Burn

by Geoff North

  “And what are you doing here, sitting beneath this tree?”

  “I was gonna… well I tried killin’ myself.”

  “Did you have to remove your pants to commit suicide?”

  Trot picked his rope up from the ground and went to his pants. “Tried hanging myself, but the rope wasn’t long enough.”

  Hank watched as he slowly worked one leg into the dirty fabric. “Do you want me to assist you with the suicide?”

  “You mean help me kill myself?” Trot tightened the rope around his gut. “If you promise not to eat me, I think I’d like to keep on living now. I don’t do so good when I’m left alone and the darkness comes. Would you help me find my friends?”

  “That depends. You said you were going to a river on a map. Which direction?”

  Trot had to think hard on that. “North maybe? It’s out beyond where the sun goes at night.”

  “That’s west.” Hank looked that way and tried to imagine any body of water in the desolate land surrounding them. The slow-minded man was the first person he’d met that hadn’t tried to murder him since leaving the installation. Wandering in the plains without a clue where to go wasn’t getting him anywhere. He took Trot by the arm. “Come along then. Let’s find your friends.”

  Chapter 24

  Jenny knew she could break out from the cage. The bars around her could keep a human trapped inside, but they couldn’t stop her. Jenny also knew breaking free from the Law House would only get her so far. There were guards posted on the front steps, and undoubtedly more stationed around back and at the sides. Cryers were strong and tough, but they weren’t indestructible. Three or four men beating at her with clubs she could probably handle—a dozen or more with knives and spears would finish her off, no matter what kind of enhanced blood was running in her veins.

  There had been no trial after the Lawman, Cobe, and Willem had ridden out of town. Two men that smelled as if their bodies had never met a wet cloth in their lives had taken her by the arms and dragged her up the steps of the Law House. Jenny had been thrown roughly into the holding cell and left there. Lode’s father had visited her an hour after sundown and announced she’d hang in the morning.

  The first rays of sunlight were shining through the single small window set in the east wall. Long shadows cast from the bars spread bands of grey across her legs. Her execution would be soon, and she’d spent the entire night debating whether to call upon her great-great-grandfather in dream. She was running out of time. Would she lie to Eichberg, and tell him they were still headed west, or would she reveal the truth—that the Lawman had doubled back, and was coming to kill him?

  She didn’t owe Eichberg anything. In fact, it was his cursed work in cryogenics that had made her into what she was today—something not quite human anymore. What he’d done to her mother had been even more horrific. She despised him. But she’d come to hate the Lawman even more in the last twelve hours. The bastard had turned his back on her to save himself. And then there was Cobe. Had she actually begun to fall in love with him? Jenny was almost certain he had finally developed feelings for her. What kind of boy runs out on the girl he cares for?

  She hated them all—Eichberg, Lawson, Cobe and his one-armed, foul-mouthed brother. They all deserved one another. Let them meet one more time. Her only regret—not being there to see them kill each other. Jenny closed her eyes and slipped into a different world.

  It was black and cold. Jenny could hear thunder in the distance—a low rumble without end. It got louder. She could feel it in the soles of her feet, intensifying, growing stronger. Her legs shook with the growing force. A smell of death, hot and foul, cut through the air in front of her as something monstrous took form before her eyes. It looked like a mutated bison head without horns. The mammoth-sized skull was swollen in spots, as if something cancerous was pushing up against the thick bone from within. Coarse fur, knotted in strands with drying saliva and blood, whipped back over the ridge of the creature’s nose and cheeks. Its bulging black eyes steamed. It continued charging for her, growing in size.

  I’m in a dream. It can’t hurt me.

  Her resolve almost broke as the beast charged. Finally its powerful forelegs dug into black ground Jenny couldn’t see. It halted inches in front of her. She looked up past the snorting black nostrils and oily, lifeless eyes. Eichberg was seated on the muscles of the thing’s back thirty feet above.

  Jenny called up to him. “I’ve seen some big rollers out in the plains, but this is insane.”

