by Megan Hart
“They did the Geneto-Test. It was fine. She caught from Ari, just like she was supposed to, and he was a match. But it was still...not right.” Tikva’s voice was muffled, but not enough that Elanna couldn’t hear it.
She didn’t want to ask what was wrong with the child. It didn’t matter. Ari had been matched to Leah but had never made a child with her or any other hopemother before. This would’ve been his first.
“It’s because he goes...out,” Tikva said. “That’s what they’re saying. Because he goes into the Blast Zone. And out there.”
It could be. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Leah had given birth to a child that was not right.
It would’ve been better if it had died.
That thought suddenly sickened and horrified her, even though she knew it was true. Elanna pressed her fingertips to her churning belly. It was true, but it wasn’t right. Babies were precious. All babies.
But if Leah and Ari had been matched and still had a child that wasn’t right, what chance did she have of bearing a baby without problems when she’d caught with Job who’d been tested and found incompatible? They would do worse than take it from her and give it to another woman to raise. They would take it from her and...
“I have to go.” She stood, the floor slipping under her feet.
“Elanna, Tikva, hey!” It was Chedva again. The shorter girl was nearly bursting with excitement, practically wriggling in her eagerness to tell Elanna something. “Did you hear the news?”
“I heard.” Elanna knew Chedva was clueless, but couldn’t believe she’d take such joy in Leah’s misfortune.
“The gatherers are due back soon,” Chedva said, completely ignoring the story of Leah’s birth and the child. That was typical. Everyone would pretend it hadn’t happened, leaving Leah to mourn in silence. “Zev came on ahead and said the rest would be here in a little while. Oh, Elanna, isn’t it exciting?”
“Yes,” Elanna answered noncommittally.
“What do you think they’ll bring back this time? Oh, I hope they’ve found some candy! And some new clothes in my size. I’d love a new dress for summer…”
Elanna left Tikva sobbing into her pillow and pushed past Chedva to leave the room. True to form, Chedva followed, rattling on as Elanna made her way to the Main Hall. She wanted to cut through there on her way to the birthing room. She wanted to see Leah, even if nobody else would.
“They’ll all be wanting appointments, you know.” Chedva nudged Elanna with her elbow. “I hope Luz asks me, though it doesn’t really matter. I know. But I’d love to have a baby with Luz, wouldn’t you, Elanna?”
Elanna thought of the tall, grossly muscled man and his coarse manners. She’d suffered through several appointments with him before realizing that he’d stop asking for her when she stopped pretending to be impressed with his physique. After she’d laughed when he asked if she thought his arms were getting too muscular, he’d never asked for her again.
“Um…no, not really,” Elanna said. “Listen, Chedva, I’ve really got to go.”
Chedva trotted after Elanna. “But guess what else? Something really exciting! I heard him say they found a man!”
By now even more people had crowded into the Main Hall. Elanna could barely move. Even going back the way she came was fruitless.
“Really?” She was only half-listening. “How neat.”
Chedva babbled on and Elanna slowly worked her way through the crowd toward the dais. The Beit Din were all there, waiting for the gatherers to come back. Then she saw Leah, face pale and eyes red-rimmed, her hair damp around her forehead. She caught Elanna’s gaze across the room. Elanna moved toward her, but Leah shook her head just slightly.
Then she looked away. In the next moment the crowd had moved, blocking Elanna’
s view. When it parted again, the other hopemother was gone.
−9-
A cloud stinking of hellfire surrounded him, making him gag. Tobin writhed on the pavement, unable to get up. His eyes bulged from his head, and his ears and nose and mouth filled with the relentless reek and roar.
Luz materialized beside him, yanking him up by the back of the neck with fingers that felt like pincers of iron. The gatherer pulled Tobin along like a rag doll, shoving him to one side. Fresh pain bloomed like some insane flower as his knees scraped the ground, but he forgot it almost immediately when he saw what had created the noise and the stench.
It was a truck, monstrous, like none he’d ever seen or even imagined. Black, with tires as high as his head, it was easily fifteen feet long. It revved and growled, farting huge stinking puffs of crackling air that smelled like lightning.
The windows were glassless and gaping, the cab doors bound with wire and bits of cloth to keep them from flying open. The bed in the back was filled with boxes and packages and all manner of things he couldn’t identify, all surrounded by a sagging wall of barbed wire and pieces of wood studded with nails.
Luz grinned at him, showing teeth gone gray. Clearly he enjoyed Tobin’s reaction. The huge man gave Tobin an almost friendly tap on the shoulder that nearly knocked him over again.
“Pretty impressive when you see it in action,” Luz said.
Now Tobin saw more black-garbed gatherers, some in the front of the truck and others in the back among the packages. Five more, if he had counted them all. More people than he’d ever seen in his entire life, Tobin thought, stunned. He had to lock his knees from sagging again. His eyes went from one to the other of them, back and forth, hardly able to take it all in. People! Eleven of them, and they were only a fraction of the population if what Ari had told him was true.
