by Mark Tufo
“Maybe that’s not such a good idea. At first I figured Lericho was just trying to scare you, but if he’s having guys follow you...” He left the implication unsaid.
“We aren’t doing anything right now but picking berries. We can’t risk leading him to the book building, Tallow.”
“We need that weapon.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s head away from here in the general direction we need to go. If we go up the Crippler Ridge way he won’t be able to follow–at least not without us seeing him. We’ll decide then what we’re going to do.”
I agreed, even though deep down I knew Tallow had already made up his mind and I had just affirmed it for him. We pretended to laugh and talk loudly as we leisurely made our way away from the blueberry patches. When the ridge the Broker was hiding behind was no longer in sight we ran as fast as we could, through a shallow pass to get to high ground ahead of him. When we were through we went up the ridge on our right-hand side, so from the top we could see down into the approaching valley. We had no sooner crested than we saw two Brokers as they neared the pass.
“They have rifles,” Tallow said. I couldn’t tell if that fact scared him, or intrigued him.
If we had stayed put they most likely would have passed us on by and lost our trail. I said as much to Tallow.
“This way we know where they are,” he said right before we raced back down the other side. “If they don’t find us now they’ll send more later.”
“And if these two don’t come back?”
“Winter, they’re already close to the book building now. If they go roaming around they could stumble upon it as easily as we did.”
I didn’t remind him that it was his plan to see who was following us that had brought them this much closer. I wondered if that had been his true plan all along. I was having a difficult time reconciling the actions of the boy I’d known half my life with the one I’d been with in the last two days. I, of all people, should have been able to see what his heart held, but I felt like an outsider; a simple plan to find a coil of rope had become a terrifying, life changing event. We came down off the ridge not more than twenty-five yards ahead of the Brokers and had to pretend we hadn’t spotted them. Tallow grabbed my hand as we once again took on our guise of laughing teenagers.
“I’m scared, Tallow.” I wished we were back in his apartment. “You don’t even know how to make the bullet come out–if...if it comes to that.”
“Sure I do. You just push back on that little finger lever thing in the middle.”
“And that’s it?”
“How hard can it be?”
“How are you going to make sure you hit what you want to when you make the bullet come out?”
“I have great aim with rocks.”
“I don’t think this is the same thing.” The whole time, we were laughing and smacking each other on the shoulders, just out for a little walk. The acting was playful; the talking was deadly. Trying to make something that was serious, less so, had me hopeful we could still come out of this. “They must have had training with the rifles, Tallow. Let’s just go back.”
“Too late.” Not more than a stone’s throw was a dark depression in the grass that signified the opening to the book room. They’d have a hard time missing it now.
“Where are you two going?” one of the Brokers asked as he came out from behind a small copse of trees.
“Probably for a roll in the grass,” his friend laughed as he also showed himself.
“My name is Hunter.” The Broker with the hairlip said. He was also the friend of the man I’d killed. “My buddy here is Torric. Now we have this bet that you and your little boyfriend there had something to do with our friend Durgan’s death. I say no way could a little bitch and her wimpy boyfriend take out a man like him. But Torric here, he’s pretty cynical on the whole human condition. He thinks you two did it just for the fun of it.”
“We didn’t do anything,” Tallow said, stepping in front of me.
“We didn’t do anything,” Hunter mocked. “Right now I don’t really care, you two have had me traipsing all around this damned countryside for the last three hours and I’m sick of it!” He was shouting by the end. “You may or you may not have had anything to do with it. But we’re going to have a little fun and then we’re going to kill you both. Once we do that I will consider the scales of justice balanced, since none of your lives matter anyway.”
“You can’t do this!” I shouted, stepping out from behind Tallow.
“Oh, Torric, she’s going to sic the Overseers on us!” Hunter placed his hands against his face.
Torric merely grunted, the predatory look in his gaze had me numb with fear.
“What...what about Brody? He wouldn’t allow this!” I knew that was grasping for straws but right now I had no other handholds.
“What Brody don’t know won’t hurt him. He doesn’t know we’re out here–no one knows we are out here. But I think you two know that, don’t you? Besides, from the little conversation you two had with Lericho yesterday it sounds like I’d be doing you both a favor. We’ll be much kinder to you than he would be. He don’t like the revolutionary types, the kind that are always stirring things up. Why do you think they always send the eighteen-year-olds to The War?” Hunter ran his tongue over his lips, and moved closer. Then he looked up, past my shoulder. “Well, lookie here, Torric. The little boy is chicken.” Hunter was laughing, Torric just grunted again and smiled.
I didn’t know what they were talking about until I turned and saw Tallow making a run for it. The “it” being the rifle. I turned and followed.
“How far do we let them get?” Hunter asked.
I hadn’t made it more than ten feet when there was an explosion of grass and mud next to my feet.
“Stop or the next one will be in your skull–and that’s really going to ruin ‘our’ fun for the day.”
I did as he said.
“Now turn around. Hey, lover boy!” he shouted. “Come back now or I’m going to carve up your girlfriend like a drunk Meddie.”