  “You know what dreams can be like… disjointed, exaggerated.” He started climbing down. The creature shrunk before Jenny’s eyes, thirty feet down to ten, from the blunt shovel of its chin to the tip of its bulbous skull. Lothair jumped the rest of the way. “I’ll have to admit I’m somewhat surprised. I didn’t expect you to seek me out like this.”

  Jenny didn’t want to talk to him any longer than necessary. “The Lawman isn’t riding west anymore. He’s come back for you.”

  Eichberg’s eyes widened and glowed sickly pink. “He’s headed this way? No doubt he hopes to… what’s the old term… waylay me?”

  “I’ve warned you, the rest you’ll have to figure out on your own.”

  “Why, dear? Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because nothing’s changed in a thousand years. Mankind is a joke… a murdering, backstabbing joke.” She spit in his face. The saliva melted the grey skin of his cheek away like acid. It was then that Jenny realized they were no longer human in her dreams. It wasn’t like the times she’d encountered her mother and great-great-grandfather before. There was nothing left to hope for—nothing she hoped she could be. Humans and cryers were one and the same.

  She heard the sound of metal clanging and opened her eyes.

  Jude was standing at the jail cell door. Ervin and a couple of other men were behind him. “It’s time.”

  The blades and clubs they held weren’t necessary. Jenny went peacefully and quietly. A hot wind was blowing outside. It whipped her hair about, stinging her face and stabbing at her eyes. The entire town had gathered around the hanging tree. No one spoke, not a person whispered. They hadn’t had a decent hanging in weeks, and now something had visited Burn to whet their blood-thirsty appetites. Someone stepped forward and dropped the noose over her head. Jenny didn’t look at the man as he tightened it up against her throat and mumbled his soft instructions.

  “You must carry the rope up the tree. Climb out across the lowest branch and secure the rope at the end of the branch. You will have a few moments to gather your thoughts and say your goodbyes. Then you must drop. If the knot you tied is true, you will hang until you are dead. If the knot fails, you will fall to the ground where the good citizens of this town will cut you open… Do you understand?”

  “Fuck off.” Jenny pushed him aside with her shoulder and started for the tree.

  Another man rushed out from the crowd and picked up the loose rope trailing after her. He dug his heels in and yanked with all of his strength. Jenny’s head snapped back. The man laughed. “Thought I might save us all some time and break your neck before the climb.” A few people laughed, but most were annoyed with the delay. Had Jenny’s neck actually snapped before the official execution, the people of Burn would’ve looped the noose around the man’s neck for a replacement.

  Jenny strode up to the grinning idiot and smashed out most of his teeth. She punched him again as he was falling, dislocating his jaw four inches to the side. No one else touched the rope. She went to the tree and kicked away the ladder resting up against it. She dug her fingernails into the dry bark and began pulling herself up.

  To hell with all of them. To hell with the Lawman, to hell with Cobe. I should’ve been allowed to die in that Chicago hospital bed a thousand years ago. She reached up and took hold of the branch. Jenny did something then she hadn’t done in centuries. She started to laugh. People started swearing. A few resumed throwing stones, and some of the braver children ran forward and spat
up at her. Jenny laughed harder.

  These freaks have gathered around to see someone die. The joke’s on them. I’m already dead.

  She stood on the branch, swaying side to side a few moments establishing her balance, and then walked out along its length. Jude called up to her. “Tie the rope and get it over with quickly. I don’t want the citizens becoming any more unruly.”

  Of course you don’t. We wouldn’t want to ruin the show with a riot. Someone could get hurt.

  Jenny squatted down and looped the rope’s end once around the branch. She stared out over the people. They had become much more verbal now that she was eighteen feet over their heads and out of arm’s reach. She screamed at them. “Stupid, ignorant savages! You’re worse than animals!”

  Jenny looped the rope over two more times and tucked the loose end under. She pulled it tight and guessed she would drop six or seven feet. More than enough to snap her neck and end this miserable second existence. Hopefully.