“I didn’t really believe it,” he whispered, thinking of the peddler.
“Believe it,” Zmorah said from beside him. She obviously thought he meant the truck, and he let her think what she wanted.
“You ride in the front,” Ari commanded, nodding to Luz who began wrangling Tobin up a short ladder attached to the side of the cab. “If you’re tied up you can’t fight, and we can’t have you getting in the way. Things are likely to get a little hairy on the ride home.”
“Fight?” The pain in Tobin’s jaw made it hard to talk. “Who?”
“Savages. We’ll be going right through their territory.”
Tobin’s feet were on the bottom rung of the ladder. With his hands bound behind him, he couldn’t balance himself. Only Luz’s strong hands on his waist kept him from falling. Though he’d only taken one step up the ground seemed very far away. Concentrating suddenly seemed a very good idea.
Luz shoved him up the next step, pushing when Tobin teetered back. Another step and Tobin was able to bend at the waist along the truck’s hood. The metal was warm under his cheek, the one that didn’t hurt. He didn’t see how he’d be able to go any further.
He didn’t have to. Two of the gatherers from inside the cab reached through the empty windshield and grabbed him. Another moment of wriggling and they shoved him over the front seat and into the back. Tobin managed to turn over enough so he was sitting on the seat, facing the front, instead of half-lying on the floor.
Two faces smudged with dirt stared back at him. He’d have thought from the strength they used to pull him in that he’d be looking at a pair of men as big as Luz, but the faces were female. Even through the dirt he could see that. Women had pulled him through the window. He didn’t know how to feel about that.
Hell. He didn’t know how to feel about anything, did he? Everything that had happened since waking up to Asaph’s blade at his throat had been one seamless nightmare. He couldn’t wish, wouldn’t wish, that he’d stayed home in Eastport, but he did regret not taking another route.
“Whutsya name?”
It took him a second to realize that one of the women had spoken to him. Her accent was the same as the others. From her lips, it sounded somehow perky.
“Tobin,” he said.
That, for some reason, elicited a giggle from the two of them. He wouldn’t hav
e thought women with arms like that would be gigglers, but then again, he didn’t know much about women.
The one who hadn’t spoken yet leaned farther over the seat to look him up and down. Tobin didn’t know much about sex, but suddenly the cab seemed filled with it. His cheeks grew hot.
Ari had climbed into the cab. “Neta, Liora. Leave him alone. He’s been gathered. We’ve got to keep focused, ladies.”
Tobin didn’t like the sound of that. Ari’s voice had turned grim. Tobin shifted, his bound wrists aching.
“Hey, wait,” he said.
Ari turned, one brow raised. “Yeah?”
“Can’t you just untie my arms?” Tobin asked. “I can’t…do anything….”
“That’s the point,” Ari said. “We can’t trust you not to try and get away. You’ve proven that.”
That was unfair. He hadn’t tried to escape, just told them he didn’t want to go.
“But if we’re going to meet trouble,” Tobin said. Damn it! He hated sounding this weak! He forced his voice to firm. “Ari, I can’t defend myself.”
“You won’t have to,” Ari said. He nodded toward Neta and Liora. “That’s what they’re here for.”
The truck jerked forward and Tobin nearly fell off the seat. His stomach churned as the vehicle began rolling. Riding a bike was nothing like this. This was like being swallowed by a huge beast.
Any flirtation or silliness vanished. The women sat tensely, heads moving steadily back and forth. Searching. For what, Tobin wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
The truck moved along streets beginning to glow with early morning sunlight. The buildings on either side of them didn’t look any better than they had yesterday; if anything, many of them looked more dilapidated. In places, parts of them had even fallen down.
Tobin strained to look out the glassless windows, curious to see more of the city. The truck moved unbelievably fast. He glanced at one of the dials in front. The needle hovered at the number fifteen. He felt like he were flying.
“Central Park!” Came a loud voice from above them. One of the gatherers thumped on the roof. “Heading into Zoo Territory!”
“Now we’ll see,” Ari muttered. “Damned Savages.”
Tobin was surprised to hear the man swear, but even more surprised by what he saw through the windshield. Whatever had happened here, happened a long time ago. And whatever it was had been big and nasty.
The street simply…ended. There was a rough trail ahead, but it obviously had been made in the aftermath of whatever disaster had destroyed the buildings in an area at least ten blocks wide. As far as Tobin could see ahead and on both sides, there was nothing. Everything had been razed to rubble.
Without the tall buildings to block the sun, weeds and foliage had grown wild. Trees, twisted and unlike any he’d ever seen, grew in thick patches interspersed with bushes and tall grasses. A breeze blew through, making the foliage move as though something stood just behind it. And maybe, Tobin thought with a first twinge of unease, something did.
“Blast Zone,” Ari said. The truck had stopped, the engine’s roar like the sound of some large monster. “This is where they live. Get ready, now.”
