Daschel had saddle sore but he couldn't let the Raiders know. He found some balm in a cabinet on the topmost rooms of the Lester Sunshine Inn. It was a sweet-smelling solid oil he rubbed on his crotch and ass. Holy sweet Mary, it hurt like hell. His bedroom was at the top of the old house. It was not the fanciest of the rooms, but it had a private commode. Daschel didn't want to share a toilet with the army of bikers he had recruited. They drank constantly, and the smell which radiated from their skin was truly and thoroughly nauseating. He found this especially hard to cope with, given he had a hangover. Because he was always drinking with them at night, a brutal morning headache and accompanying nausea were a daily occurrence.

Daschel scratched at his beard. He hated beards, but there had been few opportunities to clean up while he was on the road. Now that they had settled in Tarrytown, he thought he might get a shave, but even though he could find a xombie with a razor somewhere in town, he knew his macho compadres would tease him if he lost his facial hair. It itched especially badly this morning.

Descending the stairs, he found the army of men, most still passed out, flopped wherever they had taken their last gulp. Those who were awake were groggy and quiet. He went to find the cook, a guy whose name was the number 30, who gave him two poached eggs and four strips of pressed, fried, fatty mutton. The lamb had been transformed from the previous night's barbecue into what almost passed for bacon. He ate. 30 produced a cup of water for him, which he gulped down, and another cup of something which looked like coffee, but tasted like bitter swamp water. At least it was hot. Milk and sugar helped.

The weather had turned bitterly cold. The torrent went on all night turning into a cold drizzle by dawn, and the damp chill got to him through his sweater.

"How do we turn on the heat in here?" he asked 30, "I'm freezing."

30 was a big man with a beard and a bald head. He said nothing, but walked over to what seemed to be a radiator, and made a big show of flipping a switch on the far side. The radiator hummed a bit and soon Daschel could feel a bit of heat in the cold kitchen. He finished his swamp water and decided to check on the farm tower.

The storm had hit with vicious ferocity in the late afternoon. The mansion was filled with the Raiders so most of the xombies had to take shelter elsewhere. Several of the windows shattered. 30 and a couple of xombie helpers did their best to shutter them, but they could only protect the bottom windows before the gale built to its full force. The Raiders just drank their way through the chaos of the storm, but Daschel kept worrying the roof was about to come off. It was a bad one.

He walked outside. Out in front of the old mansion, branches and debris lay everywhere. Most of the motorcycles were lying on their sides in spite of being roped together before the storm. Daschel unknotted the rope, pulled it through and went about the work of getting his bike upright. There was no visible damage. He positioned himself painfully in the saddle and took off down the path toward the farm.

Despite his brother's orders, the Raiders had behaved in their typical fashion yesterday. He had seen a few of them beating up a lone xombie, his skinny arms covering his head against the blows. Several others were taunting a group of the xombies, forcing them to shine their boots with their tongues and playfully knocking their heads with the butts of their rifles. Daschel had no doubt there were xombie women who had been abused at the hands of his compadres, though he didn't witness it. It was ridiculous for Barnabas to think they would all simply behave themselves on his say so. This army of men needed something else to do and fast, or things would worsen and the executions would begin in earnest.

He rode down the main path to the center of town. Things were cluttered but clearing. The paths here were free from twigs and branches. There were a few homes with major damage. The xombies were glumly going about their tasks, cleaning things up. As Daschel rode by, they would look up at him, expressionless. He scratched his crotch and motored past them. A black cat lay lifeless in the path. He steered around it. Soon he came to the town square, which was set up as a soup kitchen. The xombies were busy providing food to their kind. Daschel saw Reyleena, serving slop and bread. He pulled over and stopped, grunting, and waited for her to come over.

"I'm on my way to check on the farm. I'd like you to find those techs we had there yesterday and assess any damage from the storm," he told her.

"I'm pretty sure they are already there, but I can go with you if you like. How are you feeling? You look unwell." Daschel thought he saw the corners of her mouth curve upwards for a fraction of a second. Deception? What did she care how he was feeling?

"I don't think I need you there. Looks like you have your job cut out for you here. I'm okay, just a little tired, and a bit thirsty. Can I get some water here?"

"Certainly," she said and walked back to a table to fetch him a cup of water. He gulped it down. "I think you might need me to go with you to help you talk with them. They tend to get a bit technical."

"Okay," said Daschel. "Hop on." She climbed on behind him. He was careful to hide his discomfort as she pushed him forward slightly.

They rode the short distance to the farm. It was easy to see the scope of the damage from a distance. The whole top of the structure had been mangled by the storm. The glass was broken, and the supports were twisted. The empty growing trays lay blown about on the ground. The tower was halfway submerged in the dirt. Reyleena dismounted behind him. He carefully got himself off his bike with a long exhale. He flipped down the kickstand.

Yaddle and Dink stood at the side of the farm and watched the two walk across the littered grass.

"You see this?" Yaddle shouted. "You see this? The scaffolding we were forced to build hindered the retraction! The whole structure is stuck! It's ruined!"

"Yeah, looks pretty bad," Dashel muttered. His headache and nausea were persistent now, and the saddle sore seemed to be spreading down his legs and up his back. "How long 'til you can fix it?"

"I don't think you understand," said Dink, more calmly than his fellow farm tech. "The farm is stuck halfway in the earth. We've lost 56% of our yield. We can maybe get the fiber poles out of the hole, where it's blocking the servos, dig it all out, repair the motors and get the second half up again in a week or two, but it will take months to years to put the whole thing back together. Worse, we have no way to get resupplied in the meantime. If we can't get our communications back, we could all starve. We need to be able to send a message to the other tribes."

