by Meg Elison
I think about this army, marching north, burning towns, advancing always toward Bambritch. More reports coming in every day. More drawings from Speel and tales of burned towns, of a leader whom they leave behind to tell the tale. I look up at the moon and I count the days.
And I remember what things were like when I was out on the road.
CHAPTER 8
DEMONS
The old state highway was marked with cracked and faded signs that said 13 every couple of miles. In the predawn light, most of them were illegible. The original print was long faded, but people had added new information here and there, tying streamers to mark their way or define a path toward home. But Flora had been in and around Demons for a couple of weeks now, and she knew the way.
She was driving south across the great plains, a day outside of Demons. Demons was a big old-world city with almost no one in it, according to Eddy. Wind whistled through the punched-out holes in the tall, crumbling towers. She thought back on the long days in the ghostly remains of the city. The river was so teeming with fish that she could practically pluck her dinner out with one hand. New corn sprouted on every available stretch of earth, even the narrow bands between roads and in the garden boxes of the high, honeycombed dwellings of the old-world folk.
Flora hadn’t trusted the emptiness of Demons. She had assumed there were people lying in wait, high above her or somehow below. She moved only at night. She never lit fires. Her night vision had gotten very good, but sleep was impossible.
Her truck was a crumbling, rusty wreck, borrowed from the mish in Ommun. They had lent her their oldest, least serviceable vehicle, and that fact had not escaped her. The floor would not take her weight in any place for too long, so she had labored to rebuild the frame and important places with planks of wood. She had had to reinforce the cargo area as well.
Flora was after books.
The main library in Demons was a fortress of shining, coppery stones. It was untouched by fire and still sealed up tight when she got there. Breaking in had taken a crowbar and a hammer. She had waited between blows, breathing quietly, to listen for someone who might approach from within or without.
Once inside, Flora decided she would need a light. She lit one of her torches and held it high.
It had been a long time since Flora had seen a place that was battened down during the Dying and had stayed closed. There were no crumbling skeletons here, no helter-skelter evidence of panic and chaos. Brittle, faded papers still hung on the walls telling children to come to the summer reading program or where to find books about the state of Iowa.
Iwa, Flora thought, looking up at them. Same-same.
She had a list of types of books she was looking for, but she couldn’t get past the strangeness of the place. The smell of mice was present, but mild. The long windows still held their glass, made opaque by a thick coating of dirt on the outsides, where they had been carefully boarded over.
She crept behind desks and looked at the crumbling yellowed pages of desk blotters and tear-off calendars. She opened and closed old wooden drawers, looking with great interest at the dusty, ancient junk inside. She fingered a ring of keys and tucked pencils into her bag.
The plastic Dewey system signs were still readable, and Flora was beginning to know it by heart. She tracked down the books that Alma wanted: medicine, history, crafts. She moved on to the list from Alice, who had asked for books on local herbs and specifically books on poison and toxic plants. Flora also picked through books for children, choosing four large compendiums that might hold some stories the children of Ommun had not heard before.
Her bag full to bursting, she lifted her torch and headed back to the metal door she had broken through to enter. Near the front desk, she passed by a framed picture behind glass. The caption read, “Des Moines Public Library Staff and Volunteers, August 2021.” She held the light a little closer, studying the faces and their old-world clothes.
Almost all of them were women. One older man loomed near the back of the group, arranged as they were under the shade of two spreading trees. Another younger man crouched in the front row, in the easy, loose-jointed manner of a teenager. All the others wore skirts and long hair, braids and jewelry, the telltale signs of womanhood from the old world.
They had kept the library. Flora wondered if that had always been the job of women.
Still wondering, she ground her torch out against the concrete floor in the entryway before squeezing back out into the night.
The wind whistled through the emptiness of Demons again, and the night had grown colder. Flora shivered, pulling her long silk garments and wool cloak closer to her body. She hurried back to her truck, cranked the engine, and got it going.
Out on old 13, she could see owls swooping at the periphery of her vision. The road was pitted and crumbling at the edges, so she had to drive down the center, spotting the near-invisible yellow dotted line that had once separated the two lanes.
She thought she might make it back to Ommun in two days. Her wooden wheels were in good shape, and she still had nearly half of her deez. She covered all but her eyes against the wind that cut through the hole where the windshield used to be. Clouds drifted across the stars. There was just enough light to see the green flash in the eyes of predators before they fled the roaring noise of the old truck.
Flora was out past the edge of Demons when she saw the remains of the camp. She might not have seen it at all; hanged bodies do not stay hanged. Cartilage breaks down and bones fall apart, leaving a nonsense ossuary and the frayed edges of rope. In this case, only a single horse skull still swung in the wind. Below, the long jaws of horses mixed with a pile of vertebrae, picked clean by birds and bugs, white turning to blue-gray in the starlit night. She missed the skull at first. She pulled over to see the sign.
The side of a half-collapsed building faced the road. Tacked to it were the stripped and shredded remains of a human hide. Beside that was painted one word, in letters taller than a man.