  She looked up into the cloudless morning sky and whispered a private goodbye. The upper branches of the hanging tree obstructed most of her view. The thickest and longest of them, a good ten feet above her head, jutted out so far it scraped along the railing of the Lawman’s watch tower.

  The final words Lawson had spoken before riding out of Burn came back to her—‘ Jenny must climb the tree like all them others before her… all them weaker humans … there she’s got to hang on till she drops, or jump and end it quick.’

  Jenny smiled. “Why that sneaky old bastard.”

  She pulled the noose off from her around her neck and tossed it down at Jude. “You’re going to have to find someone to take my place. I’m done hanging around here.” Jenny squatted down, and then jumped. Her hands grabbed onto the upper branch, and she pulled herself up. No one sentenced to climb and hang had ever kept on climbing. But Jenny wasn’t like any of the others, and the Lawman knew it. She sprinted along the branch, jumped from the watch tower railing and landed on the roof.

  The unruliness Jude was worried about broke into a full scale riot. The stones were bouncing off wooden shingles around her and rolling back down into the screaming throng below. Jenny scrambled to the top and looked out over the perimeter wall to the plains beyond. ‘We’re ridin’ north for Rudd. We got ourselves one more cryer to kill.’

  “He even told me which way to go.” She ran down the other side of the watch tower roof and jumped thirty feet to the top of a building on the other side of the street. She was scaling Burn’s outer wall before the mob back at the old hanging tree could figure out which direction she’d gone.

  ***

  “Someone’s running this way,” Cobe announced.

  Willem stood next to his brother, gawking back towards Burn on the tips of his toes as if the extra three inches of height would improve his view. “You figure it’s Jenny?”

  The Lawman was already seated back up on Dust. “Who the hells else would it be? Grab yer horse and we’ll pick her up.

  They had spent a long, cold night camped out on the plains a half mile from town. Cobe wasn’t sure leaving Jenny behind was the smartest thing to do, but the Lawman had insisted on it. ‘That girl can take care of herself, I reckon.’ And once again, he had reckoned right. Cobe helped Willem up onto Cloud, and they followed.

  There was no happy reunion as the four met back up. Jenny leapt from the ground and knocked the Lawman off his horse. He landed in the dirt with a thump, the cryer’s hands wrapped around his throat. “You could’ve told me what you were planning.” She lifted him and smashed his head back into the ground. “They were going to hang me and you would’ve let it happen.” Cobe and Willem had dismounted and taken hold of her arms. They pulled at the girl, but she was far too strong and determined. Lawson’s head continued to thud against the earth. “I saved all of your lives.”

  The Lawman’s face had started to turn blue. Jenny squeezed harder. Something cold was pressed into the side of her head. “Let him go.”

  She looked to her right and saw Willem holding one of Lawson’s big guns. His hand was shaking, but the barrel was planted firmly above one ear. If he shook any harder, the trigger would go off, whether he pulled it or not. Jenny let go of the Lawman and crawled off. Willem lowered the weapon and finally let it drop to the ground.

  Lawson sat up, gasping for air. He scooped the gun back up and placed it in its holster. “Gawdamn, girl… it was the only way to save all of us.”

  “You could’ve told me what your plan was.”

  “Thought I had.” He got back up on Dust and scooted forward to allow her room behind.

  Jenny shook her head. “You can’t go back to Rudd. I thought the three of you had left me to die… I didn’t figure your message out in time. I told Eichberg where you are. He’s going there.”

  The Lawman shrugged. “Saves us the effort of finding him, I suppose.”

  Cobe was helping Willem back up onto Cloud. “You knew that too, didn’t you?”

  Lawson was rubbing his throat with one hand. The other was held out for Jenny to take. “I ain’t no genius, but it isn’t hard to figure how people will react. You boys should’ve stayed with the others. Jenny and me was meant to take on Eichberg alone.”

  “Guess you can’t figure people as good as you think,” Cobe replied. He kicked his heels into Cloud’s sides and the horse galloped north.

