Campbell

by C. S. Starr

  “Good to be here,” Lucy said, when he offered his hand to shake. “So Bull called you?”

  “We sent a couple of search groups out for you last night.” He smiled, as Lucy and Tal stiffened, realizing who exactly they’d hidden from the night before. “You’re really in hiding, huh?”

  “Yeah, for now,” Lucy said quietly, smiling at Tal.

  Tal realized that he was happy they hadn’t found them and he and Lucy spent the day the way they did, especially now that he knew they’d be able to eat. “Hopefully not for long.”

  “Well, people here are pretty self-absorbed. No one really knows who you are.” He waved around. “It’s harvest week. We party pretty hard, but you’re welcome to stay. The whole town is here.”

  “We’re really hungry,” Tal said, willing his stomach to be quiet. “I could really go for some food.”

  “Eat up, Westie,” Red Cloud said, chuckling. “What’s ours is yours. We’ll put whatever you eat over there to shame.”

  “Thanks,” Tal said genuinely. “And thank you for putting us up.”

  “You can’t let Lucy Campbell wander around your land without offering her shelter,” Cloud said with a shrug. “And I’m not into starting a war with West either.”

  Tal couldn’t get over how people welcomed two strangers into their world that brought nothing, and asked for nothing in return. He ate, and drank the wine he was offered, and for a time, completely forgot that he’d been kidnapped and brutalized four days earlier. He lost Lucy as the evening progressed, trading her somewhat bristly company for quite the opposite—a pretty blonde named Sarah, who thought he was far more interesting than he considered himself. When he looked around, he realized that most of the people that had been milling around laughing and chatting had paired off and were partaking in another form of entertainment that was more horizontal in nature.

  “Oh, this always happens,” Sarah giggled, stumbling and joining her townspeople on the ground. “More babies are born nine months after this week than any other time.”

  Tal sat down beside her. “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” she said, scooting closer to Tal. “I’ve only been here two years. Came up from Georgia with a boyfriend who moved on a year ago.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “He was just gone one day, like people are sometimes.”

  A bunch of tents he hadn’t noticed earlier began to light up around them, most of them small, like one he remembered using when his dad had taken him and his brothers camping for a weekend somewhere on the central coast. There was a certain voyeuristic element to the whole thing, and as he listened to Sarah describe the festival, the breakdown of the long-held values that most of the people surrounding him had been born with had never been more obvious.

  “So you pick someone you like. This week it can be anyone. Doesn’t have to be the person you’re usually with.” Her arm snaked around, linking with Tal’s. “It’s just a bit of fun. The kids that aren’t teenagers yet watch the younger ones after dark, and we all just stay out here without a care in the world—”

  “What about when it’s over?”

  Her big blue eyes looked up at him. “I guess you decide what you want then. We’re all too young to be so serious all the time.”

  “And what about the babies?”

  “Everyone chips in and raises them together. It’s a real community here. A family. It’s why I stayed.”

  Tal’s foggy mind raced not with the niceties of the situation, but with all the problems that could result from what she’d told him, as her quick hands reached for the button on his jeans.

  “I don’t have a condom,” he mumbled, as he lay back in the grass, and let her tug at his pants. “Sorry.”

  “That’s not a problem,” she purred.

  “It is for me,” he replied, shoving her hands away.

  “So what? I’m just supposed to get you off?” Sarah sat up and cocked her head at him, her nostrils flared. “I’m just supposed to suck your dick?”

  Tal swallowed, instinctively moving his hands to cover himself in case he’d made her irrationally angry. “Well, no, I just mean that I don’t want—”

  “Fuck you,” she spat. “You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too.” She stood. “You’re a selfish West piece of shit. Good to know everything we’ve heard about you assholes was right.”

  “What just happened?” Tal said, blinking at her. “Did you…are you trying to get pregnant?”

  “I should have had one by now.” She crossed her arms and cast her gaze on the ground. “We all need to do our part.”