FRAGS
Flora stepped out of her car and looked around. There was no sound from any direction. The wind had picked up as the sun began to set, so the ropes that still hung from the trees swayed and swirled overhead. She saw the skull then, and looked below.
There had been many of them, she thought. Maybe fifty. She walked a little closer and tried to quell the panic rising in her chest like bats sensing the coming of night and making ready to bolt. She stepped on a long leg bone that might have been human or horse, she didn’t know.
There was no proof these had been horsewomen, but she knew it as well as she knew anything. Why hang the horses, otherwise? She thought of the bizarre stirring sensation when she had felt the belly of the pregnant mare—had these been pregnant, too?
She looked again at the painted word. FRAGS. She had never heard it before, but that was no surprise. Every little town had its own vocabulary and peculiar names for things. Was this a name for horsewomen here? Or was this the triumphant announcement of those who had killed them?
Flora had chosen Demons because of those stories she had heard. There might be more like her here. She might trace the line of horsewomen across the plains, finding more and more of them and knowing that she was not alone. She thought of Alma telling her that her god did not know Flora’s name.
Is there a god of horsewomen? Are our names spoken somewhere else?
There was nothing here, not even a story. Just death and that one meaningless word.
Flora got back to her truck and leaned against it. She wanted to say something. She searched herself for a benediction. A vow that she could make this right. A way to tell the dead that she was going on and so they weren’t the end of the line. But no words came. The sadness of it fought with the fright in her until she slipped back into her seat and shut the door. She sped off as quick as the ruin of the road could accommodate her wooden wheels. She did not look back.
She couldn’t hear the other car over her own engine. Neither car had any working
electrical, so neither gave off any light. Flora’s had a mounted lantern she could light if she chose, but she was wary of attracting attention. The two cars were nearly upon each other when both drivers applied the brake, screeching to a halt.
The other car was smaller, not a truck. Its windshield was made of long, thin strips of wood. Only a couple of lengthwise slits opened to allow the driver to see what was ahead. It was dirty all over, with mud spatters.
Maybe came up from the south, but where? The Misery? Crossed some little creek?
Flora stared and waited. She felt exposed on every side in the old truck, which had no doors. It was a rickety old cage with an engine running beneath it. It offered no more protection than a bicycle would have.
This other car was built for action. Looking it over, getting used to it, Flora could see it had pikes mounted along its hood, with the longest ones along the bottom as if the driver might spear a rabbit as they drove. The sides were enclosed with what looked like wood and leather. Fuel tanks were lashed to the roof.
She tried to stare in through the slits in the windshield, but all was blackness within. She wasn’t even sure she would see movement if there was any.
Flora had not seen another person since she had left Ommun. She so seldom saw any deez-powered vehicles on the road that this one gave her serious pause.
Just because they have deez does not mean they came from Estiel. They don’t have to be Paws of the Lion. They could be anybody.
But her body would not listen to reason. It was all animal, thinking only of diving through the door and running away, truck be damned.
You’ve seen worse and weirder than this, she reminded herself, trying to soothe the urge. Far worse and far weirder.
The two drivers sat on the road, facing each other, neither one giving a sign. Flora thought once of calling out, or waving. Just to see what might happen.
It might be another woman, she thought. Who else would go to all that trouble to avoid being seen?
But it also might not be. And she could not take the risk.
A night bird screeched somewhere overhead and the moment broke like a fever. The enclosed car began to shift to the right, moving to get around Flora’s truck. Flora snapped to action, shifting the gears and moving to avoid the car, to pass it on the other side.
She had one fleeting glance of a few shreds of dark cloth whipping out behind the other car as it sped away into the night.
There are too many things in this world that I will never know, to get all wound up about one car on the highway in the night.
But when dawn came and she tried to bed down in an old gas station, sleep would not come. She opened a book and tried to unwind. She thought of the car. She thought of the hanged horses. The sun was high in the sky before she slept.
The wooden car’s engine did not wake her as it rolled up beside her truck, three hours later.
CHAPTER 9
OMMUN
Ommun’s single classroom was a riot of children from the ages of six to sixteen, milling and trying to get their supplies for the day. They squabbled over chalk and slates, the latter chipped with age, and pulled chairs noisily away from their desks.
Oliver lifted the small brass bell and rang it. The high-pitched sound cut through the roar.
“Good morning, class.”
“Good morning, Brother Oliver,” they chorused together.
“Good morning, class.” Alice was still getting the hang of their very formal schooling structure. She had not been a teacher in Nowhere, but even if she had, it would not have prepared her for this.
“Good morning, Sister Alice.”
“Bow your heads for the blessing, children.” Oliver bowed his own head and they followed.
They always did as they were told. Alice folded her arms but kept her head up and her eyes open.
