Vagrancy

by Stacey Mac

  “…do Trey a favour and be rid of you myself…”

  6 – Six seconds of wait time before the wound becomes fatal.

  Without permission my vision refocusses and I see the trainer before me. My palms, now sweaty, clench tighter until my hands shake. I see my crudely made spear, I take a few deep breaths. I have to remain calm before I lunge for it, before he can anticipate. The force of impact will need to be just enough to enter the right ventricle, or he might survive long enough for help to arrive.

  Then again, maybe a slow death is what I need. My escape has more potential for success if everyone is tripping over each other while they try to pick up all the blood and push it back into his useless heart. I estimate it would take no more than sixty seconds to exit the building…and then…

  “Start over!” Reeves shouts, snapping the spear in two, throwing the pieces at my feet, and he’s gone.

  Vincent comes to my aide, again. Bless him. I watch him pick up another piece of wood from my working station and hand it to me. He says something, his lips moving at warp speed. I don’t know what he says, the blood in my ears is still pounding so loudly. My brain tells me to nod at him and I do, it then tells my arms and hands to move, and they obey. I finish the spear like that, with my brain firing messages to different parts of my body, in and around one singular, superior thought: you missed your chance.

  I make it through the day like this: on autopilot. My body does things as an afterthought while the majority of my consciousness is preoccupied. I don’t see Dean at all and I miss him. When I make it to bed, my thoughts turn dangerous. I start considering terms that before now, I’ve studiously avoided.

  What you should know about vagrancy in the new world is that it is suicide. It’s a way to kill yourself if you’re too cowardly to eat a bullet. Make no mistake in buying the delusion that vagrancy equals survival. Wandering off alone into the great unknown is just a way to procrastinate your death. Below is a list of the ways you may die, along with one way you definitely will:

  - Dehydration

  - Starvation

  - Poisoning (because you were starved enough to eat one of a vast variety of poisonous plants)

  - Hypothermia (or whatever the word is for freezing solid overnight)

  - Execution (after you are found by your own militia)

  - Gunshot wounds, spear wounds, knife wounds, other wounds (after you are found by another militia)

  So, by reputation, vagrants have a short lifespan. I guess I can see a sort of beauty to it. There is something about sauntering off into the deep, dark woods, corrupted and undeterred by common sense, to lay down underneath the grey sky and wait for death to claim you. It is almost romantic, and if you want to die being romantic and stupid, then I guess that’s your right. I, however, plan to die quickly and thus, less painfully when it is my turn. And so, I want to become a vagrant about as much as I want to contract a disease.

  My mind unchanged, I have been considering the words ‘vagrant’ and ‘jumper’ more than recommended lately. I dream about these concepts, too. There was a man my father knew when I was a child whose name I can’t recall. The story goes that he heard word of his past lover, now living in Scarce, a survivor of the end of the world. Once he had discovered her survival in another militia, he up and jumped Galore for somewhere far crappier. Like I said, these things can seem romantic, and this particular urban legend would make me gush if it weren’t for his unfortunate recapture and subsequent public execution (during which he pissed himself – but in all fairness, he was about to die).

  In my dream, I’m running away from Galore, towards the wonderful nothingness of the hills. I am aware of footfalls behind me, I can smell instinctively the presence of a pursuer. I run faster, sure that my chaser means to drag me back, but when I turn, the man I see wears black and green. Dean.

  I see him and stop. This is the part of the dream when I realise I am dreaming, because as surely as I cannot jump a train to a great unknown, I know I cannot jump at all.

  A girl can dream, though.

  *

  After another day, I am tired at the cellular level, dragging my protesting body up the stairwell to a faraway bed. Other initiates with more vigour than I shove past me, impatient. I let them. Each bump to the shoulder makes me pause, makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just stay here and wait for the next day to come.

  “Come on, lazy,” says a voice in my ear, “up you go.”