  “What?” he croaked. “Your part?”

  “To make our community strong. And you’re from outside. Someone new.” Her eyes darkened. “You wouldn’t have to be here—”

  Tal quickly buttoned his fly and scrambled to his feet, putting his back against a tree. “Sorry, I can’t…that’s…no.”

  She gave him one final glare and then stomped off into the woods. Tal slumped down against the tree, his heart thudding hard. He’d dodged a bullet, he thought to himself, as he relaxed slightly and resigned himself to a night alone, unwilling to take the chance on anyone else that might be more aggressive with the same mandate. He found a jug of water and drank deeply, the water stilling the churning in his stomach from the wine and food.

  Tal felt like an observer in a foreign land as he walked around the park, bodies writhing in the dim light from lanterns in the tents. A few hadn’t made their way inside and littered the ground with flailing limbs and purposeful movement.

  It was then that he began to wonder where Lucy was, since this was even less her scene than his. He continued his walk, this time with purpose, looking and listening for something familiar that might indicate where she’d ended up.

  “She’s with someone,” a voice from behind him said. “Over there.” He turned around to see Red Cloud nodding at a small green army tent as he came to stand beside Tal.

  They both watched, intensely silent as the shadow of a head poked up, with an accompanying pair of breasts, which matched what Tal imagined Lucy’s to be like.

  “Who?” Tal whispered, finding himself bothered by the prospect. “Who’s she with?”

  “Stacy, I think. She’s…she’s more interested in that than our kind.” Red Cloud shook his head disapprovingly. “But she pulls her weight.”

  Tal felt a strange weight lift. “Oh.”

  “They spent most of the night together, talking. I guess it’s easy to spot when someone’s like you when you haven’t seen anyone in a while.” He shrugged and pulled a t-shirt on. “I trust you’re enjoying yourself?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine,” Tal replied, hoping he wouldn’t ask for specifics.

  “Well, enjoy as much as you want. The more the better,” he said brightly, a gleam in his eyes. “I’ll see you around.”

  It was weird, seeing the world through the perspective of the people here. Tal sat on a rock not far from where Lucy was. Although he felt invasive, he didn’t feel entirely comfortable leaving her alone and probably drunk, in a park full of procreators.

  He tried not to listen too closely to the whimpers and moans, the kisses, and everything else that he was overhearing, but it proved difficult, and once again, he let his imagination run wild until he was too tired to think anymore.

  ***

  Lucy found her traveling companion passed out in the woods a few feet from her designated tent about an hour later, after her bedmate had departed, off to find someone to help her with a biological requirement that Lucy couldn’t meet. It was for the best anyway. Lucy had felt incredibly guilty from their first kiss for myriad of reasons, none of which made a hell of a lot of sense, and was part way into things before she realized the girl was not her type, and was, in fact, quite aggressive. She found her head swimming, a mix of wine and confusion. Things had never been blurrier. In trying to prove something to herself, she was less sur
e than ever.

  “Tal,” she whispered sharply, poking him. “Come on. I’ve got a tent.”

  Tal blinked and groaned a little, obviously stiff from laying on the ground. “What? I was sleeping.”

  “There are blankets in the tent. And a mattress. It’s just me.” She looked at him, her eyes wet and sad. “You don’t have to sleep out here.”

  She extended her hand, and he took it, stumbling a bit as she helped him up. “I’m not really that drunk,” he whispered. “Just fast asleep.”

  “Whatever,” she replied. “Come on. Let’s get some sleep.”

  Lucy didn’t miss Tal’s nose twitch as he entered the tent, the smell of sex heavy in the air.

  “Just go to bed, okay,” she muttered, tossing him a pillow. “No comments.”

  “This girl tried to get me to knock her up,” Tal grumbled. “It’s like they’re running some weird baby factory.”

