Gales Ashland was starting to remember.

It was little bits, at first…small fragments of memory. Like fireflies at night; brief, untraceable, there one moment and gone the next. But definitely there.

He knew this place, somehow. He could remember the sight of towering blue pines almost touching the clouds. And the awfully-sticky feel of pine sap. Memories came to him, fuzzy, like looking at something out of the corner of his eye. But it was there. He was starting to remember.

The truck went over a bumpy patch of road, and the sudden motion jolted Ashland awake. He clutched his weapon instinctively. The driver, Hawkins, momentarily took his eyes from the road and playfully hit Ashland on the knee.

“Wake up, kid.” Hawkins turned back to driving. Ashland grunted in greeting and looked outside the window. The truck was carefully winding up a forest road, passing through dappled patches of afternoon sun. He glanced behind him, and through the grimy rear window he saw the bed of the truck filled with crates covered in a green tarp.

“How long have I been out?” Ashland asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“About an hour.” Hawkins kept his eyes on the road. “We’re not far from camp.”

Another few minutes went by. Ashland shifted in his seat. Finally, Hawkins slowed the truck and stopped with a gear-grinding jerk.

“This is you,” he said.

Ashland stepped out. He nodded to Hawkins and shut the door, grabbing his backpack from under the tarp in the bed of the truck. He tapped the rear window twice, the truck revved into gear and, in a cloud of dust, made its way further along the winding path up the mountain.

Once the noise of the truck had faded into the distance, Ashland stood in silence. He took a deep breath, taking in the mountain air that was, blessedly, clean. Not like the air in the city. Here, he didn’t have to wear a respirator.

There was another whisper of memory. It was coming back to him. The feeling of dry, dead pine needles under his feet. Laughter, and the smell of a campfire. That must have been before the rains came. It was before they came.

He turned his head skyward. The sky was a deep blue and beautiful. Golden sunlight filtered in through the twisted branches, tall trunks, and huge boughs that made up the forest, the casting patchy shadows onto the path and the forest floor. A light breeze blew; a soft mountain air that was pleasant and cool. These were good trees; high and mighty, with lots of branches and nooks.

There it was again. Fireflies, in the night. He remembered the blue sky and golden light. The sounds of branches rustling.

The curve of the road was just right, and the elevation was good to make this a perfect spot for a lookout. Behind him, the twin-rut path wound its way up the mountain. Maybe it was an old logging road, or a fire access road, he thought, but now it led to the camp that Hawkins, Ashland and the rest of the Resistance had been using for a few weeks. The camp was in a clearing high enough in the mountains that the air was safe to breathe. They also hoped that being that far up, the might see some animals. No one had seen an animal for months, not since the rains.

 He knew these memories came from before it first rained, before that terrible acid rain, when government men in dark suits came to the house; he remembered a set of respirators on the kitchen table. He remembered Dad taping the windows shut.

Ashland stepped off the road and into a small bare patch in the undergrowth and set to work. He needed branches; a half-dozen stout ones would do the trick. He scanned the forest floor, passing his eyes over a carpet of linen-colored dry leaves, loose rocks, and pine needles. Small twigs poked up through the bare spots in the growth, little saplings reaching for the daytime light.

Branches. Yes, he remembered now. He remembered playing on a fallen log, green and furry with moss, in spite of the stern warnings from his mother. He remembered the feel of the bark, old and flaky and dry, and how much fun he had rolling and tumbling over the big log. He remembered the sight of fallen branches littering the ground after a big wind. He was starting to remember.

Ashland slung his weapon on his back and reached down, grabbing the big branch and hauling it up. Perfect, he thought. He dragged it over to the others he had collected, set down on his haunches, and began lashing a few of the branches together with a cord he’d saved. He wanted wide branches, for his platform, and once he found some more, he’d add them once he got up in the tree.

After some hard work, he had a makeshift platform of branches lashed together to form a platform. Ashland picked his tree – a mature oak, which he knew would have a big, strong spread of branches – and traced a path up with his eyes. There were little knobs, old branch stems gray with age, which would afford him a path up the tree. Ashland found his tree and worked his way up, using the gray knobs as guidance, bringing up the branches with his leather cord, and in no time he was twenty feet off the ground. He kept moving, his hands finding fresh oak boughs, thick and strong, and he kept one hand on the rope trailing beneath him. He moved from branch to branch, working himself into the shade of the spiral, serrated leaves. He found a nook which afforded him a good view of the road coming up. To his left, the slope was steep and the underbrush thick; he was confident that anyone – or anything – that was coming his way would come up the road. He set down the platform between two branches and tied it off.

Another memory, now. Hot marshmallows on sticks, gooey and sticky. The smell of charcoal on the grill. The cool, dank air of a forest morning.

He hung his satchel on a tree knob, and from it he extracted his camouflage blanket, woven with bits of aluminum foil. He draped it over himself, tucking the extra under his legs, and in a moment recalled the raisin granola bar in his pocket. He braced himself on the tree branches, settled onto a comfortable position on the platform, and gently moved his hand under the camouflage blanket. He wiggled the granola from his jacket pocket, and using his teeth to cut the corner of the packaging, tore it open. Since he picked it up from a looted supermarket, he stopped for a moment to take a deep, long whiff. It didn’t smell bitter or sting his nostrils, so he assumed it was safe. When he was finished, he tucked the foil wrapper into his jacket, mentally reminding himself to save it for later, when he could sew it into his camouflage blanket. He knew the reflective foil fooled their sensors, and Ashland needed every advantage when he was on watch.