  Chapter 25

  Trot lifted his arm with an incredible effort and covered his eyes from the sun. His legs had given out over two hours before, and the strange man was now carrying him. I should’ve tried harder. I should’ve figured out a way to hang myself. Anyone else could’ve done it. I shouldn’t have let Hank talk me out of it.

  Never had he been so hungry and thirsty in his life, and Trot knew what it was like to go hungry and thirsty. He was from Burn, and people there weren’t known for their charitable natures. He had slept in cold, wet alleys that smelled of shit, and had gone days without eating. There were no pissed-filled puddles to drink from where he was now. There was no garbage to pick through or rat carcasses to eat. At least back in Burn, Trot had options. This was different. Out in the open plains there was nothing to sustain yourself on except whatever you brought along, and Trot hadn’t brought a thing. The last bit of food and water was with Sara and the girls. He wondered if they’d made it to that river.

  Trot’s thoughts drifted from drinking gallons of river water and eating the meat off dried up rodents to another moment in his life not that far back. He remembered the first time he’d met a cryer. Trot had released him from his metal coffin, and he recalled the words Lothair Eichberg had spoken.

  ‘I’m starving.’

  Trot had never been so scared. Eichberg’s eyes were pink… just like Hank’s. He peered up at the man’s face. Cryers eat people. That wasn’t completely true, he realized. Jenny was a cryer, but she hadn’t tried eating any of them. At least not yet.

  Trot closed his eyes. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it. If Hank was going to eat him, he prayed to whatever cruel gods there were that he would at least have the decency to kill him quick before the first bite.

  Hank looked down at Trot. The man had either fallen asleep or slipped into unconsciousness. Maybe he’d died in his arms. They’d both be dead soon if they didn’t get out of the sun and find some water. He trudged on with his heavy load. He crossed miles of flat, barren plains and climbed hills. There was never anything beyond.

  I should’ve collapsed by now. I’m over sixty years old. What was it keeping him going? What changes had overcome his aging body to make him feel so strong and young again? My name is Hank. I was born in Wichita, Kansas on January 11, 2012. My father was a farmer, my mother was… my mother died of breast cancer when I was eighteen.

  It’s how Hank was bringing things back. He would start at the beginning and work his way forward. “My name is Hank. I was born on January 11th, 2012. My father was a farmer… his name was Richard… his friends called him Dicky.” It
seemed that if he didn’t over think things—if he just let the memories come naturally—the faster they came. No, that wasn’t quite right. Nothing was coming fast or slow, they were just appearing in his mind. And by saying the facts out loud, as if reading from the pages of a book, more of the lost information returned. “My mother died of breast cancer when I was eighteen. Her name was Eileen… Eileen O’Dell… Dicky and Eileen O’Dell.”

  Trot moaned weakly. Perhaps speaking as they walked comforted him. “I’m an only child. My father wanted me to take over the farm… Ma wanted me to move on to bigger and better things.”

  More came to Hank as they continued their long, hot trek through the waste lands. By the time the sun had started to set in the west directly ahead, he had remembered most of his life. He had gone into business, real estate specifically. In his thirties, he reinvested the bulk of his fortune into organic computing. By the time he had turned forty, Hank O’Dell was one of the world’s last trillionaires. Most of the private wealth worldwide had been stolen back by the over-taxing, desperate governments. Hank remembered his name, his birthday, the names of his parents, and what he’d done with the majority of his life. But he couldn’t seem to recall the importance of it. Dates, names, career paths and financial figures—they were facts. He couldn’t remember living. Had he ever fallen in love? Was he married, and did he have any children? Did he have a favorite color?

  Hank’s arms had grown numb. He stopped walking and shook the man. “Trot?” He shook harder. Trot’s left arm slipped away from his face and dangled down limply at his side. “Trot. Are you dead?” Hank leaned in and placed one ear an inch away from his nose and mouth. He still couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He sunk to his knees and deposited Trot gently on the ground. “I’m afraid I can’t carry you any longer. I don’t have the strength.” Hank tried to stand again, but discovered his legs would no longer cooperate. “At least you won’t be left alone.”