  A sleeping bag was bitterly hurled in his direction and Lucy climbed into hers, zipping it up. “Whatever floats their boat. Everyone seems pretty happy to go along with it.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” she whispered, leaning in close to him. “We can rant about it later because I agree with you, but the walls are thin and we need to make friends while we’re here. You need to learn to stop saying out loud every thought that crosses your mind.”

  “All right, all right,” he muttered, curling up and looking more comfortable than he had been outside. “At least they know how to make camping good.”

  “Amen to that,” Lucy replied, yawning as she switched off the lantern. “Night.”

  “Night,” Tal whispered back. “I didn’t, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Fuck her. The girl.”

  Lucy found her heart unexpectedly in her throat. “Okay, Tal.”

  “I couldn’t...” he continued. “It was too weird.”

  “Night,” Lucy repeated, happy it was dark, and Tal wasn’t telepathic and able to access her squirrely mind.

  There were days she wished she didn’t have access to it either.

  Chapter 13

  March 2002

  Campbell

  “Some kids moved into the old Smith house up the road,” Lucy said giving her brother a half smile. “That means there’s as many kids here as there was when there were adults.”

  “It feels like a lot of responsibility since they came here. What the fuck are we?” Cole cradled his face in his hands on the front step of their house as they watched the activity all around them. Cows went past, dogs, a kid on a pony towing a cart full of corpses. It felt like spring, and kids were eager to get out of the house and do what needed doing.

  If Lucy hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she would have had a hard time believing it. She’d never imagined a world full of kids, not in her best dreams.

  “We’re what they need, I guess,” she said with shrug.

  “Why us?”

  “Because we’re dark, twisted, and jaded,” Lucy replied, stubbing the toe of her new cowboy boot on the ground. She’d outgrown almost everything she owned that spring as she shot up three inches, leaving deep red lines around her hips. “Most of them don’t even know what jaded means.”

  “I don’t know what jaded means,” Cole admitted.

  “Dictionary is on the shelf in the living room,” Lucy said snidely, standing. “Andrew should be back in a few days.”

  “And Bull?” Cole said, raising his eyebrows at his sister. “When’s he coming back?”

  “Whenever he likes,” Lucy replied, slamming the screen door behind her as she went inside.

  Lucy knew it bugged Cole when they went up to her room and locked the door behind them when he was in town. Cole had confided in his sister that Bull made him feel strange things, when he looked at his arms, at his shirtless chest when he’d encounter him in the hallway late at night and Lucy was fairly certain Cole was in love with him. It was one of the first times Lucy had shut him out, both literally and figuratively. She didn’t like the idea of sharing Bull with anyone else. She’d told him as much when he’d finally gathered the courage to tell her that he liked boys.

  “Are you having sex with him?” Cole asked, following her inside. “Is that what you’re doing in your room?”

  Lucy’s eyes went wide at the prospect. “No.”

  “Then what?” he asked, practically begging. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this with you,” she said, avoiding him as he followed her around the house. “We’re allowed to do whatever we want.”

  “I didn’t kill him so you could end up in the same situation with some new asshole telling us what to do!” Cole shouted, once he had her cornered in the kitchen.

  “He doesn’t tell me what to do, and you didn’t kill him, remember?” Lucy snapped, tired of Cole pretending their memories of that day were unique. “You didn’t finish the job! I was happy running away, but you had to go and—”

  “I would have finished the job.”

  “You left him gurgling on the kitchen floor.” Lucy’s mind flashed to the knife in her grandfather’s throat. “You huddled up in the corner, right over there.” She pointed to the floor by the fridge. “And you cried—”

  “Shut up. I didn’t,” Cole stammered. “I didn’t cry.”

  “You did, Cole. You cried, and cried, and I got the axe. I cut his head off. I scrubbed the floor, and I dragged his body outside, and Andrew strung him up. You wouldn’t even do that.”

  “Fuck you,” Cole said, slamming his hands against the wall behind her.

  “Oh, don’t you think you get to start scaring me, because it’s not going to happen, Cole.” Lucy shoved him aside and went into the living room. “And you stay out of my business with Bull. It’s none of your fucking business what we do.”

