He retreated one step and then two, moving so his right shoulder was to his attacker, the knife in the same hand. The European followed with another meaty punch, this time down and over, striking like an axe-blow. It took Day in the left shoulder and spun him around and back like he’d been hit with a shotgun. He slashed with the narrow-bladed knife as he was propelled backwards and managed to cut the big man across the knuckles.
His attacker hissed and sucked the injury, blood running down his wrist. While not a deep cut, the knife was so thin it made for bad-bleeding wounds. Day knew he couldn’t relax, no matter how painful the injury might be.
Mikhail drew back a distance and then started circling. In a moment, Day knew he’d have to contend with both of them.
Consequently he went on the attack, stepping forward and stabbing low with the dagger in a feint.
He spent most of his childhood hiking and wrestling. No one used the closed fist where he was from, but even without such skill, Day was a master of bodily momentum and understanding balance. As the big man tried to turn to the left and retreat side-on from the imagined knife blow, Day slammed his open left palm into the man’s thick shoulder. It caused him to stagger, counter to the direction in which he’d been moving, which in this case was a circular motion going forward. Thus he started to pitch away from Day, no longer able to defend against the imagined knife blow that never intended to attack on the right anyway. At the last moment Day gave a hard angle change to his right hand and sheathed the blade completely in the European’s stomach. By then Day’s own momentum was changing, following the European and, just in case, trying to step slightly behind and beside him. This motion altered the angle of his knife-holding hand and that, coupled with the alarmed man’s toppling vector, made the blade slice sideways from out above his hip. The knife came free having sliced like a razor through the contents of half the victim’s abdomen and then, with a heavy impact, the dying man hit the ground.
Day whipped around with the red blade sticky in his hand. Adrenalin coursed through his veins and in the cold it made his skin frighteningly blotchy, the animal figures twitching and jumping in accordance to the nerve-fuelled antics of his muscles. He pointed the business end of the blade out just as Mikhail caught himself from rushing in to help his partner. It took a moment for the mind to register such bloody fatality and then a split-second more to halt progress on actions no longer valid.
“Mother of God,” the black-haired man gasped.
“You can still have the pants,” Day said more coldly than he felt. “I’ll be taking everything your friend owns.”
Mikhail took four steps back. It was metaphoric thinking space made real. His glassy blue eyes flicked between the body and Day. The dying man seemed to have died. Blood and bile were gushing from the great vent in the man’s side. Day felt his gorge rise while at the same time, quite apart from the momentarily understandable elation at having been the victor and winning the right to live for at least a little more time, he noted dispassionately how the European was wearing durable-looking black leather pants with a good belt and boots that might be a comfortable fit. He only wore a cloth vest on his upper half, whatever he used for warmth probably resting with his night-time stash. That thought alone, coupled with Mikhail’s failure to bolt and run, made Day wonder if Mikhail and the European had allies.
“I see,” Mikhail said calmly after a few more moments had passed. His nose was scrunched up in emotion. “You’re dead. You mightn’t know it yet, but you’ll come to regret this.”
“Your friend died for a pair of pants that the last owner pissed in,” Day said angrily, more than anything just outraged that this encounter might end not just in enmity but an ongoing feud. It was enough to worry about the nights without constant fear in the daytime.
Mikhail kept staring. After a moment he turned and strode away without comment. From the shaking set of his shoulders Day could presume it would not be the last time Day would hear from him, unless the vampires got in first.
Day tiredly cleaned the knife in the dirt and put the weapon away. He wasn’t interested in the European’s weapon when he already had something better. In truth, he wasn’t much interested in having anything to do with the cadaver except for the fact his logical mind all but ordered him to do what was necessary before finding a hole to crawl into. Therefore, with a frosted expression and mechanical demeanour, he set about stripping the dead man’s pants and boots.
