by Linsey, Tam
“Here.” He collapsed onto his back and forced his vision upward to the smoke obscured heavens.
A gust of wind fanned nearby embers to life, shredding the cloud of tamarisk fumes over the pond. The roar of the burning trees had subsided to crackling and eventually only an occasional snap.
Trying to clear the remaining fluids, Tula drew oxygen into her lungs as deeply as she could. Coughing bent her double until her stomach muscles cramped. She told herself that she was safe. The duster was gone. Mo was gone. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. Everything was gone. Lying in the aftermath of a Burn Operation, she realized she couldn’t go back to the Protectorate.
What was she going to do now?
You’re going to survive. You’re going to help Levi get home. Find a way to contact the Board and explain. She held onto the thought of reaching his people. Arnica had wanted her to make contact all along. Maybe the Board would be lenient once they recognized what she’d accomplished. All the peaceful converts she could offer.
After what felt like hours, she found the strength to sit up and look around. Their safe haven was destroyed. The tamarisk stand reduced to blackened nubs. All that remained of the stalks Levi called cattails were fragile towers of crumbling ash.
Next to her, Levi lay on his back with one arm flung up over his eyes. Grime and slimy bits of waterweed caked his skin. Looking at her own legs, she saw she, too, was contaminated. A long green tendril looped around her ankle, and she fumbled to rip it away, looking for blisters. She crawled toward the edge of the sooty water to rinse off.
On the far edge of the lake, the basket with their empty water bottles wallowed among loose items from the first aid kit.
Levi gained his feet while she trailed ashy boot prints to the scorched spot against the rock face where the shelter lay smoldering. Mo had kicked coals off her sandals. Close to tears, she picked them up. The fire-blackened nuvoplast had cracked but might still be wearable. Her yellow robe and the blanket peeked from beneath a sifting of ash, the flame retardant microfibers intact.
Pulling the fabric free and shaking off the ash, she turned to see Levi staring down at the curled pages of his notebook. He squatted and brushed a fingertip over the top. The edges crumbled to dust. Lifting what was left, he carefully opened to paper darkened by fire. Then he reared back and heaved the notebook across the beach. It shattered into flakes and scattered in the desert wind.
Face cut by anguish, he plunged into the lake. Her heart broke for him. From what she’d gathered, those drawings might have been all he had left of the woman called Sarah. She watched him churn toward the far side of the pond, his usually graceful strokes violent.
A hermetically sealed packet of allelopathic pills bobbed a few feet from shore. She waded out to grasp the medicine. It might help her get through a few days with no shade. And maybe by then, she’d develop enough tolerance to continue.
Draping the robe over her head, she watched Levi cut a return path across the water’s filmy surface, towing the basket behind him. He’d lost his notebook and a few weeks of freedom, but he could go back to his old, peaceful life.
And she had time to convince him to convert.
As Levi gathered their scattered supplies, he prayed for guidance. Seeing his notebook’s images crumble to dust in his hands was like losing Sarah all over again.
He upended the basket, showering water bottles onto the rock, then stalked past Tula without a glance. She called his name, but he ignored her. He couldn’t look at her without accusation. If her people hadn’t captured him, he’d be with Josef right now. Curing him. Making things right. The Blattvolk were a worse atrocity than his people understood.
Diving back into the lake, he set out to gather packages of gauze and pills with foreign labels. His hat had been destroyed. He should have set out days ago, but he’d waited around for Tula to get better. He shoved a roll of adhesive into the basket. His debt was repaid. He needed to stop being so compassionate for others and put his son first.
To his right, the glossy dark head of a muskrat broke the surface, looked at him, and dove again. Levi tread water. The muskrats were out of luck, as well. The pond would regenerate, but not until spring. Would they have enough food to survive the winter? He shook it off. The muskrats were the least of his concerns. But the homeless creature made him even more furious with the Blattvolk.
At the other end of the lake, Tula stood hip deep in the water, fishing a last few packets from the first aid kit out of the lake. She stretched a little deeper, eyes wide with fear. He was impressed she would even get her feet wet after what she’d been through. A small twinge of guilt plucked his soul.
