by V. K. Ludwig
“This should be interesting,” Hazel mumbled and emptied another glass.
“He never did.”
A communal what? echoed through the room. Heads cocked, brows arched and at least one mouth stood slightly open.
“What do you mean with he never did?” Autumn asked.
“He never hit on me. Not once.”
“Is lying allowed in this game?” Autumn’s gaze wandered to Ayanna. “Does she need to drink when we catch her with a lie? Is that how it works?”
“I’m not lying!” I said, the force in my voice making everyone shrink back. “Adair never hit on me, and if you would know him better, you’d understand it’s not in his character.”
Autumn flung her palms up. “Okay, okay. Not need to eat me alive over it. I swear sometimes I think you two should get married because you constantly stand up for each other. It’s cute, really.”
“Yeah, it’s cute,” Ayanna agreed. “You guys would make a lovely couple, in my opinion.”
My breath stalled in my chest. “You really think that?”
Before Ayanna could build on that hint of a nod, Darya shoved a glass into my hand. “Drink one anyway. The rules are kinda out the window already, anyway.”
“My turn,” Ayanna said in a sing-song voice, her excitement once more spilling over. “I’ll ask Darya. When did you —”
“I have a question,” I said.
“But you’re not asking the questions,” Autumn said.
“Darya said the rules are out of the window anyway, and I want to ask Ayanna a question.”
They each glanced at each other, then shrugged.
“When did you realize you wanted to marry River?” I asked, each second it took her to answer straining my nerves.
“I never did,” she said, her eyes resting on the tree-embroidered pillow. “When the council wouldn’t let me go back to the Clan, it devastated me. I never decided that I want to marry River, I simply realized I didn’t want to live without him, but living with him was only possible if we married. So I did it.”
“You just did it?”
“Uh-huh.” She gifted me a warm smile. “I didn’t like the idea at first, because my parent’s marriage wasn’t exactly… harmonious. After Rowan married us, I realized that nothing had changed. Things were still the same between us.”
“But how did you know you loved him enough to get married?”
Autumn rolled her eyes and grabbed for the tray. “This game sucks.”
“Love isn’t a constant, honey,” Darya said and folded her hands in her lap. “It fluctuates. Sometimes I love Rowan more, and sometimes I love him a little less. The important thing is that we stay true to the commitment we made to each other. It helps us through the bad times, and makes the good ones even sweeter.”
Realization squeezed my lungs like a metal chain forged by my foolishness and stupidity. The memories of our sex faded into the background, allowing me a sober glimpse at everything I had ignored.
Secrets we shared.
Moments we held each other.
This morning, when he had made love to me. All this time, Adair and I had been living the life of a married couple, but I was too stupid to see it.
“My love for River doesn’t fluctuate,” Ayanna said.
Darya leaned over the tray and gave her a pat on the back. “Give it some more time,” she said and finished her sentence off with a wink.
At that moment, I realized that I might not have been able to decide to marry Adair, but I understood that not marrying him wasn’t an option anymore. I loved him, and it was time for me to confess.
Chapter 16
The Burn Pit
Adair
Even with ham and eggs sizzling away over the campfire, the imaginary smell of decay had rubbed itself so deep into my pores, there was no way of ridding my nostrils from it. We had dug for a day and a half, the cracked skin on my hands and soreness in my arms proof that we tried our hardest.
Coals glistened here and there, the thawing soil hissing and crackling underneath the heat. The meltwater had turned the ground into a slush of ash, grit and shattered bone fragments.
The night shift made slurps of boots pulling from its grip sound like a lullaby. But there was no sleep for me.
I embraced the sleep-deprivation. Most of all, I indulged in the way it clouded my thoughts, blurring the edges of my memories of Ruth.
“Coffee?” Rowan asked and handed me a banged-up field mug. “Used up the last grounds of my stash, so it turned out a bit pale.”
