Outland Exile: Book One of Old Men and Infidels

by W. Clark Boutwell

  He could now report the final fate of the enforcer leader. The dead, pale blue lips were already pulled back from chipped teeth in the rictus of death. The man still wore his bearskins, but the hood was a frozen mass of blood. With difficulty, Jesse lifted the dead man’s chin to examine the wounds. There had been only two cuts, but one had fileted the carotid artery on the left for over four inches. The man’s blood pressure must have dropped like a stone. Most of the bleeding was next to the corpse rather than underneath it; the body had been moved, flipped onto its back after death. Jesse looked at where the man had died, mentally canceling out the blood pool, looking just at the shape of the cavity. It revealed the form of a body … a small, familiar body.

  The old man widened his search away from the corpse and found the wicked little blade. He grunted.

  “Slaver’s blade,” he hummed. Except for some of the peace-loving Muslim states, the institution had officially been interred before the twentieth century. When the Meltdown had occurred, American slavery had stretched, yawned, and resurfaced, invigorated by the brief rest.

  They were now in the no-man’s-land of Indiana, and the practice was alive and well. The old man had wondered about the odd wound Malila had collected just above her pubic hairline. It looked deliberate. Despite how much she put on about her sexuality, the girl was still naive about the sexual cesspits available for falling into.

  “Everything is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power,” Jesse thought.

  So Malila had killed the man in a hand-to-hand fight. She had also made two credible attempts to kill Jesse himself with an unfamiliar weapon, one at a range of over 1,100 yards. If his kith and kin were not to be deprived of his sparkling personality, Jesse needed to keep Malila under very close guard. Damn.

  It was late morning when Malila awoke. It took her a few minutes to orient herself inside the horizonless whiteness of the cave. She wondered how many of the experiences of the day before had been dreams. Had the old man really abandoned her to rape and enslavement? Had she run off naked into the snow and been attacked by a wolf that had turned into Jesse? Had she killed Bear? How had she come to be swimming encased in a column of ice?

  She found herself again naked under warm furs inside a snow cave. The old man had not seen fit to leave her any clothes this time. Malila checked her fingers and toes, finding them flushed, warm, and tingling.

  Sometime later, she heard Jesse glissade down the face of the ravine. He pulled aside the deer hide covering the entrance and, without a word, threw in some clothes, the woolly socks, and her still-damp new boots. Malila dressed, despite the occasional dark, stiff stains she found on the clothes, and emerged. The old man grunted at the fit and pulled the coat’s hood up, closing it around her face.

  “We hav’ ta shift, Lieutenant. Gimme any more truck, and I’ll leave ye fur th’ wolves.”

  “What?”

  “Wolves, lass. Do ye want to meet them for real?”

  “No!”

  “Clever lass.”

  Malila waded up the snow slope with difficulty, followed by Jesse. Then Jesse had her load her pack and put on skis, the old man adjusting the bindings until he was satisfied.

  “J’ever use skis lik’ this afore, Lieutenant?”

  “No.”

  “Show me what ye kin do, lass. Gang down twenty meter or so, and come back.”

  Before she started, Jesse put a hand on her arm and waited until she was looking at him.

  “Just for th’ record, I’m fagged out, and right now I don’t like ye over much. I have this new Knapp. Not tried out yet. Don’t piss off the Sisi.”

  Malila nodded.

  “Learn to ski wi’ the pack, and we get on the trail sooner. Let the skis carry ye. This ain’t snow walkin’ by a long sight.”

  It was still snow walking for Malila for many attempts thereafter. She got the hang of it before the sun was down, the old man’s burr improving in step with her skiing.

  They headed north on the smaller road until well after sundown, when they rested. By the time they were moving again, the rising moon shed an eerie light across the landscape. During that lurid night, each time Malila looked over her shoulder, she saw Jesse’s dark form silhouetted against the blue-lit snow, like a specter bearing down, as if to run her over.