“What the hell?” Torric yelled.
“Damn, Torric, that’s the most words I’ve ever heard you say at one time.”
I heard the rifle explosion, then a sizzling sensation on the top of my shoulder as if a large cat had raked it. Torric fell backwards, a crimson plume of blood forming on his chest. Hunter was bringing his gun up when Tallow shouted.
“Put it down!”
“Piss off!”
“Move, Winter!”
I had clasped my hand over my wound and was twisting to the side as I watched Tallow running toward Hunter. Blood and tissue sprayed out from the side of Tallow’s leg as Hunter’s bullet found its mark. Tallow fired as he was falling. I don’t even think he was cognizant of that. A bullet hit Hunter in the kneecap. I watched as his leg bent at an unnatural angle to the rear. He was contorting down in a pile of pain. He would have screamed if not for the next bullet striking his chest. Bubbles of blood and air pooled around the wound as his lungs collapsed. Tallow’s third shot before he fell completely down missed the mark entirely, not that it would have mattered. Hunter was on the ground making wheezing noises from wounds he would not recover from even if we did make an attempt to get him to the Meddies.
Torric hadn’t moved since he’d struck the ground. I made a quick look around to see if anyone else had witnessed this and then moved quickly to Tallow.
“Are you alright?” I asked, moving his hand away from the wound on his thigh.
“Hurts...bad...Winter. If...if I don’t make it….” His teeth were chattering. I need to tell you something.”
I didn’t want to hear it; my tears were already welling up. “No, Tallow. You will not die on me.” With some force I pulled his hands away and then with my good hand punched him hard in the shoulder. His clothes had suffered a more grievous wound than he had. “I’m shot worse than you,” I told him.
; He got serious and sat up. “You’re shot? Where?”
“You should know since you’re the one who did it.”
“What?” I showed him my shoulder. “Oh, Winter, I’m so sorry. Let’s get that fixed up.”
We had traveled enough in the Outlands to know basic first aid, and for all the pain I had in my shoulder it was still a fairly minor wound. It was just a little worse than Tallow’s, not that I was going to let him off the hook that easy. He poured some water over it and placed an herbal medicinal paste into the wound before he put in three stitches. I think he could have got away with two but I think he liked being this close. Not that I was complaining.
When he was done I looked over to the two dead Brokers. “We can’t leave them there.”
“Why not? They would have left us.”
“Because someone will find them.”
I knew what Tallow was thinking. This was a remote enough place that it wasn’t too likely they would be found, not any time soon anyway. We dragged them back into the small woods that they had originally emerged from. I would have liked to bury them, but that would have involved another raid on the Broker hut for a shovel and the first time hadn’t exactly worked out particularly well.
We covered them over with sticks and debris, and when we were done, I just wanted to go down into to the book building and forget any of this had ever happened. I wished it was possible to take a long enough nap that I would awaken and find this a distant memory. Or possibly just a bad dream. Tallow bent down and grabbed the discarded rifles, as we passed by them.
I wanted to know why he would even want to touch those things after seeing the devastation they wrought. I guess that disgust showed on my face.
“We could use these, Winter. This is what we need to survive out here. Even if the Brokers find us we can deal with them.”
“By killing them?” I answered sourly.
He looked pained. “If it came to that, yes. What’s the alternative? We wait, starving and afraid for a couple more years, and then go to The War? I’ll let you in on a little secret, Winter. I don’t want to go. I'm not afraid, but I don’t have the slightest idea who we’re fighting or for what reason. All I can figure is we must be winning or whoever this enemy is would already be on our doorstep. So if we’re winning, how come hardly anyone ever comes home?”
He hadn’t said anything I didn’t agree with, so I couldn’t understand why his words sounded so dirty to me. We’d had the necessity for The War shoved down our throats from our earliest memories. But he was right–the explanation for “why” had always been somewhat vague.
“They’ll send more,” I said as we walked. “They’ll always send more.” I was feeling defeated even though we were victorious for the moment. Was this what it felt like to win?
“Think of it, Winter. We could stop this, you and me here and now. With these!” He shook the rifles.
“These are terrible weapons, Tallow! Look at how much damage they can do in an instant. Maybe we shouldn’t have them.” I wanted to tell him that three rifles weren’t going to be nearly enough. But I didn’t have the heart; he looked so full of hope. I also wanted to tell him I didn’t have the stomach for the killing either, no matter whether they deserved it or not. And certainly the Broker that had just been going on a bathroom break hadn’t. His death was going to haunt me for the rest of my days; however long that may be.
“I think you’re right about The War,” I said as Tallow tied the rope to one of the rifles so we could lower ourselves down into the book building. “Hunter said something before you shot him. He said there’s a reason they always send the eighteen-year olds…something about being rebellious. But who would we revolt against?”
“I’m telling you, I can feel it. This isn’t the way we’re meant to live, always just waiting to die. I’d rather die fighting for something I believe in than for something I know nothing about.”