"Not an option," said Daschel firmly. "Your communications are down for your own good. We are not bringing them back up. There has to be another way."

Dink and Yaddle stared at him. "You don't understand!" Yaddle shouted. "It's wrecked! Do you get it? This accounts for most of our food!"

"I don't think you understand! We are in control here now. This is our town. You need to fix this..." Daschel stopped talking. He shat his pants. His legs felt wet. He looked down at his legs and saw blood seeping through the thick tan cloth.

"You are sick," Reyleena said, looking him over. "Let us help you." That tiny smile again. Poison? What had the bitch done?

"Get the fuck," Daschel swept his arm in a wide arch in front of him, as a fire erupted in his bowels. He felt like his insides were turning to mush. Acid was climbing up his throat. He vomited pink. His vision narrowed to a small point. In it, he saw Reyleena staring back at him. Now the smile was not tiny. It stayed on her face.

"Oh no," Reyleena said. Daschel could see her white little teeth, rimmed with her big pink gums. "You really don't look well. Maybe you need to lie down."

Daschel did lie down, immediately and without another word. He crumpled into his ruined legs. He fell straight down and he didn't get up again.

Reyleena regarded him with no small amount of satisfaction. Soon his body would be broken down into its base elements. The reprogrammed decompilers had attached themselves via residue left on the commodes and eaten away at his legs and intestines exponentially. She was immune, as were the rest of the tribe thanks to the richness of manganese in their diet of late. Pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, and the rest of their recently modified diet had protected them. The Other had predicted the Raiders would be lacking sufficient quantities of the element in their daily food. They were right as usual.

["Leave him,"] she messaged Dink and Yaddle. ["We need to get back to the town square and keep everyone safe. The barbarians may suspect what is happening to them. It shouldn't be long now. The tide has turned."] Dink and Yaddle stared at Daschel amazed.

Reyleena looked up to see Nora walking up the pathway toward them. She saw her brother in a heap on the ground. "What did you do?" She screamed. She ran at Reyleena. Reyleena waited until she got near and then punched her in the nose.

["Grab her,"] she messaged the farm techs. ["bring her with us."] Then she said, "Shut up" to Nora who was bent over, holding her face, cursing.

They headed back to the town square. Two of the Raiders had made it this far before their insides had been eaten out by the decompilers. LalaUbriay was lying on the ground next to Gavin « Trina « etc. They had both been shot. Lala looked worse. Her stomach had a large hole in it. Gavin's lower arm was all red. The bone was showing. Members of the tribe were tending to the two who were wounded. It didn't look like Lala would live.

["You did this!"] Piter « Marisella « etc messaged her. ["Why didn't you stop them! We should have fought!"]

Reyleena felt so sick watching the aftermath of the violence on her tribe. She had no answer to their accusations. She couldn't explain, even if she wanted to. Her relationship with The Other and their plans together was a secret. She gritted her teeth and turned to Dink and Yaddle.

["I need you to take this one,"] pointing at Nora who was now sobbing ["back to her home, and stay with her there. Keep an eye on her. She is not to move from that house."] She saw Theresa « Aileen « etc, nearby. Theresa was one of her surviving security crew. She had been spared the fatal fight on the bridge. Reyleena messaged her to go with the farm techs. Then she turned and trotted alone to face the aftermath at the Inn.

She walked carefully past three more Raiders, who were all in various states of being desiccated. One of them had holes where his eyes used to be. Soon they would all become neatly organized piles of dust. Their moisture would be shuttled down the gutters as gray water for the farms. Reyleena didn't want to think about the ramifications of the damage to the vertical farm. ["Idiots,"] she thought to herself, remembering the abject stupidity of Barnabas and Daschel. ["Damned stupid idiots. They ruined it for all of us."]

She approached a repeater node at a point between the town center and the Inn. She looked up and down the path, but there were no members of her tribe visible. Following her instructions, she knelt on the path by the mound of dirt. Accessing her new implant, she opened the part of her mind which held the program installed in her by The Other. The transfer of information to the tiny bots and the node itself took less than a minute. When it was done, she got a brief confirmation. She allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. Her job was almost done. Soon, the precious data would return.

Slowly, and with trepidation, she made her way up the hill toward the Lester Sunshine Inn. There were more Raiders on the path, a few lying next to their bikes, a couple in the bushes. Several of them were partially undressed. Chances are they were trying desperately to get at what was eating them. It was gruesome.

The thought came to her unbidden that The Other had no comprehension of human suffering. The counterattack was efficient and impersonal. Only a machine could have planned this. It horrified her. She felt a wave of nausea that turned her knees to rubber. What had she done? Even at the pinnacle of her rage, she would never have devised a fate like this for the Raiders. They were human beings, after all. No one deserved to be eaten alive by tiny robots.

She walked the final meters to the Inn and paused by the door. Steeling herself against what she might find on the other side, she reached out and turned the knob. Thirty/Fourteen was on the other side. She shrieked. He was covered in blood. In one hand he held a red kitchen knife raised over his head, ready to strike. He recognized her and slowly let it down to his side.

"It's you," he said aloud. "They're all dead." He gestured with his knife behind him into the huge house. His voice was flat. His eyes had a haunted look. "They killed Seemi." Seemi was a sous-chef at the Inn, a sweet, cheerful, young girl. Reyleena felt a hollowness in her gut. "They tried to kill Dexter," Dexter was stationed at the Inn to help Thirty/Fourteen look after their captors. Reyleena could see him behind the big man, retching into a pot. "They tried to kill me. They couldn't." His face looked ashen. Blood dripped from his long beard. A red handprint stood out on his bald head. "Do you know what happened to them?"

"Yes," Reyleena said. "Do you mind if I come in?"