Free Apex Cypher (Prequel to The Techxorcist series) by Colin F. Barnes

seriously special and I don’t think I’ll be able to protect it. One day, it’ll save the world.”

Part 9 - The Handover II
    Gabe woke with a start. A sound had penetrated his fevered dream-state, dragged him from his past, dropping him cold into the present. The dream was the same as he always had: of entering the shelter, his home, finding the place nothing more than a ghost town.
    The sound roared again. Gabe pulled himself up from the bed—Jericho’s bed, and stumbled to the window over-looking the town. The place was even worse in the daylight. Half-eaten and rotten bodies littered the place, not just the central square.
    A plume of black smoke caught his attention. Directly below the apartment building, Petal and Holly stood over an old-fashioned motorcycle. It must have been as old the server. It looked like it had more rust on it than actual metal, but despite that, the internal combustion engine spluttered and coughed until it purred.
    Holly twisted the throttle, revved the engine. The exhaust smoke cleared from a thick black to a light grey. Within minutes of her tinkering with it, the bike sounded good. Solid. As inefficient as the old IC engines were, they couldn’t be beaten for raw excitement.
    Gabe had only ridden one motorcycle: a museum piece back in Hong Kong. A Hyabusa. He nearly killed himself on it, the power incredible. You didn’t get that with the sedate electric motors. And with the EMPs having taken out most vehicles, the old mechanical oil-burners were still going—if you could find one that hadn’t ceased completely, and if you could find the fuel.
    Putting his duster jacket on, and collecting the pistol, he made his way out of the building to meet with the girls below. He checked every shadow and nook as he went, convinced some nutter would jump him at any moment.
    “What we got here?” Gabe said, smiling wide as he got neared the bike, felt the roar of the engine. Petal was equally excited, sitting astride it, her arms out-stretched on the once-chrome handlebars. She revved the engine again, looked back at Gabe.
    “Fucking cool, eh?”
    Gabe knelt to the fuel tank, scrubbed at the old badge. He could just make out the name of an old maker from the USA: Harley Davidson. The front tyre had been patched crudely, and the rear suspension springs were welded in various places. It’d be a hard ride, but it beat walking.
    Attached to the rear was a makeshift trailer, on which Holly had firmly strapped Old Grey for transportation. She held a bag in her head. She passed it over to Gabe.
    “What’s this?”
    “A gift from me,” Holly said. “For taking the server, and for saving me. If you didn’t come into the station when you did, the Mayors would have killed me for sure—after doing whatever it is they were going to do to me.”
    “Where are the others?” Gabe asked, wondering where the feral nutters from the previous night had gone. No fires burned in the station and he heard no voices. There was certainly no sign of any occupation when he first came down and passed the building.
    “They go back to their holes during the day—holes beneath the buildings,” Holly said.
    “Why?” Petal asked.
    “Most of them have developed an aversion to UV rays—radiation poisoning. That’s why they fight over the soy crops. Those crops are the only thing around here they can eat that ain’t screwed up.”
    “What about you?” Gabe said, opening the bag.
    “I eat what Jericho provided. There’s enough for a few years yet.”
    Inside the bag, Gabe found a plastic box containing three vials of NanoStems, and a two-litre flask of water.
    “That should get you to your destination, as long as this old jalopy holds up,” Holly said, pointing to the bag.
    “Thanks,” Gabe said, giving her a wide smile. “That’s very kind of ya.”
    She shrugged. “Least I could do.”
    “How are you running this?” Petal asked. “They stopped making petroleum fuels decades ago.”
    “Soy oil.