I couldn’t argue with him, and anyway, I was too tired even if I had thought he was wrong. My shoulder blazed as I went down, even broke a stitch, but I waited until Tallow got down before I laid down on the bench. I think I was asleep before I had a chance to shut my eyes, if that’s even possible. When I awoke a bit later, Tallow was on the floor, surrounded by books.
He had a fever pitch in his eyes. “You wouldn’t believe the kinds of guns they have!” He turned the page of the book he was holding. There was an illustration of something that looked similar to what we had but was much bigger. “This can shoot two thousand rounds a minute! Can you believe that?”
“No.” And I meant it. I sat up on the bench. My shoulder still ached. Tallow was going on about this and that type of weapon, more to himself than to me.
“I wonder how we could get ahold of some grenades, or maybe a rocket launcher!”
The words sounded so foreign and deadly. I stood, intending to look for a more peaceful part of the building. I got the distinct feeling Tallow didn’t need an audience as he was having the time of his life all by himself, talking about things that were designed specifically to kill people.
Some of the shelves were in relatively decent shape so I decided to walk down to a few of those. I passed by a sign that read, “Cookbook Section,” the pang in my stomach telling me that this would not be a good place to browse. There was a Fiction and a Science Fiction section, then a Non-Fiction section, which seemed to be getting closer to what I was looking for–some part of me knew what I wanted. Then I stopped. The sign I had been sub-consciously searching for was right there at eye-level; in bold black lettering was the word, “History.” I scanned the titles on the shelves I could easily reach. The section was vast, full of people and events I’d never heard of; in fact, I saw nothing familiar. I figured the best place to start was at the beginning, so I pulled out a thick, heavy book with golden lettering on the cover. “World History: From the Dawn of Man to the Present.” I squatted down against a wall and opened up the dusty bookbinding across my lap. “Present” in this case meant the year 2020. Again, that was something that held no intrinsic value for me. I was about to learn what that dating meant, but right then it was just a random series of numbers.
Tallow came to find me a few hours later. I had the book nearly pressed into my face as I was struggling to read the words in the dying light. My eyes must have been pretty bloodshot from the strain.
“I’m thinking you should take a rest. Here, I brought you this.” Tallow handed me a piece of cooked rabbit.
“How...when did you do this?”
Tallow smiled. “I came by a while ago to see if you wanted to get some food but you had your nose attached to the page. I decided not to bother you.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever be hungry again, but...” And then I tore into the warm flesh. “Have you ever wondered how big the world is?” I asked after I swallowed a few pieces.
Tallow thought about it for a moment. “Honestly, no.”
“Come here and look at this map.”
“Why don’t you come with me and we’ll sit by the fire.”
My knees popped as I stood and my legs grudgingly stretched but not without a fair amount of protesting. It was nice to have Tallow so close when we sat down, and I balanced the book between us. “Okay, look at this. It is a map of ‘Colorado.’ I couldn’t find Dystance, but it has to be somewhere in the mountains.”
“You think?”
“Are you giving me a hard time?”
“Of course,” he responded.
“I’m trying to show you something. You’ve walked Picket to Picket, how big do you think this area is?”
“Best I could tell it’s about thirty miles north to south, maybe a little more east to west.”
“Tallow, Colorado is two hundred eighty by three hundred eighty miles.”
“Whoa, I never imagined the world could be that big.”
I flipped over a couple of pages. “That’s just the beginning! Look at this," I said, turning over a few pages. “Here’s a map of a place c
alled ‘The United States.’ See that? There’s Colorado in it.” I put my finger on the area and looked at him. “The United States is almost three thousand miles across.”
Tallow looked like he was going to fall off the bench. “That's not possible, Winter. How can anything be that big?”
“Tallow, The United States is only one country in a much, much bigger world.” I flipped to another page that showed a spherical shape cut to lay.
“How big is that?” He looked pale.
“Over twenty-four thousand miles.”
“You’re blowing my mind, Winter.”
“Yeah. Why do you think I've had this book open all day.”
Tallow got up and put a few sticks on our small fire. He took the spit off its braces and picked at the small bits of meat that clung to it. “If the world is that big, why would anyone fight for what little we have here? That makes no sense. Most of the people are starving.”
“I’ve been asking the same questions, Tallow. One thing I’ve noticed while I’ve been reading this is that Man has been warring amongst other sections since people started recording history. How much must we hate each other that we try so desperately to wipe ourselves from the world?” I would have to think on that at a later time.
“In fact, most of this book is a testament to that. Those who fought used all sorts of guises to hide their true intentions, from deposing a brutal dictator, to spreading religious dogma, protecting one’s borders or creating new ones. It didn’t much matter because the outcome was always the same. It’s a revolution, a changing of the old to usher in the new–whether it’s a government, an ideology, or an era.”
“What ‘new’ has our war brought?”
“Our war isn’t even mentioned here, as far as I can tell. And we have seen nothing come of it except more war. That in itself does not make sense. I’m not saying war is right, but it always brings on change, and we’ve been living the same way for at least a hundred years...that’s if our lessons are to be believed.”
“You think they’re lying?” Tallow looked shocked.
“I do now. Look at the trouble someone went to keep this building concealed and protected.”