  Dean places one hand discreetly, carefully on my lower back and pushes me to the next step. As I ascend, I feel my entire being shudder involuntarily. It starts in the place where his hand is pressed, and branches quickly outwards, spreading warmth. By now, only several others are in the stairwell, and they pass us too. I stop when I reach the second floor.

  “Got time for one more training session?” Dean asks, his eyes flicking to the ceiling, where the dreaded gym lies.

  I frown, my head turning longingly down the hall to the dorms, where sleep awaits. But the idea of an empty room with Dean has its perks. “There is only one way you are getting me to train, and that is if that training session involves distasteful relations between the two of us, and/or sleeping.”

  Dean smirks, and then in one abrupt swoop, lifts and throws me onto his shoulder.

  *

  When we exit the gym, the time is 2345 hours. It is literally the eleventh hour, when Dean tells me he is leaving.

  “We have to go tonight. Trey suspects that we have been snooping around, and he plans to alert your Command Unit in the morning. We have no choice.”

  I gape at him, my mouth opening and shutting like a Neanderthal before coherence finally settles. “And you’ve decided to tell me this now!”

  “I’m sorry, I just…” he stutters here, swallowing something he can’t verbalise. “It was only decided this morning. It doesn’t matter, Tess. We are leaving at midnight.”

  “But…but Julie…” I’ll be honest, I don’t care about Julie at this point, I’m just floundering for something that might change his mind. We are supposed to have three more days. I was completely prepared for this to happen in three more days…

  “I promised you that I’d try to help her, and we can, but we need you,” Dean says. He looks into me severely now, cutting me in two, his arms grasping mine. “Listen, I know this is sudden. But I need you to focus. If you want to help Julie, you’ll have to lead us to her house.”

  I nod, gulping. “Do you have a safe way out?”

  He smirks, “We are guests here, after all. They have no reason to stop us from walking out the front gate. But it will have to be quick, before Trey or anyone else realises where we are going. We can disguise you as one of us.”

  I nod again. He’s right, the Resolute superiors can take their initiates outside the fence if they want to. “Okay, but how will I get back in?”

  The moment these words leave my mouth is the moment that Dean and I understand each other. We stand there as the echo of my voice rings true, and I watch Dean’s hopes sink to the floor, because he never intended to get me back inside the compound.

  He shakes his head, eyes boring into mine, turning aggrieved. “I can’t get you back in, Tessa. Once you’re out, you’re out for good.”

  I don’t move, or answer, and this seems to enrage him. He reads me, I read him, and we remain locked in this uncomfortable, silent battle; knowing what the other intends and knowing that we had been knowing all along. He sighs. “You’re not going to do that though, are you?”

  I shake my head. He knows, but he makes me shake my head anyway. He takes his hands away from my arms and throws them up. “Don’t you get it, Tessa? Your sector is corrupt! You have to leave. Come with me!”

  I shake my head still. I feel a ripping in my stomach. Another rupture ready to take up residence next to the existing holes. Already it hurts, this loss. I try to be gentle. “It isn’t any more corrupt than anywhere else, Dean, you just can’t see it.”

  His beautiful eyes turn
to stone. “Well, I guess you can’t take the girl out of Galore, or the Galore out of the girl, it seems.”

  I sag. “I’m sorry. You knew what this was. You knew…”

  “I know what you really want,” Dean bites, “but do you?”

  I step forward and tie my arms around his neck, covering his mouth with my shoulder, unwilling to hear more. It takes a couple of seconds, but when I don’t let go, his hands go to my back, and he holds me.

  My brain is at war with itself, a circular argument: do I soak in every part of him now, while I can, and forbid myself to forget even the smallest detail of this last touch? Or do I block it out, and begin the separation? Do I refuse to feel what I undoubtedly do to protect myself?

  I’m not the type for soaking and relishing and cherishing, so I loosen my grip, and let my arms slip away.

  Dean’s jaw, a foot above me, pulses involuntarily. “So that’s it, then?”

  There is nothing else. I knew this was coming. No point in dragging it out.