When the loud speaker from the flyer had come on, it had sounded like they were inviting her back. But she’d hesitated. He wished he knew what they’d offered her - or threatened her with. Or more likely threatened him with. Saving him had cost her everything.
And he resented owing a Blattvolk so much.
He pulled back to shore and looked over the supplies, still refusing to acknowledge her. She’d filled the water bottles and placed the items she’d retrieved in a pile nearby. The water in the bottles might last two of them a day. He guessed the river might be a day and a half or two days walk. If she wanted to come, it would be a thirsty walk.
Shoving the gear into the basket, he lifted it to his shoulder and turned north. He stared at the horizon for a heartbeat. Tula remained silent behind him. With one hand, he gestured for her to follow and set out into the plains without looking back.
The air away from the pool was like opening an oven. His sweat evaporated before it could cool him. As the sun beat upon his head, he longed for his straw hat. The scrubby brush and amarantox dotting the plain shimmered with the bronze cast of waning autumn. Had they started the harvest? Was Josef getting enough to eat?
“Levi, what is called —?” Tula pointed to a rock. Next to it a shiny black scorpion hid in the shadow.
“Skorpion.” He clipped. He would have left it at that, but she squatted close to the creature and reached for it. “Danger!”
She jerked back and continued following him. His long strides didn’t seem to stress her, and now that he’d spoken to her, she chattered at him, asking all kinds of words. Rocks. Mountains. Trees and shrubs. He answered in monosyllables, and she eventually grew quiet.
They reached the river much sooner than he expected, just as the sun hovered full and orange over the western mountains. Tula fell behind, staring at the stretch of lazy water from a rise. He hadn’t thought about crossing, but he’d obviously have to find a bridge rather than swim.
He ground his teeth. Again, she was slowing him down.
Speeding his walk, he left her to gawk and pushed through a stand of tamarisk to a sandy spot next to the water. The rough handles of the basket had rubbed his shoulders raw, and he dropped it at the edge of the trees. Tula remained on the plain, but he ignored her. She could join him or not, as she liked. It wasn’t like she needed food or anything. His stomach rumbled. He had cattail roots in the basket, but he wished for another juicy muskrat. He set about bending the needle from the sewing kit into a hook, in case he found fish in the river.
While his line drifted in the shallows of the river, Levi lay out his blanket at the edge of the thicket and rested his pack against the roots of the trees. He built a small driftwood fire, then set about filling the water bottles.
Tula still hadn’t joined him, and he worried, but not to the point of looking for her. He glanced up the hill and had trouble spotting her in the falling light.
His throat tightened in guilt. She didn’t deserve his poor treatment. Or to be blamed for the Blattvolk atrocities. She’d chosen to do the right thing and, deep in his soul, he knew he needed to forgive. He felt God would grant forgiveness, green skin or not. So why was he so angry?
He turned to the thicket to fetch Tula and froze. Between the trees, a foreign face glared at him, dark eyes glittering in the firelight. He was,
for a brief moment, reminded of Awnia as she thrust the pencil into the Blattvolk’s neck.
And then a cry from behind him spun his attention the other direction to see a man wielding a long knife launch out of the branches. On instinct, Levi’s arm flew up to ward the blow, and the blade raked his arm. The momentum knocked him backward and sent the man’s blade flying.
Excruciating pain as his shoulder landed square in the fire made him shout obscenities. The woven shirt smoldered against his skin. He tried to roll away as another person joined in with a volley of kicks to Levi’s shoulders and back. All he could do was protect his face as the man pummeled him with his fists.
Tula watched Levi from the rise beyond the tamarisk. She’d taken the allelopathic suppression pills before they left the pool, thankful they kept the drunkenness at bay, but the side effects made her tired. She wanted to curl up on a soft bed and rest. He hadn’t even noticed she’d fallen behind. Since the duster, he’d been snappish and reticent. She didn’t understand what he was thinking, but he obviously didn’t want her along.
But she had nowhere else to go.