In the end he decided to quickly undress and change into the macabrely warm clothing, even though the European was so recently evicted and by Day’s own hands. It felt as if the ghost of the man clung to every fold in the leather. It was a conscious effort for Day to stop unwanted tears leaking fiercely from his grey eyes. Like the boy he had once been, he wiped his snivelling face with the back of one forearm, glad the superstitions that surrounded his diet did not extend to the spirits of men he killed. Nonetheless, Day was quietly certain that he would be followed by a train of ghosts from those he killed just so he might survive. The only sobering thought was of Carlos snickering at his high-flown moral plight.
Although Day thought for a moment about attempting some way to appease the body-ousted spirit of his attacker, he kicked the idea away almost immediately. He was no shaman to go inventing rituals to match the needs of his world, which is what the first shamans among his people had been forced to do to reclaim their link to the past. It was the only way they could reclaim the natural traditions from which humankind had been isolated over the millennia, they said. But Day knew there was no solution for him, especially while he remained on the farm. He would have to bear his penance as the fates and ghosts themselves decided it. In a sign of prayer, he ran his hand across his chest and sighed, looking skywards.
The new boots were a more comfortable fit. They were still too long by an inch, but it was better an inch too long than a pinch too small.
In the dead man’s pocket he found a coin seemingly made from silver. Day had heard of dollars but didn’t know if this was one, since it was worn smooth and a cross had been forced into one surface with something sharp. It was the sort of contraband he and everyone else were searched for during transit to the farm, so it puzzled Day where the object could’ve come from. Worse was the tantalising possibility that it might actually be effective against the blood drinkers. Day knew the lore. But when he held the coin in his palm he couldn’t help doubts. It was more like a piece of folk art than a holy symbol designed to abjure the undead and, besides, it was widely rumoured that crucifixes had no effect on the vampires anyway. Day knew only a few snatches of the old customs from which the crucifix was descended. In his upbringing, vampires and trolls and changelings and everything else were put under the banner of night spirits and that was that. People frequently found their understanding of how things worked turned out untrue. Day wouldn’t be risking his life on the dead European’s coin. But he also wouldn’t throw it away.
He wrapped up the work boots, pants and his leather kilt. He had kept his spiderweb-thin track pants on beneath the leather for warmth, which felt like a luxury. He pledged that if he didn’t avail himself of a shirt soon, he would do something with the needle and thread to turn the work trousers into one. Yet apart from those items, he left most of the sniper-shot man’s belongings strewn on the ground as if in offering. Scattered, they looked like a primitive augury, as if the future might be read in how the rubbish fell when scattered. It was no use to Day now.
He walked north-west, knowing it would swiftly bring him within undesirable proximity to the nearest barrier, but he wanted to put as much distance between Mikhail and himself as possible. Because each fence was a mile or more long it meant he had walked more that day than he had for quite some time. It made him sad to realise his path took him further from Carlos’s hiding spot, but it couldn’t be helped.
If Day had the materials, he would do as the Sioux Mexican had done. Carlos had impressed Day, not just with his comradely attitude, but by how we
ll he looked after himself. If things were vastly different, Day thought they might make good travel companions. Yet all Carlos would want would be to return to his caves, which Day, in learning about more and more places that used to be part of the same country, found he greatly desired to see some of the world himself – places like Manhattan, especially – before he submitted to whatever grim and grisly death his ancestors had prepared for him.
By the middle of the afternoon he had reached the north-west wall and spent a fair amount of time scanning it for any signs of weakness. None presented themselves. Thankfully none of the ghouls started shooting either. No doubt it was bad for the food supply for the wardens to start assassinating the inmates.
As the sun started casting shadows east, Day thought he could hear the mosquito buzz of helicopters in the distance and he started to walk back towards the Huddle at a brisk rate. However in the end the choppers did not appear. Day was thirsty and regretted not taking the tin cup from the ghoul-murdered man’s pile of worn possessions. As it was, he was forced to urinate into his own cupped hands and drink from them before the thirst abated in any way.