  “Do you honestly have nothing to say to me?” He asks hurriedly, impatiently.

  “I’ll miss you,” I say weakly. And then, because I’ve left so many gaps unfilled, I kiss him greedily, hoping he feels the heat of my fingers against his neck and understands what he is to me.

  His forehead connects with mine, our sweat intermingling but unable to fuse. “I love you,” he breathes.

  And I shudder. Not because it is not nice to be loved by Dean, but because it is not nice to be loved and left. And all along I’d thought we’d both known that these words were to be left unsaid and unfelt. Maybe he can’t follow the rules, but I don’t say what I feel. Instead I press my lips to his for what must be the last time, and step away.

  Dean looks away, to the stairwell, anxious for once. When he looks back his features have solidified again, composed once more. “Please, look after yourself,” he says, before turning away. “It was nice to see you again, Contessa Tyrell.”

  “And you, Dean Mason.”

  He leaves, jogging down the stairwell before I figure out what more I should say, and then he’s gone.

  I let him go thinking that he cares more, that he loves me. But if there is one thing I’ve learnt from loss, it’s that it is far less painful to love someone than it is to miss them.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  With no Tilly, no Adriel, no Dean and no inclination to rise from sleep, it feels likely that my parents will die. I’m on a roll in the game of losing people I love and inertia is a bitch.

  Inertia is a good way to sum up the remaining days of my initiation. The routine is a uniform motion uninterrupted by any external forces as I await the next piece of earth-shattering news.

  Dean left. The Resolutes left with him, and I’ll save you from the crash that followed, but rest assured it was both great and horrible. Trey actually left the compound with a bunch of compound fronters in a sad attempt to hunt them down and haul them back. However, after the initial chaos settled, he called an assembly and announced that the Resolutes had ‘responded to calls’ to go back to their own sector. Of course, the rumours and gossip had already circulated by then. I have it on good authority that although the Resolutes had traipsed out the front door, no one had suspected their retreat for several hours. Apparently they’d faked a training exercise, “with guns and all”. Other than that, it has affectively been swept under the rug. No one is talking to us about it. This is incredibly strange for three reasons: (1) Galore must now know that Resolute have played dirty (for unknown reasons), and (2) they must also know that Resolute will withdraw their numbers from Galore’s campaign, and (3) Galore usually love exciting us all with this kind of dramatic betrayal. It makes me wonder what Dean was actually up to in his time here. It makes me wonder what the Resolutes found – other than a shit-tonne of guns. And it makes me wonder why I never interrogated him about it.

  If I’m being very honest with myself I had brushed away things I’d known and found inconvenient. For example: it is inconvenient to find someone who is into you, but is also into extremism. Hadn’t Dean admitted to spying to me on a number of occasions? Hadn’t he shown me the bunker and hinted at his theories? Hadn’t he expressed his deep dislike for Galore? Looking at it this way, I suppose I could be charged with treason.

  So though I can still feel his skin on my skin and a very real, non-metaphorical pain in my chest when I think of the way he left, there are several things I can no longer ignore: the first is that I’m an idiot for falling for a Resolute. The second is that Dean could have been responsible for the deaths of many Galores and Resolutes, had he been caught. The third, and worst, is that though he had promised to help me to help Julie, he hadn’t. I cling instead to the frail hope that Julie will be okay until the training season is over, and I can go to find her – alive.

  And so the remaining days creep by with excruciating slowness made worse by deteriorating nutrition (the ‘climax phase’ of physical conditioning in the compound – our meals have been limited to half the size), and crippling exhaustion.

  A small mercy is brought to us with only forty-eight hours remaining in the compound, and it is brought to us by Commander Snare of all people.

  I’m sure this is the moment the other shoe drops, and the purgatory ends. Snare will tell us that the militia was ambushed as they crept towards Scarce: but this is what he says instead:

  “Hello there, initiates! It is nice to see you again. Great news! Galore has managed to recover our dead, so they should be along shortly…” Or something like that. The actual speech was long-winded and pretentious. His eyes crinkling like a proud father. He gave a little bow and left, the initiates hooting and fist pumping in celebration.