He could now remember looking out the car window, into the inky blackness of the night, the feeling of his camping pack on his lap. Then a blue flash. The car swerved then stopped. Another blue flash, the feeling of an impact. He remembered the smell of the air when the car door opened, acrid and awful. Dad grabbed his gun, a sinister black thing, and swung himself out of the car. Ashland never saw him again.

At this height, about thirty feet off the ground, he was afforded a superior view of the dirt road coming up the hill. The guys at the top would be relying on him to watch that path; they had a guy watching the base of the mountain but no one else. Ashland was the last line of defense.

The forest was quiet, and he could feel the comfort of his weapon on his lap. It wasn’t built for human hands, but the guys at the workshop managed to build a stock and trigger for it. Ashland had practiced on it down in the valleys, and since he could operate it pretty well now they let him keep it. Now it kept him safe on watch.

Ashland could now easily remember Hawkins, staring down at him through a respirator. Hawkins had found him in a gully, nearby the burning car wreck. The ground was wet, the leaves still dripping with the awful chemical rains. Ashland was hurt, but not badly; however he’d absorbed a serious dose of the amnesiac chemicals. He remembered Hawkins hoisting him up and putting him inside a waiting truck concealed in some nearby brush.

* * *

Ashland sat awake in his blind. He didn’t know how long had passed, but the sun’s light had reddened appreciably. As he breathed the clean air, his mind cleared and he processed these new memories, which came to him almost as often as he could close his eyes. He relished the chance to recall his life before he woke up in that gulley. The fresh air and feeling of the forest was familiar to him, too; somehow he’d known the way up the mountain. The sights and smells and taste of the air had a familiar quality that he couldn’t place. He hoped that someday soon he’d remember everything. He wasn’t there yet, but he was starting to remember.

Then, somewhere, leaves crunched.

Ashland’s eyes snapped open but he remained motionless, as steady as the surrounding trees. A moment later, another crunch, and then a twig snapped. It wasn’t the sound of the wind – it was deliberate, the sound of something moving. Moving closer.

He held his breath and made himself as small as he could under his blind. His hand gripped the weapon’s crude wooden stock as he strained to listen for the source of the sound. An animal? He’d be a hero if he brought a deer back to the guys at camp. No one had eaten fresh meat in months.

The noises grew louder, coming from the steep slope to his left, and now he could hear the faint whine of metallic servomotors moving as mechanical legs pumped up and down. The machine, a horse-sized terror meant for killing, had stumbled upon his position.

He dared a glance, and leaned ever so gently to his left, peering down as the machine came into sight below him. The sun reflected dully off the mechanical beast’s dark tungsten skin as it rotated its curved bipedal frame, using its vertical set of green electronic eyes to survey the surrounding terrain. The machine moved toward the road, metallic joints buzzing, scanning back and forth. Its sensors must have picked up on the smell of exhaust, Ashland thought ruefully.

The machine paused again, now no more than forty feet from him, its eyes searching up the road, facing away from him.

Ashland slowly raised his weapon and focused his vision on the front of the barrel, aiming down the sights. Everything lined up. Breathe in. One. Two. Breathe out.

He squeezed the trigger bar.

The weapon fired in bright flash of blue light. The blast drove the makeshift stock back, and Ashland grunted in pain. Faint blue smoke drifted off the hot cowling of the weapon. He’d managed to keep his grip on the rifle, however, and quickly refocused, holding the weapon steady, ready for another shot – but a second shot was not needed. The machine lay still, a motionless hulk with a deep, smoking hole carved into its metal skin. It was dead.

Ashland smiled and enjoyed a brief moment of victory. But not long after, logic cut through Ashland’s pride. He knew small mechs like this didn’t wander out alone.

All was silent. The breeze came again, blowing some leaves, somewhere. He caught the smell of burnt electronics – another reminder of his victory. But then: another awful, mechanical drone, quiet but distinct. And getting louder. He couldn’t see it yet, but knew another mech was approaching, double-jointed mechanical legs carrying it effortlessly towards him. The sound came louder, much louder now, and he hazarded a glance down. He saw not one but three machines – their front cameras, those terrible green electric eyes, scanning back and forth. One machine clicked to another. They hadn’t seen him yet. Ashland heard more whirring sounds, from up the path this time, and two more joined the three already below. Ten green eyes looking for him.

They’d find him eventually, even though he had his foil blanket. He adjusted himself, peered over the edge of his blind, and raised the weapon again at the closest machine. Another burst, another flash of light, another monstrous blast. He didn’t wait to see what carnage he wrought – he was already tracking the next one.

Mechanical eyes, meant for murder, found him. He knew those eyes.

One more massive shot. A flash; blue smoke. Ashland saw a branch next to him, one that might let him swing around and use the tree for cover. That would buy him a few seconds. His hands searched for the branch, swinging the weapon around, shifting his weight. But he was too late.

Wood splintered in a deafening crack, and the makeshift platform he was on canted to the side, the fractured network of branches cracking and splitting from the heat of the enemy’s fire as his weight bore him down. He saw more bright blue flashes. Ashland reached out, flailed, trying to grab a hold of the branch. His hands found only air.

He remembered now. Cool air and campfires…Dad unpacking the cooler from the car. The warm feeling of his sleeping bag inside the family tent. 

He wildly spun as he cleared the black spruce branches and plummeted to the earth below, and his body faced upward in freefall and he felt warm sunlight on his face a moment before he hit the ground.