I quickly poked the scrambles of ham from my plate and shoveled it into my mouth. The enamel clanked against the crooked aluminum sink, two of its legs sunken deep into the soggy ground.
“Thanks,” I said and grabbed the mug, the hot metal rim burning against my lower lip.
“You’ve been working hard since we got here. When was the last time you slept?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine to me.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned against the sink, staring at how the tip of his sole splashed the gray puddle underneath. “Anything you wanna tell me about? Is it because Hazel’s about to leave?”
“Like I said, I’m fine.”
Except that I wasn’t. Two days ago Ruth had put me in my spot as a plaything. A toy boy. Something every guy here would love to be for a woman — until you start fucking falling for them.
When Rowan wouldn’t quit tapping the slush, I fed him a bit of truth. “Living together with Ruth shows me something I want but won’t ever have. When I asked you to be her guard, I didn’t take that into consideration.”
“Did you hit on her?”
I shook my head. “I swear I never did.”
Another truth, but one that didn’t make me any less guilty — or stupid. Ruth might have been the driving force, but I was the fool who jumped at it without thinking of the risks. At least not all of them. Sure, I had considered being exiled. I had considered knocking her up. What I hadn’t thought of was me falling in love so hard each second of my existence was now pure agony.
“I’ll continue down at the western edge,” I said and grabbed for one of the mud-crusted shovels which leaned against a tent. “The soil should be soft enough now to get that skull out.”
The moment I walked away Rowan darted his arm out, giving me a quick pat on the shoulder. “There will be others, okay?”
My foot froze mid-air for the fraction of a second. Not sure if he meant other chances or other women. I gave a quick nod and kept on moving. I would have loved another chance with Ruth, but she sure as hell had spoiled me for any other woman.
I walked over to the western edge and stepped up to the large skull with its jaw protruding from the ground, four teeth missing and a hairline crack veining through the bony mass. With my gloved finger, I dug up the surrounding soil, only to dive my shovel underneath in yet another attempt to lever it out of the ground.
“Wait,” Clay said and walked up from the other side, wisps of his dark hair clinging to his sweaty forehead. “Let me come from the other side. Maybe we can get it out together.”
“You gotta go in deep or the vacuum will damage the skull.”
He gave a quick but earnest nod, then worked his shovel deep into the ground.
“On three,” I said, stepped on the edge of my shovel and applied gentle pressure against the shaft. “One… two… three…”
With leverage from both sides, a gooey pop sounded from underneath the grit, and the skull lifted slowly from the ground.
“Fucking shit,” Clay snarled and pulled his hands away from the tool. “Drop it. Drop it, or it’ll come apart.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“This thing is still attached to a spine, man.”
I let go of my shovel and kneeled down on the ground. “That’s impossible, we already dug two feet into the ground. Lift it up!”
Clay grabbed the handle of his shovel and gave it a tu
g. Sure enough, the skull partially lifted, the atlas still connected to it. And from the atlas dangled yet another vertebra, sending a petrifying shock across my body.
“Get Rowan,” I said, my voice tense and my stomach broiling.
As soon as Clay disappeared behind a mound of dirt, my knees shuffled away as if on reflex, and a mix of coffee and bile washed a cluster of vessels into the ashy soil.
“Here…” River kneeled down beside me, letting his canteen dangle in front of my nose. “I didn’t drink a drop of that water yet today, but used it twice already to rinse digested breakfast from my molars. Ain’t no shame in it.”
I took the canteen with a dip of my head, poured some water into my mouth and swished it through my teeth. The moment I spit it onto the ground, Rowan hurried over to us, together with Clay and two of the volunteers.
“Please tell me he’s bullshitting me!” Rowan snarled.
He grabbed the skull with both hands, pulled, then dropped as soon as the resistance confirmed an unspoken fear.
“Fucking shit!” he screamed, grabbed Clay’s shovel and cracked the shaft across his thigh, throwing both pieces into different directions. “God damnit. How much deeper are we supposed to dig? This guy’s at least another two feet down, if not more. What’s the fucking frost line out here?”