Oliver’s voice rose and fell in a rushed uneven cadence that started off fast and strong before dying away at the end of each sentence. “Dear most gracious Heavenly Mother. We thank you for this day, and for the opportunity to learn. We thank you for sending Sister Alice to us, that she may strengthen our people with her special knowledge. We ask you to bless us and our lessons, that they may enlighten us and keep us safe. We pray these things in the name of thy children. Amen.”
“Amen,” came the answer.
“We’re going to have a science lesson first thing today,” Oliver announced. “Please split into your groups.”
Alice got the kids ten and over—the ones to whom all chemistry was new but accessible. The children of Ommun had previously had some instruction in practical biology, derived from farming and husbandry. They had also had cooking lessons, which gave her some scaffolding on which to build their knowledge of basic reactions. However, she had come to understand that beyond midwifery, the underground city had almost no medical profession. The old and sick simply died, and often without the comfort of good drugs. Alice could train a chemist, but she had to start with the basics.
Across the room, Oliver was showing the different parts of a flower to the under-tens, who were getting a more detailed version of biology than had previously been in their curriculum. Alice had worried that Oliver would balk at her suggestions, but he took them as “wise counsel” and began immediately to work it into his lesson plan.
Alice had been overwhelmed when she had first come back from Estiel, over a month ago. She had endured imprisonment and torture there until Etta had killed the Lion and destroyed his house to free Alice and the other women he was holding there. To get past her own grief and to adjust to her new surroundings, she had accepted work as soon as she was able, and had thrown herself into her calling.
But there were things she had to know. She had gone first to see the kitchens where the delicious food she had been eating was made. After that, she had wanted to know where all of it was grown. Gabriel and Rei had taken her up the lift to peer out of one of the secret doors and shown her a field of potatoes, with baby goats in the distance.
When she asked whether they’d ever had a doctor or a drugmaker, she was met with sad reluctance to answer.
Gabriel had pushed his long golden hair out of his face. “We have no drugs here, Sister. And no doctor to speak of.”
“What do you do when someone breaks a bone?”
Gabriel shrugged, looking to Rei. “Get it set by someone who wants to try. Bite down hard on something. Mostly, it won’t ever heal right and it’ll always give you trouble.”
Rei had smiled a little. “That hardly ever happens, though. We’re blessed and anointed, you see.”
“I see.”
More anointing followed when Alma sent word that a laboratory had been found for Alice. Neum was terribly pleased to deliver the news, but he had no details to share.
“Is it in working shape?” Alice asked. “Can I take my students there?”
Neum’s ratty little eyes had darted around. “I haven’t seen it, Sister. I’m not sure.”
Alice stalked off to the location he had given her. The door was locked and she had to go back and track down someone who could break in; the keys were long gone. Once inside, Alice sighed heavily. This was going to be a lot of work, even before the real work could begin.
There was an inch of dirt on absolutely everything, and the evidence of chaos was on each visible surface. Broken glass lay all around, like dead teeth furred with dust. The cabinets yawned open, emptied of anything useful. She found the remains of old glass syringes and rolls of rotted gauze in the corners. She tied up her hair and covered her face, then set about making sense of the space.
It took the better part of two days, but it was worth it. Underneath it all, there were stainless-steel instruments from the old world as well as a handful of reference books that were mostly whole.
And water ran through the pipes in here. She had no kettle or fire to heat it, but she could clean up enough once it ran clear. Alice busied herself scooping up the broken glass and setting bundles of garbage out
in the hallway. Ommun had a patrol of boys who were in charge of refuse. Where it went, she didn’t know, but on the second day she found that the first day’s garbage had disappeared.
Under a mountain of decayed boxes, Alice unearthed an examination table and lovingly wiped it down. She missed her house and her herb garden terribly, but she was beginning to see the possibilities here. She could bring her students here and begin their real education, moving them toward the kind of work she had always done.
“Needs a greenhouse. But it’s not so bad, is it?” Her voice sounded small to herself. She sent a messenger with a hand-drawn map so that the older children could meet her here for their next session.
“This will be good,” she said, and she tried to believe it. She wrapped her arms around herself.
Her words hung in the empty air. She wanted Flora to come home. She wanted Etta. Etta was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER 10
DEMONS TO SHY
Flora knew there was someone in the room with her before she woke up. The truth of it wound itself into her dreams and alerted her that she should wake up slowly, carefully. She slit her eyes against the midday light, trying to hide her state. She kept her breathing low and slow.
A figure sat across the room, legs splayed out and back to the wall. Through the thickness of her lashes, Flora couldn’t make out much. Their clothes were slick and a little shiny. Leather armor, she supposed. Their boots were the moccasin type that Kelda wore, stitched up the side with long strips of rawhide.
She flared her nostrils unconsciously, trying to pick up the scent of the other body in the room. She could not smell anything but the dirt and herself.
“Quit acting like you’re not awake,” a voice said. “I can see it.”
The voice was unmistakably female.
Flora opened her eyes slowly, but did not stir her limbs. She was wrapped in the long loops of silk clothing she had made for herself, warm and secure and utterly covered.