  At dawn, they had made several false trails to either side of the road. Jesse then directed her to backtrack a kilometer before heading to a bivouac. In the cold camp, Jesse once more bound her before they slept. It was midafternoon before she awoke and dusk before they set out again.

  The hard-driving dash lasted for three long nights. She rose exhausted, the days too short to repair her fatigue. When the snow melted too much, Jesse started again to hike during the day. He never talked to her now. Days passed with nothing more than a nudge from a boot. His silence drained her life away. Even the hallucination of Edie’s voice had abandoned her after that last protest. She had acted like a child lashing out in anger … in frustration. The old man had then turned to save her. She felt shamed by her actions but could not put a name to the feeling.

  For the first time, Malila saw the two of them in comparison to the vast unpeopled prairie, a life raft on a sterile sea.

  CHAPTER 33

  DEVIL’S BRIDGE

  The cold rains of November swept across the plains as Malila and Jesse huddled under a small lean-to near the river Jesse had refused to name.

  They had reached the banks that evening. Pruned of its leaves and limbs by death and the wind, an immense cottonwood tree had fallen across the small river that blocked their line of travel.

  Malila, without asking, hopped onto the trunk and started walking forward.

  “Get back, you fool.”

  She turned to look at the old man. Since Bear, Jesse had seemed to shrivel within himself, older now than she could imagine. His eyes became dull, his hands bore livid bruises when he took his gloves off, and he winced with each mouthful of food. He had become vague and indecisive. The only unchanged condition was her bondage. Jesse was still scrupulous in tying her up and watching her movements.

  Looking back at Jesse, Malila bounced on the log, taunting him, her long lead sending sine waves back and forth to Jesse. “Losing your nerve, old man? We have a ready-made bridge.”

  “A devil’s bridge, more like. Kill you quick enough if you try to cross.”

  “It’s a dead tree!” Malila jumped up and down again lightly. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

  “Okay, nothing to worry about. I’m not going to cross on it. Any road, we are stoppin’—now. Understand, Prisoner Chiu?”

  Malila shrugged and retreated from the trunk to follow Jesse up to the lee side of the river’s bluff. Jesse was getting old before her eyes.

  After constructing a shelter, the sound of the roaring water still audible, the old man acted exhausted, stumbling as he collected firewood to store dry, nodding if he sat for even a few seconds, and refusing to answer her questions. After he threw her some jerky, he went to bed, without fire, food, water, or bathing. Falling asleep almost at once, every few minutes Jesse would fret, groan, wake, and reposition himself. Malila was left to consider her hunger and isolation. Clouds scudded over them, extinguishing the stars before the sky even grew dark.

  It started to rain within the hour.

  Despite her hunger and the dismal weather, Malila slept. The next day Jesse was even sicker. Trapped, Malila was forced to roust the old man whenever she wanted to pee or get water. At last, Jesse, drawing his long knife and brandishing it clumsily, worked the blade between the knot and the small of her back and released her. Jesse collapsed back onto the furs, and Malila skittered away into the dull, sodden landscape.

  That day and the next, Jesse lay abed, fretting and moaning. Malila scrounged enough food to keep herself nourished as the rains continued and the river rose. The old man moved only
enough to drink and piss. All he ate were the berries from which he made his loathsome tea.

  It looked as if he was settling himself for a slide toward a fetid death, like an old picture of a sinking ship. At home, they would have euthanized him by now. It would have been kinder. He stank.

  That third night, with nothing to do all day but watch the rain and listen to Jesse die, she could not sleep. She tried pulling Jesse’s arm over her waist to console herself, to warm him. He groaned and rolled away from her, leaving her colder than before.

  It had been five weeks since her capture. Jesse had abducted her only to die in his own Sisi way, leaving her in a half-drowned wilderness. The thoughts of what might have been played nightly in her imagination. Every time she drifted off, Jesse groaned and moved.

  At dawn, exhausted, Malila arose and dressed, leaving Jesse to his fretful but now less-noisy sleep. It must be getting close to the end. Throwing an oilskin around her shoulders, she left the shelter barefoot, her light footprints filling with water. Once free of the shelter, the roar of the water almost overwhelmed her, and she followed it to the river.