“Four feet,” Clay said. “Maybe a bit more.”
Rowan turned his back on us for a moment, hands on his hips and a shake on his head so desperate, it made my stomach act up all over again.
“I’ve got seventeen men on that second truck. Eight women and way too many babes,” he mumbled. Then he faced us again, his eyes wet and his face smudged in brown and gray. “How many more women and children am I supposed to pull from this dirt? We’re running out of coals to thaw the ground, and there’s no way we can work through another two feet until we are below frost line. This was a massacre.”
“The smaller skulls all have bullet holes through the back,” River said as he reached out his hand to pull me up.
Clay scoffed. “At least they spared a bullet for each child.”
“What now?” one volunteer asked, the lines underneath his eyes even darker than my mood.
An uncomfortable quiet settled between us, except for an odd kind of thunder booming from afar. Like a constant growl, rolling closer as we all stared at the ground.
The steam of the meltwater mixed with the smoke of the coals, turning the air around us thick and wet and clingy. Everyone knew we had failed, and the shame of it hung over our heads.
Rowan pinched the bridge of his nose, then followed up with a sharp exhale. “Let’s uh… let’s keep on digging for another two to three hours. Then we’ll have to wrap it up and head back home. We’ll have to —”
A metallic clatter cut through his words. Thunder rolled in from all around us now, coming from long, shiny exhausts which hummed a choir of pta-pta-pta. It must have been around forty vehicles closing in on our camp, two massive tires in the back on each and wide handlebars keeping the single front one straight.
Everyone's hands darted for their weapons, but Rowan flung his one up. “Stand down. They’re too close already, and even if they weren’t, this isn’t something we could fight off.”
“Those aren’t defenders,” River shouted over the noise, his eyes locked on how they circled around us before coming to a standstill.
Engines idled, and a guy the size of an industrial fridge climbed slowly off his bike. The heels on his boots ground deep into the mud, and he walked over to us with one hand on his chest holster.
Rowan took a few steps and positioned himself in front of us. “Who the fuck are you? And what are you doing out here?”
The man looked around for a brief moment, letting his eyes trail over our tents and the shovels standing handle-up from the ground.
“They call me Bird,” the guy mumbled in a low-pitched voice, his gray beard doing little to hide the scar that trailed from his chin to his cheekbone. “My brothers here and I came to ask you the same thing. What the fuck you doing out here?”
The two men stared at each other for a while, spurring my pulse and sending a twitch into my trigger finger.
“We’re digging,” Rowan snarled.
“Why? This ain’t no sandbox, brother.”
Rowan’s hands stretched and balled repeatedly. “I’m not your brother.”
“No shit.” Bird let out a chuckle. The moment his fingers fumbled inside his jacket, we all stood up straighter.
He retrieved a small piece of paper, stuffed it with what looked like dried moss, licked the edges and rolled it into a cone. “I’d say you’re too pretty to be my brother. But we’re both out here instead of in there.” He pointed down south. “And that makes us all brothers.”
He pulled a brass-colored lighter from his pocket, engraved with a soaring bird, flipped it open and lit the cone. After he had taken a quick puff, he continued. “Where I come from, it’s rude not to introduce yourself.”
Our chieftain hesitated and gazed over the assembly of motorcycles around us. “I’m Rowan, chieftain of the Woodlands, and these are some of my men.”
Bird wiggled his finger toward us, a smirk on his face that reminded me of a hissing opossum. “Yeah, I heard of you, Rowan, chieftain of the Woodlands. Which makes me wonder even more why the hell you come out here playing with shovels in the dirt. This ain’t your territory.”
“The Districts sent us a message a few weeks back, saying they prosecuted a friend of our Clan. Pastor William.”
For a moment it seemed as if Bird’s eyes had widened, but he quickly sunk his gaze and took another puff, coughing the smoke from the corners of his tight lips. Then he gestured Rowan to go on.
