by Amy Briant
Flasks and bottles were passing from hand to hand, and the smell of weed was rich in the air. They had that back at the Settlement too, although I’d never wanted to partake. I could not afford to be off my guard—not then or now. I could tell from the pupils of some of the partygoers that other substances were in play that night as well. It was truly a muy loca fiesta as Marta had warned me, and nothing like the far tamer occasional festivities back at the Settlement. I’d read descriptions of such carousing in books, but they were nothing compared to the real thing. The real thing was torch-lit, surreal, sensual, loud and exciting. A little alarming, to be honest. No one was hassling me, but there was a lot of incidental contact in the crowd. A lot of bodies rubbing up against each other. A lot of couples making out. I wasn’t used to any of it. I wasn’t sure how it made me feel. How it was supposed to make me feel.
The meadow was ringed with tall trees, a mix of evergreens and deciduous. The leaves on the latter moved with the night air as seductively as the dancers. I’d been wandering the meadow for what felt like hours since dinner had ended and the festivities had not yet peaked. Whenever they did peak would be the best moment to slip away. But I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—leave without East, or at least without talking to her. I still didn’t know if she would come with me. Were we even friends anymore? Had we ever been?
My feet brought me to the barbecue pit at the edge of the meadow. Aromatic smoke billowed from the coals. An entire cow had been roasted for the feast. Two of the burlier kitchen staff were still turning what was left of the carcass on the spit. Both looked drunk and were giggling as they struggled with their task. Buffalo (“Beefalo” was my churlish thought) slumped in a chair nearby, simultaneously supervising, drinking, and sharpening a very large knife on a whetstone. A dirty bell on a leather strap lay beneath her seat. I decided to never mention that to East.
The smoke parted to reveal several workers approaching with empty trays, East among them. I grabbed her arm and pulled her aside, out of earshot. “Jesus, where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you!”
She seemed surprised by my intensity.
“What? I just woke up. I was working the spit all last night. I’ve been asleep in my tent.”
The one place I hadn’t thought to look for her. Shaking my head at my stupidity, I pulled her a step further into the shadows. None of the kitchen people were paying attention to us. They were all busy teasing Buffalo, who couldn’t seem to get up out of her chair on her own. One of the burly women tried to help her and ended up on her butt to gales of laughter from her pals.
“This is it, East,” I said, my voice low. “This is our chance to go—now, tonight.”
She jerked her arm out of my grasp. “Now? You mean right now, this minute?”
I noticed she was clutching her serving tray tightly to her chest—a shield between us. Warding me off?
“Yeah, look at ’em, they’re all drunk. We can escape tonight, East, but we gotta move fast.”
“Escape…” she said uncertainly.
“Yes, escape,” I said impatiently. “Look, you knew this day was coming. If you want to come with me to Segundo, well, now’s your chance.”
She looked at me. There was just enough moonlight for me to see her face. She looked beautiful, as always. Beautiful and remote.
“Don’t you want to come, East?” I said softly. Oh, God, don’t make me go by myself.
“I do,” she said, “but—”
“But what?”
“But they have food here, Kell, and water and beds! It’s safe here, for Christ’s sake. These people are my friends.”
We stared at each other.
“I thought I was your friend,” I said.
“Of course you are! That hasn’t changed. But you have to remember what it’s like out there. Do you?”
I felt like I was turning to stone, to ice. My muscles were stiff, my fists clenched. But my blood was red hot in my veins. The anger felt good.
“What I remember is my sister’s at Segundo, Elinor Eastman. And you’re either with me or you’re not. And it’s time for you to decide, right now, because I’m going. Tonight.”
She bit her lip and looked away, then looked back at me. Really looked at me. Took in a deep breath and then exhaled.
“Well, damn,” she said, tossing her tray into a convenient nearby bush. “Can we at least wait until morning?” The sweetest words I’d ever heard.
And then I was hugging her, holding her tight, squeezing the breath out of her. I don’t know which one of us was more surprised. When I let her go, she was laughing, but I was hoping the dark of night hid the tears in my eyes.
“Sorry, no,” I said. “It’s now or never. Let’s go get our stuff, okay?”
“You found our stuff?”
I filled her in on the plan as we rapidly skirted the edge of the meadow, avoiding the torch light. Now that we were really doing this, my heart was in my throat that someone would see us and raise the alarm.
But everyone was at the party. The only women we came across were lovers in the shrubbery and they were far too busy to notice our passing. We made a quick stop at East’s sleeping tent where she got her jacket and a few small things she’d acquired during her time at Tres Hermanas, then we found the tree with my cache. It was but the work of a moment to scale it and toss down our stash.
I had the flashlight Nancy had given me and used it to check the contents of our backpacks. Everything was as we’d left it with two notable omissions—our remaining MREs and the gun were gone! Silently cursing, I thought quickly. They’d probably locked up the gun in the office trailer, which was nearby. I did a fast risk versus reward calculation. I could try to break into the office—but I might not be successful, the gun might be elsewhere, we might get caught. Although I hated to leave without it (and was more pissed than ever at Simone for filching it), I had to conclude a midnight raid on the office wasn’t worth it. Ditto for the food storage shed.