After that, the area slowly became more populous and Day found himself walking slowly. On the one hand he went with an air of caution; but on the other, as he and dozens of others strode about aimlessly on the trampled space equidistant from the towers, the place felt like a marketplace in every sense except that it lacked a market. People clustered about to look at other people, reading faces, raising eyebrows at what was worn or what seemed to be owned by some, others perhaps braver or cleverer than Day trying to ascertain the life stories of other strangers at a glance. Day himself just hungered and thirsted, wiping his mouth like a lumbering hound when a woman, thoroughly owned by a huge black man, stood drinking brackish water from a plastic bottle; or when a rotund woman breastfed her pink newborn under the shade of three other protective figures.
Day noticed the young woman openly watching him only after he averted his own gaze from another mother who appeared to be comforting the greying corpse of her child. A convulsive shudder ran up Day’s spine so powerfully that it actually manifested in a manic gesture and a short barked syllable, and his grey eyes snapped to the girl the moment her laughter broke loose across the solemn hush as brightly as if butterflies themselves had taken flight from her lips. In an instant Day’s guardedness gave way to an embarrassed pause.
Although she stood by herself at that moment, the young woman was too beautiful not to belong to somebody. Her cheeks were flushed a natural crimson that seemed to ride up the sides of her face and into her hairline, where red goldened into shaggy abandon, flowing like a desert fern over her elfin ears and across her shoulders. She had on a vest made of many pieces of stitched hide that only did up in a few places, a broad leather belt that underscored her bare navel, and black ex-military pants with heavy external pockets frayed and worn through. More Huddle cottage industry fashion adorned her feet: espadrilles made from hide and a few flat, narrow pieces of smooth wood.
As soon as he realised she was watching him and not about to look away, Day turned himself in the opposite direction and started south. Doing so, he crossed the ovaloid stream of people milling about and set off away from the Huddle with the woman behind him. He only realised she was following when she called out.
He glanced over his shoulder as he walked to see if she was keeping up – which proved to be the case, much to Day’s chagrin. When it was clear her little cry hadn’t halted him in his tracks, she broke into an uneven run, the sort which her sandals barely allowed. As a result she stumbled twice before drawing abreast of him.
“Slow down!” she cried. “Where are you going? And why are you going?”
Although Day refused to do anything as undignified as run from the unknown girl, he didn’t slacken his pace. He barely glanced at her profile, not wanting to get too familiar with the lines of a face he had already committed to memory.
“Why do you care? Stop following me,” he said. He sounding angrier than just expressing the confusion he felt.
“I didn’t think you’d mind!” She halted hard enough that dust billowed.
Her stopping threw Day off. Despite the natural desire any man might feel for such a woman, he had no wish to know her. It could only mean trouble and heart-wreck in a place like the farm. All the same, he stopped as if he could turn and explain himself and not have the inevitable consequences fall into place as neatly as a child’s game of blocks.
“What’s the matter with you?” the girl demanded. Annoyance brought the colour rising to her face.
“Nothing,” Day said. “I’m not out to make friends. Is that enough for you?”
“Why won’t you look at me?” she asked fiercely. She took a few steps closer and Day retreated an equal number. He was aware of a few people watching them.
“I don’t want to know you,” he flatly said. “One of us will likely be dead inside a week. What’s the point? Besides, this must be some weird lure. Don’t try and tell me you’re unclaimed.”
”Unclaimed?” she spat the word back angrily. “Am I some kind of livestock?”
Now Day met her eyes and sighed to see them. “We all are. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” He watched her blank face a moment. “This is a farm for human beings, woman.”
“Kvelda,” she said quickly.
“Kvelda?” Day shrugged. “How long have you been here?”
“Yesterday morning,” she said. “Since then.”