“They gave us the coordinates of this location,” Rowan said and pointed behind him. “We didn’t find the pastor, but we found human remains, which we believe belong to nonconformists, butchered by the council and burnt down to the bones right here.”
“And digging up corpses is a hobby of yours… I take it.”
Rowan’s shoulders slouched. “We’re here to take them back to my Clan, so we can give them a proper burial.”
“All one-hundred-and-thirty-two of them?” Bird asked and tilted his head, a raised brow framing the tight expression on his face.
Rowan glanced over his shoulder and exchanged a quick look with me and River, then took a strong step toward Bird.
The engines around us roared up in warning, sending shivers down my spine and a silent prayer north. Why I couldn’t tell. Dying twenty miles outside the District’s walls sounded sweeter than having to face Ruth again.
“How do you know it was that many?” Rowan asked.
“Would’ve been more if we wouldn’t have picked up the seven that got away.” He dropped whatever he had smoked to the ground, stepped it into the mud and smoothed his beard between his fingers. “Two women, four children… and the pastor.”
Rowan stood up straight. “Pastor William is alive?”
Bird pouted his lips and let his eyes trail skyward. “How do they say? He moved on to greener pastures? His injuries were too severe, but we’ve got his bones if you’ve got a valid reason to claim them. William was… a friend of ours.”
“His son is one of my men now,” Rowan said, his voice deep and already weighted down by the bad news he would have to deliver to Max.
Bird turned around and waved at his people. Three seconds later, one engine roared up and pulled a small, black trailer behind it.
“If you wanna have his bones,” Bird said, “you’ll have to send one of your men with us to claim them. We’ll make sure he catches a ride back. All in one piece. The man that is… not the bones.”
He gave a chuckle. As soon as the trailer drove up beside him, he gave a loud pat against its side and fumbled with a lock on the back.
“Are you a chieftain of some sort?” I asked, expecting Rowan to punch me with his eyeballs any second now. But he didn’t. His eyes lay solely on t
he trailer, but behind his back he stretched and pumped his hands.
Bird let out a laugh that made us stare at the back of his throat. Then he shifted his weight to one side and called out for the guy who had brought the trailer. “Hear that, Abe? He asked if I’m a chieftain of some sort…”
Abe gave a slow, precise nod. “A chieftain through and through, brother.”
“No, but seriously,” Bird said and turned his attention back to us. “My father was a chieftain some sixty years back. But we don’t do chieftains out west.”
“Out west?” Rowan asked.
“You call is Ash Zones. We call it home. Now ease up… we’re here to help you.”
Bird opened up the trailer and pulled out several metal rods, narrow on one end and a funnel-like shape attached to the other. Each one of the thumped against the ground, vibrating against the soles of my boots.
“We use these to warm the soil in our germinating beds,” Bird said, and then continued to pull stuff from the trailer. At least two dozen shovels, crates with water jugs and several bags of what looked like charred logs. Then he stood up one of the metal rods and spiked it into the ground. “Fire goes inside the wide part, and there're holes drilled into them for oxygen. The solid part will transfer the heat into the soil around three feet deep. I will also leave you twenty of my men behind.”
“Fifteen,” Rowan blurted from a straight line of lips.
Bird answered with an approving smile. “Smart man. Fifteen of us are easier to fight than twenty, aren’t they?”
“Why are you helping us?” River asked with his chin held high.
“Like I said… pastor William was a friend of ours. Been doing business with him for at least thirty years. He tried to get his people out before things would escalate inside the Districts. Then they escalated out here…”
His voice had cracked at that last sentence, and his gaze wandered off, seemingly without focus or destination.
Then he went on. “One of our drones reported your presence, so we loaded up and went on a run to help you out. There’s a truck coming as well which will help you with the transport, but it’ll take them another couple of hours to arrive. Four-wheelers don’t fare well on our terrain.”