She hung back, sitting on the dusty ground with her knees drawn up to her chest. The long line of water stretched from east to west as far as she could see. If Levi intended to cross, she had no way to follow him. And he didn’t seem inclined to teach her how to swim.
What if he left her here, all alone? Could she survive by herself? All she carried was the robe with a nearly empty water bottle in one pocket. The remaining pills were in her other pocket. Two more doses and she’d be at the mercy of the sun unless she found shelter during the highest points of the day. The Protectorate might be a mercy — if they killed her, it would be quick and humane, not rotting alone in the sun. The scar on her arm mocked her in the orange light of sunset. She swapped her arms around her knees top to bottom, hiding the mark.
You have a better chance of surviving than Levi. He would need to scrounge for food in a world of scarcity. To compete with savage cannibals and toxic weeds. How far was it to his people? And how had they managed to survive without resorting to cannibalism? His notebook indicated a society more stable than cannibals, but it was also a primitive tool compared to the gamma pads and dusters the Protectorate had to offer. Wouldn’t his people appreciate such innovation and ease?
She stroked the green skin on her knee. Conversion was the last best hope for human survival. Cannibals would run out of food, eventually. And the Fosselites by all accounts weren’t truly human any more, living forever yet refusing to come out of their mountain cave. Levi hadn’t wanted conversion, but perhaps others of his people would.
Gritting her teeth with determination, she rose and lifted a hand to her eyes to shade them from the setting sun. The orange globe sat half below the horizon already. She had to stay with him. With more time, surely he’d see that conversion was the only way. If Mo’s offer of amnesty was true, she could serve as a liaison between Levi’s people and the Protectorate. Once she’d established a rapport, she could contact the Protectorate.
A flare of orange light and a trickle of smoke down by the tamarisk let her know Levi had started a fire. A fire tonight would be nice. The breeze on the rise had already cooled.
She picked her way through the leaves and branches as the light faded, using Levi’s fire as a beacon. A shout froze her in her tracks. Ahead of her, the light of Levi’s fire danced between the trunks of the tamarisk, intercepted by shadows and movement.
Cannibals.
Dread settled into the hollow of her stomach. Every muscle in her body trembled with weakness. Cannibals had found them, and Levi was in danger. She had to save him.
But they’re cannibals.
She forced one foot in front of the other, mind spinning without options. Through the thicket, she saw Levi and another man roll across the sand. A smaller man drove blow after blow against Levi’s head and arms.
Although larger than his attackers, Levi didn’t put up a fight. He curled in on himself with his hands over his head. A woman joined the fray, kicking Levi in the head and kidneys. The whites of her eyes glowed fiercely in the flickering fire. Levi squirmed and tried to twist away. His attempt to escape rolled him through the coals of the fire, and he yelled in pain.
“Levi!” She barely heard her own voice over the woman’s savage ululations and the small man’s bellowing.
She spotted the fire-starting wand on top of Levi’s gear just inside the thicket. Drawing on courage she didn’t know she had, she crept into the clearing and grasped the compact implement with a trembling hand. She spun to face the skirmish, a tiny flame licking from the tip of the wand. Useless. What would Mo do? Flash them.
An idea blossomed. She turned to the tamarisk and ignited leaves and twigs. The tinder caught quickly, climbing the resinous trunks like lightning. She moved to another spot, and another.
In the clearing, oblivious to her entrance, three cannibals held Levi spread against the ground while the fourth approached with a knife.
Tula braced herself in front of the growing light and in as deep a voice as possible yelled, “This is the Haldanian Protectorate!”
The group around Levi released him in a limp sprawl and swung to face her. She raised the flame wand, dialing the pitiful flame to full and made a show of looking to the sky, as if expecting a duster.
Without hesitation, the cannibals fled.
With her help, Levi limped out of the thicket, but he grew heavier as he leaned on her, and she eventually had to stop. She crept back to the burned out grove and searched the clearing in the dying light of the tamarisk fire. While gathering Levi’s things, she found a crude metal knife dropped by the cannibals. She kept the blade in one hand as she stumbled her way back to Levi, her eyes and ears attuned to the darkness around her. The Cannibals wouldn’t stay away long. And her bluff wouldn’t work a second time.