  The cottonwood that Jesse had feared to use was still there. The rising river now crested over the massive trunk, generating a monstrous standing wave of dirty water. Malila stood mesmerized. Debris sped along in the peat-colored water before being sucked up and over the aged trunk to disappear into the maelstrom below. Caught in the flood, uprooted trees and swept-up wreckage fountained into the endless cascade.

  Upstream a dark object caught Malila’s eye. It moved within the torrent, and she could not tell if it was alive or dead. As it swept into the cataract and over the trunk, she could make out the carcass of a bloated and decaying young bison. It rose high on the wave but caught, for a moment, at the very crest. Malila could see the sodden head of the beast. Short horns protruded above the lolling putrescent tongue, the belly ballooning obscenely, the legs bulging away, as if fearful of its rupture. The bison pivoted in the torrent and was released, plunging over the spume and spinning away downstream.

  The cold no longer bothered her. She thought how inexorable would be the plunge. The decision simplified things to a single point. She need no longer be a failure or an embarrassment. A single decision solved it all.

  The huge spinning mass of her life swung back and forth over a malevolent darkness. Malila crawled and climbed up the roots to the trunk of the cottonwood and turned toward the river before standing. Through her feet, she felt the thrill of the surging water as she inched forward. A few small steps and she would snip the single corroded fiber that bound her to life. She moved forward. The trunk swayed as the river surged. The brown opaque crest of water overtopping the trunk hypnotized her, her life … squandered … too damaged to cherish.

  Glimpsing a dark shadow on the shore, she hurried forward another two steps as if afraid that death might take her uninvited.

  Malila, come back!

  “Malila, come back!”

  The two voices echoed each other inside her head and confused her. The voices were mingled: old and young, without and within. She hesitated.

  Jesse swung up to the trunk, and she felt it shudder under their combined weight. She moved forward once more, no longer waiting, afraid to look back at what Jesse might have become. The Unity was already counting her among the dead. The oblivion of the cold rushing water beckoned to her. She stretched forward her bare foot … and felt the cold water close over her head.

  She gasped and inhaled some water. Darkness enclosed her as she struggled to the surface to cough, the water burning her lungs.

  “Stand up, lass!”

  She opened her eyes. The naked scrub trees were turning lazily around her. She put down her feet, and cold, soft mud squished between her toes. Rage flared momentarily within her. Jesse, clothed in just his oilskin, jumped off the trunk, waded in, and disengaged the length of hide rope she found tangled around her neck, arm, and legs. As she dully tried to pick the line away, she recognized it, the thin line weighted with a machine nut to suspend food away from nighttime scavengers. While she had been consoling herself with the idea of her death, the old man had thrown the line to ensnare her. Jesse had pulled her into the backwater of the cottonwood, a quiet spinning pool despite the cataract beside it.

  Without a word, the old man was beside her, pulling her up. Standing in thigh-deep water, he hugged her, almost crushing her, and sobbed. Numb and in the throes of her thoughts, Malila, for long seconds, stood with her arms at her sides before starting to beat at Jesse to release her. When he turned her to face him, his face frightened her, rain or tears furrowing down the man’s features before dripping onto his oilskin.

  “I’m sae sorry, love. Ah haven’t been keeping ye right. Ah promise ta keek after ye, hereafter, na matter what.”

  Malila stared at him.

  Jesse retrieved and shouldered the rope before grabbing her by the wrist. Malila allowed herself to be half-pulled and half-led up the bank and along to the shelter. She let the old man strip her, wash her, and maneuver her under the furs, before he kindled a fire with the stored dry wood.