“We ain’t been bothered the past two trips,” Neta said. “Maybe…”
She didn’t have time to finish her thought because suddenly a howling, gibbering wild thing leaped onto the side of the truck and reached through the window to grab Liora by the hair. Quicker than Tobin could blink, whatever was out there had pulled the woman halfway through the window. Only her knees, caught against the sides, stopped her.
With astonishing calm, Neta grabbed her friend’s waist and pulled her inside with a practiced tug. “I tole ya to cut that hair,” was all she said. Tobin realized they were grinning.
Then they were surrounded on all sides. Men, and he could only assume they were men, leaped onto the truck. Two jumped on the hood, waving clubs and spears that looked all the more deadly for being homemade. Tobin’s innards turned to ice. He could only watch; he couldn’t move.
I’m dreaming, he thought finally. Please let me be dreaming.
But he wasn’t dreaming. The men, the Savages, were hammering on the truck. They wore furs, not clothes. Their cries were all the more terrifying because they didn’t yell with words.
The one jabbing his spear through the windshield wore a tawny fur with a huge ruff pulled up around a burned and oozing face. His partner wore a black and orange striped fur around his waist, and the oozing burns were all over his body. Through his daze, Tobin realized he recognized the furs from a picture book called “My Visit To The Zoo.” These men were wearing the skins of a lion and a tiger.
Ari reached up and grabbed the end of lion man’s spear. It snapped in half and he flung it out the window. Lion started to dive head first through the windshield, but Neta kicked up one foot and caught him square in the forehead. Screaming, he flew back and off the front of the truck. Tobin felt rather than heard the thud as the vehicle ran over him.
Tiger man wasn’t as bold. Liora leaned out the windshield toward him and butted him head to head. The crack was loud enough to hurt Tobin’s ears, even above the rest of the cacophony, but Liora didn’t even flinch. Tiger did, though. With a scream that echoed Lion’s, he tumbled off the truck too.
In minutes, there was no more yelling. All the Savages had been pushed off or away, and had disappeared back into the brush. Neta helped Liora fix her hair, and Ari kept driving as if nothing at all had happened.
“Damage?” Ari yelled out the window.
Luz appeared, upside down. He’d been cut on his cheek and the blood flowed up into his hair. He grinned like a mad man.
“They got Brosh in the side, but nothing else serious!”
Ari nodded. “We’ll go another mile and then drop the package.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes, until Tobin could find his voice. “What the hell!”
Ari turned around. “You weren’t worried, were you, Tobin?”
“Back during the riots, someone dropped a bomb on the Blast Zone,” Liora said, turning to look at him. “Whatever was in it made them the way they are. Crazy. They live in the forest, hunting animals for their food and clothes. There’s something in the water here that makes them look that way, too. If you stayed here long enough, it would happen to you, too.”
“Where’d they get the skins?” Tobin asked hoarsely.
“From the animals,” Neta said matter-of-factly. “Where else?”
“But a lion? A tiger?”
She smiled at him, and he saw she’d never flirt with him again. The earlier interest in her eyes had turned to pity. She thought he was a moron, and he felt like one.
“There was lots of animals living in the zoo,” she said.
“I seen a giraffe once, through the trees,” Liora said. “Only once, though.”
Tobin shook his head. “This is too much.”
Ari laughed, but not meanly. “You’ve lived too long by yourself, Tobin.”
“Maybe it was better by myself.”
A moment later Ari stopped the truck. One, two, three, packages were tossed off the back of the truck into the underbrush. Immediately, Savages appeared from the weeds and grabbed the packages, then disappeared again.
“I’m not going to ask,” Tobin said.
“We have to give them something,” Ari said. “They’re no better than beggars. If we don’t give them something, they’ll just try to steal it from us and we’d have to kill them. They can’t help how they are. We’re just trying to do a mitzvah. A good deed.”
“But why do they attack you, then?” Tobin demanded, head spinning.
“Well, because they’re Savages,” Liora said, and he knew she wouldn’t be flirting with him again.
“We’ll be all right from here on out,” Ari said as the truck moved slowly along through the undergrowth. “Just a few more miles and we’ll be in Tribe territory. Home.”
Home, Tobin thought. Would he ever fin
d it again? Without thinking he slumped down along the seat, his bound wrists making even laying uncomfortable. Shock and exhaustion won out, though, because before he could even try to fight it he’d fallen asleep.
He woke when the truck stopped. They were out of the jungle and back into the city. The buildings here were, if it were possible, even taller. Neta and Liora helped him slide out through the windshield again, and Luz helped him down the ladder. When he reached the pavement, Ari slipped the ropes off his arms.
“You can’t run from us here, so don’t try,” Ari warned, and Tobin was so glad to have the use of his hands that he couldn’t even be insulted.
Rubbing his wrists to get the feeling back, Tobin stopped, not caring that the hulking gatherer was pulling on him. Up, up, impossibly high, stretched a building unlike the others. Only by craning his neck could he see the top at all. It ended in a tall triangle. Just feet away from the building’s foot, buried in the pavement, was an enormous metal spike bigger than his entire body. It must’ve fallen from an enormous height to have been buried so far into the concrete.