With no illumination but starlight, it was difficult to determine how badly Levi was wounded. His breathing was rough, a man in stress. She offered him water, but he turned away, clenching his body into a fetal position. Did he have internal bleeding?
With nothing left to do, she draped him with the blanket. Knife in hand, she sat beside him, arms around her legs to ward off the cold. Part way through the night, he began shivering. She removed her robe and added it to the blanket covering him.
Still, he shivered, until she heard his teeth clacking. Helpless in the dark, she climbed beneath the blanket, adding her warmth to his. She kept the knife by her ear, and startled alert at every hint of sound. The moon never rose, and Tula didn’t sleep at all.
When dawn broke, she slid into the cold air and looked at Levi’s face. Both eyes had swelled shut, his nose was a purple mess, and multiple contusions and abrasions covered his scalp. The shoulder peeking from beneath the blanket screamed an angry red with blisters over blisters oozing fluid.
Rummaging through the first aid items, she found antiseptic spray, but no burn kit. The stitch kit needle was missing. She found butterfly closures that might work in place of stitches.
“Levi,” she dropped her face close to his ear. “Levi.”
He shivered and his eyelids trembled, only managing to become slits. “Mmmm.”
“Levi, I help.” She held up a roll of gauze.
“Mmmhmm.” He nodded slightly.
“I look your…” she didn’t know the word for wounds. “Bad.”
He sucked a shuddering breath and slid the blanket off his shoulder. “Burn,” he said.
Tula flinched. The grass shirt over his right shoulder blade had a burned hole as big as both her palms together. The edges of the charred fabric had crusted to the blisters, and spots of blackened flesh had already sloughed away, leaving glistening sores. Even if she had a burn kit, it would not have properly treated this injury. “Oh, Levi.”
Wracking her brain for solutions, her eyes slid over a nearby yuvee tree. The wide, pale leaves resembled helping hands in the calm morning light. Back at th
e pond, he’d covered her in the leaves thinking they might heal her. Would they work on him? She rose and plucked one between her thumb and forefinger, touching as little as possible.
Returning to his side, she put the leaf in front of his face. “Levi. Good? Burn good?”
He cracked his eyes again. He seemed to have trouble focusing, but he nodded. She gathered several more leaves, then helped him remove his shirt. Magenta bruises dotted his chest and lower back. A gash on his left arm showed a glimmer of bone near his wrist.
He managed to remain sitting while she washed the burn with water from a bottle. He stiffened as she sprayed antiseptic and pressed the leaves to the sores. Using a swath of gauze, she held the leaves in place and then turned to his sliced arm.
Dirt caked the jagged edges of flesh. As she picked out bits of debris, the wound dripped blood, and his face grew so pale she wondered if he was conscious. She debrided the wound as best she could, washed it with the antiseptic and pinched the flesh together to apply the butterflies. The scar would be ugly, but no major arteries had been severed.
Satisfied with her work, she wrapped the forearm in gauze. She wished she had painkillers to help him sleep, but all she could offer was a sip of water. He swallowed obediently.
His stomach growled. She had no food for him. She didn’t even know how to go about getting food. He lowered himself onto his left side, hugging his injured arm against his abdomen. He didn’t look in any shape to gather for himself any time soon.
She rummaged through the pack and found the raw roots he’d gathered at the pond. Back at the camp, he’d put them into the coals to cook, but she wouldn’t risk a fire with cannibals nearby. Could he eat the roots uncooked? With the knife, she cut one open. They were tough and fibrous, and he was weak to chew.
The sun cleared the horizon and she swallowed two suppression pills before deciding what to do. She couldn’t be drunk while caring for him. Again with the knife, she scraped at the root’s juicy inside. A pulpy white fluid gathered on the blade as fibers separated. Carefully, she deposited the pulp into a half empty water bottle. She scraped each of the roots until she couldn’t get any more.