myself because he taught me
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  to be curious and take nothing for granted. You could learn the same someday,
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  perhaps by the robots. To Reggio swore softly, hissing the words almost
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  in Johnny's ears, go before you antagonize them. If they start throwing things
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  again, I won't be able to save you. Johnny turned his back and
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  squared his shoulders in a gesture compounded as much of defiance as contempt. He
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  told de Reggio, at least do one thing for me, if I can,
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  when they are burned, say a prayer, one of the old prayers,
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  if you remember. Johnny did not wait for an answer. He set
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  forth in long strides, his sandal shod feet, powdering the sun baked ridges,
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  on the dry creek bed. He did not once look back over his
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  shoulder, But now with the people gone and his pride no longer a barrier,
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  he sobbed softly, thinking of his parents, who had died because they
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  had to venture for from Hamilton Village to learn some of the truths which were
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  hidden from their people, and so had come down with the plague. Hours
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  later, as the sun sank toward the western horizon and the heat of the
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  day became less intense, Johnny heard the distant baying of dogs as the village
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  hounds picked up his spore and followed it as prescribed by law. Mayor de
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  Reggia was making certain Johnny did not double back to Hamilton Village. He was
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  alone in a hostile world which in twenty years had seen civilization come tumbling down
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  like a house of cards in a hurricane. That night, he slept uneasily
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  on the bare ground, the soft footed padding of foraging animals all around him,
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  under the dark, moonless sky. He awoke with a tremendous hunger and
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  a parching thirst. The latter he slaked in a swift, gushing stream,
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  which flowed clean and cool even in the heat of midsummer. Presently, he
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  came upon a huge black hawk, its pinions flapping, its talons sunk into
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  the flesh of a dead cotton tail rabbit. As it prepared to fly off,
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  Johnny waved his arms and shouted, frightening the bird of prey, which
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  rose without its breakfast, circled uncertainly, and then wheeled off to the east,
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  a soaring black ghost, graceful as a feather. Johnny built a fire
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  with brush and dry twigs and ate his meal in silence. Feeling like a
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  scavenger, he drank again from the stream and began to fashion himself a spear
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  by uprooting a sapling and ripping off its branches and rubbing its tapering top to
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  a fine point. On the edge of a small flat boulder. He hardened
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  a point in the embers of his dying fire. After the makeshift weapon experimentally,
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  and headed north in the general direction of New York. Two days later,
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  the joints of his knees and elbows began to stiffen. It came upon
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  him slowly, and thought it was from too much walking and not enough food.
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  But when the stiffness spread to his ankles, wrist, and neck,
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  and giddiness struck him. Suddenly he began to suspect the plague. It was
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  early afternoon, and he sat down at the base of a thick trunked oak
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  tree, propping himself against the bowl. He hurled his useless spear away and
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  wondered how long it would take before he sank into the final coma and death.
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  He ran swollen fingers across his knees and realized they had puffed twice their
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  normal size. He could now feel nothing from his knees down, and it
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  was an effort to move his hands. A faint purple color suffused his limbs,
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  and any doubt he may have harbored about the plague vanished. Dereggio was
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  right. Johnny tried to rise and failed, rolling over helplessly to lie half
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  in and half out of the cooling shade shed by the oak. The chills
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  rushed up from his feet and engulfed him, followed at once by fever.
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  By the time he began mumbling in delirium, the sun was going down in
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  the west, casting long red cloud fingers into the darkening sky. End of Chapter one