  September 2012

  Grove, Old Oklahoma

  When Lucy woke and found herself draped over Tal’s chest, she didn’t panic like she had the morning before. Her reaction was quite the contrary, and she took a minute to try and sort through her feelings while he gently snored away, oblivious to their contact. They both needed a shower, she thought with a smile as she lay there, her head on his chest as it rose and fell. Her more than him. If there was anything she had a hard time with, it was not being clean.

  She tried to understand what had changed, and found herself coming up short. She was the same person she’d been a few weeks ago, a month ago, but now she was filled with lingering doubts about the one area in her life that she’d worked very hard to ink out in black and white. That night, while she should have been enjoying one experience, she found herself caught up imagining another.

  Tal’s stubbly face between her thighs. His lips against her neck.

  He wasn’t exceptional, she’d told the tiny voice in the back of her mind when it wouldn’t shut up the night before. There was nothing about him that she hadn’t seen in other men over the years, nothing that was worthy of inspiring her curiosity as much as he had. He was a boy; almost a man, who liked boy things, and smelled like a man. He was kind, capable of goodness, and logic, and he’d protected her and kept her safe.

  She was lying to herself if she thought she was ever black and white in any way, shape, or form.

  Somewhere in the distance, something that sounded like a dinner bell rang, and jarred Tal out of sleep beside her.

  “Hey. Are you cold?” Tal croaked, his body flinching underneath her as he stretched. He didn’t look surprised to find Lucy curled around him, even though they’d gone to bed feet apart. “I think there’s another blanket.”

  Lucy remained quiet, her eyes open as she faced away from him. She thought about making a fuss about how they’d woken up, but wasn’t sure she had it in her to sound the least bit authentic doing it. She felt sick from the wine, but knew a bit of water and some food would cure that feeling, but would likely have no effect on the other one that was gnawing at her.

  She l
onged for her twin. She used to talk to Cole about everything she was feeling, deep in the woods behind their house. He’d listen earnestly, and tell her something about following her heart, which she’d tease him about because it sounded like it came from a lame greeting card. She’d feel assured in whatever she knew to be true in her gut, because he’d affirm all the things she knew already

  “I cheated on Zoey,” she whispered, unsure of why it mattered when she found herself contemplating doing it in a much bigger way. It wasn’t exactly the biggest thought swirling around her head, but it was an important one, nonetheless. “And I knew I was doing it, and I felt guilty, but I still did it.”

  Tal swallowed, and Lucy could feel it through his chest as he awkwardly patted her on the back. “I suppose you did.”

  “I feel terrible,” Lucy said genuinely, because the more she thought about it, the more she did. “I mean, it didn’t need to happen. I always wanted to be better than that.”

  “But she…with me...” Tal mumbled, trailing off as he realized that she didn’t want to bring it up again. “Isn’t that the same?”

  “We decided it wasn’t,” she murmured

  “Seems the same to me,” the boy she was draped over said quietly. “If you’re in a relationship.”

  “There are all kinds of relationships,” Lucy said defensively. “Look at this place.”

  “Maybe I’m a traditionalist,” he shrugged, as he realized how badly he needed to relieve himself. “I need to get up.”

  Lucy pulled away and moved back to her spot on the mattress and for the first time met his eyes. “Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize,” Tal said hoarsely, taking in her now-familiar morning look, still dressed in his clothes from yesterday. “Thanks for not leaving me out overnight.”

  When he left, Lucy closed her eyes and tried to work through her guilt in the grey morning light. She’d end things with Zoey when she got back. Explain, and hope they’d be able to build a friendship someday. That was what she felt most strongly about. The repercussions of losing the relationship didn’t bother her as much as she thought they would. If she was honest with herself, she’d been looking for an out for a while. They probably both had. Their sex life had cooled to almost frigid temperatures, even before Cole vanished and she had little interest in reviving it, which was problematic in all sorts of ways.