  Of course, by ‘shortly’, he meant in a few weeks or so, and a lot can happen in a few weeks. But still, that letter hasn’t yet arrived. Maybe they’ll come back. It is the first time since my parents’ names were drawn that I’ve teased myself with the thought of their survival. The last two days in the compound are washed with fresh, watered-down hope, but hope all the same.

  *

  The last supper in the compound looks like a dinner party that everyone is attending out of politeness only. It is supposed to be a celebration. We aren’t so much as indifferent as we are sceptical. If someone kidnapped and tortured you, and then untied the ropes and offered you a feast, you’d be paranoid too. It looks like this every year. Our meals are triple the size, we can stay up as late as we please, we can socialise without being fearful of reprimand. But our stomachs have shrunk and will only except one small helping, our bodies beg for sleep, and as it is the last night, there really is no use for new friends. So instead, we sit where we always sit with the people we always sit with and thank our stars that the torture is complete.

  Delilah sits to my right. She looks brighter than she did yesterday. Her hair is smoother, her eyes less dull. She looks a little more like herself – if herself were usually rake-thin. Across from us sits Vincent and Mia, Vincent has his arm around Mia’s shoulders, and her head lies on his chest, a small, tired smile on her lips. My heart squeezes uncomfortably.

  “Back to the farm tomorrow?” Vincent says, as though to no one. I’m the only grazer here though, so I figure I’m supposed to speak. “Yep.”

  “Reckon the pigs have survived?” He smirks.

  “We don’t have pigs, genius,” I say, though the comment still makes me think of home, of the animals left unattended, and I wonder if in fact there will be carcasses waiting for me.

  Vincent clearly notices. “Kidding, Tess. Don’t worry, I’m sure everything is fine.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mia pipes up. “Your parents will be back soon as well.”

  “Will they?” I ask her, almost followed by, have you got a crystal ball shoved up somewhere I can’t see? But I don’t. This is a dinner party after all.

  “Tessa, it’s important…what your parents are doing, I mean,” Vincent says now. “You should be proud.”


  I feel my muscles tense. “Should I?” I snarl, “I don’t even know what my parents are doing, Vince, and neither do you.”

  “They’re bringing Galore soldiers back home to their families, they’re fighting Scarce. It’s for a good cause, Tessa.”

  Too tired to argue, I smile. “So long as it’s for a good cause,” I tell him, shovelling another spoon full of beef-something in my mouth.

  Vincent scowls, his brown eyes penetrating mine as he considers me. His face relaxes after a while, and he wraps another arm around Mia, looking away. “All we have are causes, Tessa. No person deserves a safe spot in a bad world unless they’re willing to be dead for a better one.”

  And that shuts me up.

  *

  When I close my eyes, I find it more challenging not to think. I believe this is what stops me from sleeping, but tonight, desperate tiredness collides with my thoughts and scatters into a maze of dreams, and in all of them I feel I am falling. The only times I can focus on one thing is when I see Dean. I try to hold him in the forefront of my mind, I try to black out the spinning blur of light and sound beyond him, but always, he slips away, and I’m back in the labyrinth. I wake again sometime before dawn, jolting out of sleep, and causing the person in the cot beside me to grunt and roll over. With my head back on my pillow, I slow my breathing, listening to the pulse behind my ears slow. I know that my intellect is in question. I know what is good for me and what is not. I know that there are more important things that are here and that are coming that deserve my full distress, but in this darkness, with this quiet, the only thing worth thinking about is why I didn’t tell him that I loved him, before I never saw him again.

  I wait until the light beyond the windows turns the room grey. I count dust motes as they float above me and then beyond me and as I do, I can feel sense returning, and with it the better worries: what will my initiation into Galore bring? What are my parents doing right now? Did they survive the cold? Did Julie?