by Drew Avera
Chapter 8
David Langstrom
There was warmth to her touch. I could still feel it after a few hours of scouring the tunnels, lost in my own thoughts. I chastised myself for making such a visible show of affection. I didn’t know if it was reciprocated, but I knew I wanted it to be. Now I was fearful I had drove her away.
Too many criticisms, too many questioned motifs ran through my head. Did I really love her? Did I think she could love me in return?
Yes!
Or no, maybe…
I was young, too young to know love like that. I could hear my mother telling me these words in her constant drone, her reprisal more alive in the darkened tunnels than anywhere else. But I did know love; I felt it in my core.
I doubted my mother would concede to that irrational thinking, but I was a man. I was no longer her child clinging to her for every answer of life. I might not truly know what love was, but I was willing to learn with Moira. That is, if she would embrace my affection.
I started walking again, this time towards the common area. I bother hoped and feared seeing Moira when I returned. How would she react to my touching her? How would she react to the fact I abruptly ran away like a coward?
Oh, God, what have I done? I ran away from a girl, a beautiful girl at that.
My boot scraped against a stone and flung it into one of the walls, the dull thud of it making contact reverberated softly. I had at least an hour to come to terms with what I had done and bring myself to talk to her.
I just hoped it wasn’t too late.
Chapter 9
Mayor Donovan
The chair squeaked as I leaned back in it stretching my arms out. After days of calculations I still came up short. Any way I went about it, we had only enough resources to feed the colony for a year, maybe two.
I rose from my seat and stalked over to one of the over-burdened book cases. The entire history of our colony was encased in these tomes. Almost two-hundred years of people privileged, or cursed enough to hold this position of power. I had lives in my hands, a balance that was too much to bear.
“Run the numbers again for me, Jorge. I need to know for sure that I’m not going crazy.” I said to my assistant as he leaned against my desk with his pencil drumming against a pad of paper.
“I’ve run through the numbers a dozen times, Mayor Donovan. The output is always the same. Our colony is too large to be sustained. Perhaps if we knew four or five years ago we could be better prepared to do something about it. It’s just a matter of the soil not producing like it used to.” His words were cold and hollow, as if the numbers weren’t each a name in our census.
I turned to look at him with a stoic glare. “Run them again. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to save lives.”
“I can’t fumble with the numbers to give you the outcome you want, sir. That’s the thing about math, the numbers don’t lie.”
I moved over to him and gripped his collar with both hands, lifting him closer to meet my gaze. “I did not ask for your insolence! I’m not asking you to fix the numbers, I merely want to be one-hundred percent certain that I don’t have to banish a large percent of our community because we missed something.” I was too the point of yelling and I shoved him away from me before I felt the urge to punch him in his smart-aleck mouth. “Would you simply rest on your laurels if one of those people sent above ground was you?” I asked, hoping that the severity of the situation nestled itself into his head.
“I’m sorry, sir. That’s not what I meant,” he said with shame in his voice.
“I know what you meant. Just run them again and cross your fingers that we can at least buy a little more time. I don’t want to lose anyone if I can help it.”
“All right, Mr. Mayor. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“See that you do. You’re dismissed,” I said with my back turned towards him. I could hear his footsteps retreating from me as I ran my fingers along the spines of each record on the shelf. An entire historical log from censuses and judgments, to food budgets were contained inside.
I was ready to give up hope before a thought occurred to me. What if the answer to my dilemma could be found by one of my predecessors?
It was a long shot, but it was one that I had to take. I grabbed the first volume and moved back to my desk, hoping to find an ounce of hope to save my people.
Chapter 10
Kevin Falls
The commotion down the hallway drew me in like a moth to a flame. I realized it was coming from the mayor’s office when I was several yards away. Mayor Donovan always seemed well collected and I had never seen him lash out at anyone.
I took a quick turn into one of the storage rooms which was open so I could get a better idea of what was going on.
“I merely want to be one-hundred percent certain that I don’t have to banish a large percent of our community because we missed something.” Mayor Donovan was yelling at the unknown person. “Would you simply rest on your laurels if one of those people sent above ground was you?”
“I’m sorry, sir. That’s not what I meant,” the voice sounded like Mayor Donovan’s assistant, Jorge.
“I know what you meant. Just run them again and cross your fingers that we can at least buy a little more time. I don’t want to lose anyone if I can help it.”
“All right, Mr. Mayor. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“See that you do. You’re dismissed.”
The sound of footsteps followed the rather heated discussion and I caught the blurry image of Jorge hastily walking down the corridor.
From what I could gather it seemed that something was wrong and it could result in a large group of people being banished from the colony. For the life of me I could not fathom what it could be. Everything always seemed to run efficiently, there was no crime that I could think of and the only banishments I had witnessed during my life were that of elders when the younger colonists won the lottery and had a child.
Needless to say, I was baffled. Several thoughts tore through my mind at a blistering pace. What could be bad enough to banish several people at once? What hope was there for those banished to survive outside? Could I finally be free of pain if I were condemned to the death above?
A twinkling of something like hope filtered into my heart. The burden of this life of obsoleteness might finally come to an end. Perhaps to dream of the final sleep was enough to rescue me from this torment, to be free of the prison of my body and save someone else as a final act.
I decide din that bleak moment that if it came down to it, I would volunteer to be banished. Better to die than live with the loss I have been burdened with for so long. I stepped out of the shadows and into the corridor, set my eyes to Mayor Donovan’s office, and knocked at his door.
To be continued…
Thank you for reading the first ten chapters of The Banished! I hope you like where the story is going. I hope to have the rest of the book out by the end of the year. In the meantime you can always check out my other novels, novellas, and short stories here and if you enjoyed what you’ve read so far, then please leave a review. Thank you again!