Day felt a part of him inwardly deflate while another part, one that had withered under his own sense of self-denial, rose up hopeful and renewed. It seemed perhaps she really hadn’t been claimed. With his new purpose he could claim her for himself and maybe protect her, among other things. Yet the cold unnerving moment at which his last charge had been forcibly taken from his side came back to him instantly. The effect was immediate. He felt like a child who first realises he must one day die.
“You’re pale,” she said. “Aren’t you cold?”
He ignored the question. “You dress like you’ve been here a month, not one night.”
“I’ve been here two days.”
“We measure the time here in nights.”
“Hunh,” was her only response, then: “Some women took my things when I was forced off the skybus. They held me down. If there had been a man present, I’d be done for. Later on, an older man came and he scrounged some things for me. I was going to stay with him last night but he disappeared while I was sleeping. He left all his things behind too.”
She looked at Day for a moment contemplatively, her eyes not seeing the lean-figured Nebraskan, but instead the scene from the night before. “Is that what you mean by claim? I expected him to try something while I slept. When he didn’t I was just relieved. Those monsters took three days to process me. I didn’t sleep the whole time.”
“People say they keep us awake so we’re dull and passive for the airlift into the fields,” Day explained.
“Is this really a farm?”
“Yes.” Then because he felt it was necessary, the responsibility for educating the girl having fallen to him, he added, “I’m sorry.”
Her flush receded. Within moments she looked almost sick from contemplation of the fate she’d stumbled into. When she didn’t say anything, Day considered walking off once more and leaving her. A part of him, that small part that was excited by her presence, urged him to stay.
“You’ve got a lot to learn,” Day said finally. “Good luck.”
He walked away from Kvelda because he felt he had to. It wasn’t just his lust that tried to rouse him to the benefits of staying. The part of him that ached whenever he saw the cruelty of the camps felt even worse in contemplation of Kvelda’s fate. Above everything else she was all those things it was easy to feel sorrow for when they were abused. She was young and innocent and beautiful and perhaps too trusting for her own good. He knew this even though they had barely met. He couldn’t imagine she
would survive long.
“Wait!” Her yell followed him after a minute, but Day kept walking until the cries lost their immediacy. Only then did he really feel like he had missed his opportunity, put it beyond use, and that he could therefore relax, miserable though it meant he might be.
By his non-involvement he had consigned the young woman to whatever fate that would take her next. But, in doing so, it wasn’t any different to what happened every day to the dozens of other people he ignored. It was cold comfort, though he knew it was truth. The beauty that may have bought her privilege in another life would be her death soon enough here. Or perhaps she would merely wish to die, Day thought unhappily.
When it grew dark again, he found an unoccupied spot along the dry creek-bed that ran north-west to east-south-east through the southern half of the hex. It was open to debate whether the Creek or the Huddle were lures or sanctuaries against the harvesters. With the evening winds picking up, the argument was moot. Day knew that by full dark the winds would be buffeting anyone without decent cover, and since he didn’t have a tent or even a shirt, the only way to salvage rest was to use the lay of the land to his advantage.
The darker it became, the more a sort of ambient luminescence began to creep across the landscape. Despite the debate surrounding it, every evening the Creek housed hundreds of captives along its banks. Some had permanent housing while others were transient. They got along by mutual respect and trying not to intrude on each other’s privacy. As Day lay in the dark he closed his eyes, but he could not close his ears to the pitiful sobbing that floated down from further to his right. Soon that crying was joined by more as the blackness of the night settled in properly. Even the glow from campfires could not compete with true dark. Day wrapped the work pants around his shoulders and hunkered down to sleep.
He woke at dawn with the leg he had been lying on half-numb, a bruised pain registering at the join of his hip and thigh. Gasping, he turned stiffly onto his back and pulled out the black velvet pouch he had stuffed into his track pants before putting on the leathers. He looked down at the bag blearily, first in annoyance and then, as memory resumed its daily curse, his interest blossomed.
Endless Night Page 4