  She awoke in what she knew to be a dream. She had returned to the blood lake, the steps, and the sunless, brittle sky. She had not had the dream since her first bleeding. The dream was different this time, even from the beginning. There was a sharp texture to the air. She was grateful for the warmth of the blood as she moved through it. She still dreamed she was climbing the steps to gain the temple porch. When she reached the top, the breeze smelled of the sea. She was wearing a long white gown of some soft, clinging material. Looking out, a forest spread into the distance. She raised her hand to the sky and watched her hand disappear as through a wall of fog. She felt the cold, wet breeze on her hand, dew condensing on her fingers to run down onto her arms. The dewdrops were the color of blood. She awoke with a start.

  Jesse hushed her as she rose. “It’s all right, lass. Just your dream.”

  He pulled her down to the warmth of their bed and arranged the skins over her again before settling himself. He rested his arm, thick and solid on her waist, and Malila hugged it to herself, letting the old man feel how her heart pounded.

  “It will be all right, my friend.”

  She sagged into his warmth and was again asleep.

  Over the next several days, they scouted south until they found an ancient weir, fouled with debris but sturdy enough to offer them a footpath. They never camped near a large river again.

  CHAPTER 34

  THE RIVER

  Crossing of the Ohio, Indiana Territory

  Early evening, December 6, 2128

  Malila sat tied with her back against the furrowed trunk of a tree, the ground littered with dried pod-like fruit, telegraphing her every motion. Since her attempt at the devil’s bridge, Jesse’s concern for her welfare had been almost endearing, making her ashamed to have ever thought he wanted her merely as a trophy. He kept her under “close arrest,” as he called it. She did not blame him.

  In so many other ways, however, the old man was not playing fair.

  He was an enemy. He was strange, old, and uncouth. Even so, Jesse had, without her permission, refilled her empty cache of self-esteem. Over the last week, ever since he had pulled her back from the devil’s bridge, it had become clear to her: somehow, the old man reminded her of forgotten childhood images, best forgotten … perhaps.

  Regardless, the idea of causing grief to the old man was now somehow distasteful to her. Her own life had a worth because of the old man’s concern, their bondage now mutual. For a while, he had talked to her at every opportunity, expending his grand eloquence around every campfire, holding her close at night in the increasing cold.

  But it had not lasted. Over the last few days, Jesse had started the same vague, slow descent into senility. He could no longer eat except by cutting the meat into small bits and swallowing without chew
ing. Malila had taken over cooking. Jesse forgot things … or no longer cared. The voice that had echoed with Jesse’s, calling her back, had not surfaced again.

  She had no illusions. If Jesse died, her own death in this wilderness could not be long delayed, just more gruesome; she would go back to the devil’s bridge.

  It had been two days since Jesse had talked to her.

  Tonight he’d abandoned her at dusk, bound. She was not sure he could remember where he had left her. Darkness rendered her blind. Her ears picked up every sound: the fall of a leaf, the faint cracking of a branch in the distance, a distant bird crying unanswerable questions. She could see nothing. No doubt her body, producing a plume of scent down the wind stream, attracted any animal or plant with a taste for flesh. In the dark, her imagination invented slavering horrors circling her. Malila felt a breeze on the back of her neck.

  Behind her, without a rattle of a pod, a voice whispered, “Get up.”

  Jesse retied her hands in front of her. He showed no hesitancy in the gloom of the forest, his gait smoother and more assured, even as Malila found every exposed root to trip over. Eventually, she looked up to see an opening in the blackness. The forest parted to reveal a broad expanse of river. Jesse led her along a bluff and down to the water’s edge. A small skin boat waited for them. Jesse tethered her to a seat in the bow with their packs lashed amidships. The old man settled himself aft and, after groaning effort, pushed them off with a short paddle.

  Jesse negotiated rather than paddled the boat across and down the wide river. Washed out by the full moon, the sky showed just the brightest stars as they slipped along between shadowy lines of forest. Within a few minutes, a little break in the tree line on the opposite shore proved to be a juncture with a smaller stream. Water foaming white even in the uncertain light, the old man pointed the bow toward the point and shoved the boat forward. He paddled them close to the port-side shore and continued upstream. Within minutes, a small light appeared, flashing in triplets. Jesse leaned back and turned toward the light before running onto the shingle of a small beach.