Heck, I hadn’t even used the gun since I’d taken it off Lookout Dude back at the bomb-blasted observatory. But it sure had been comforting to feel it on my hip. At least they’d left me my hunting knife. I threw it and everything else back in my pack in my rush to get moving.
Shrugging off the loss, I handed East her backpack and donned my own. Best case scenario, we’d be in Segundo in a matter of days. The worst case wasn’t worth thinking about.
“Which way?” she whispered as we filled our water bottles from the nearest spigot. So long, spigot. With the familiar weight of our packs on our backs, she seemed more like her old self to me already.
“Behind that hill is the freeway,” I told her, pointing. “Let’s get up and over it tonight, then we’ll see what tomorrow brings.”
I hoped it wouldn’t bring a search party on horseback looking for us. My expectation was that we wouldn’t be missed until later in the day, after the hangovers wore off. Maybe longer with a little luck. And surely they realized they couldn’t hold us against our wills forever?
We hurried to my sleeping tent where I hurriedly tossed the rest of my things into my pack. We then continued on the path to the foot of the hill we needed to climb. That path was fairly smooth and well-maintained. The narrow trail up the hill I’d sussed out earlier was neither. Knowing that Security was on patrol, I couldn’t risk using the flashlight. Moving as silently as possible, we saw no one. The moon was still bright in the sky, so that helped. Even so, we stumbled slowly up the hill.
Halfway up the incline, we crouched behind a boulder to catch our breath. Gazing back at the valley, we could see the torches of the party and hear the deep-throated BOOM BOOM BOOM from the deejay’s speakers. I started to stand, then froze as I heard horses approaching. A woman spoke, just a few yards above us.
“Perfect night for it, eh?”
Someone grouchy answered her. “Be a lot more perfect if we were down there instead of up here.”
“Well, you heard Pinto. The quicker we catch the b
astard, the quicker we’re at the party.”
One of them chirruped to her horse, the sounds of creaking leather, jingling metal and hooves on a dirt road fading as they moved further away from us. As startled as I was, it was good to know we hadn’t been missed already. They were looking for the intruder we’d been hearing about, not alert for fugitive teenagers. Plus, if the patrol had just passed us, with any luck the next one wouldn’t be along for quite some time.
We waited a minute more, then climbed up to the horse path and beyond. In near silence, East and I finished our ascent. The undergrowth cleared near the top of the hill. A few lone pines provided cover. I made sure we were hidden behind one of them before I turned to look one last time at the valley behind us. East, close beside me, took my hand.
“We’ll be fine, East.”
How many times had I told her that? Well, it had been true so far.
We carefully picked our way across the clearing, straining in the darkness to see an opening to lead us down the other side of the hill. I still wasn’t ready to risk the flashlight.
It was quiet on the hilltop. The Milky Way dazzled above. If we could safely descend and find a place to sleep for a few hours before dawn, I’d be satisfied. By the time all the party girls woke up and staggered out of their tents/bushes, we’d be long gone.
In the shadows under one of the big pine trees, a twig snapped. I froze, as did East. Animal? Wind? Security?
It was a man. Stepping out from behind the bole of the tree, not twenty feet away. He had a flashlight too, but kept his hand wrapped around the end of it so only a weak beam exuded. In his other hand was a gun.
To my horror, he said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
His voice was hoarse and shaky. But when he shone the light upward briefly to show us his face—filthy and overgrown with dirty matted whiskers—his lips were distorted in a triumphant snarl. He wanted us to look at him, to recognize him. It wasn’t easy with all the dirt and hair, but I did.
As unlikely as it seemed, I was expecting Matteo.
It wasn’t him.
We watched as the man kissed the barrel of his gun, then extended it to the sky, his raspy cry hardly more than a whisper.
“Long live the Ship of State! Death to all traitors and cowards!”
Lookout Dude.
“Mister, I thought you were dead—”
“They told me to take out the school bus, to send a message to all those weak-minded liberal fools at the university. They said I was the only man for the mission, that I had the vision, the courage to do what others feared to do…”
His tone was rapturous, jubilant at his conquest. The words poured out of him, tumbling over one another now that he finally had an audience. And all the more sickening to hear it in that raspy-voiced whisper.
“And I did it! I did it, except for you two and that other boy. Where’s he at?”
He squinted suspiciously at us.
“He’s dead,” I said. My voice sounded calm, bored even, but every fiber of my being was focused on survival. I had no weapon other than my wits. The knife in my backpack might as well have been on the moon.
Lookout Dude went back to raving about the moral decay of an America infested with mongrel blood, government interference with his God-given rights, the end of days and a bunch of other shit. He seemed to have forgotten about the flashlight in his hand. With each wild gesture, the weak beam skittered about the clearing.
“Run when you can and yell for Security,” I muttered to East through clenched teeth. I took a step toward Lookout Dude.
“No, Kell, no,” East moaned.
She reached for me, but I shrugged her off, walking slowly toward him on legs which seemed to have lost all feeling. The whole moonlit scene was dreamlike. I felt hyperalert, flooded with adrenaline and out of my body at the same time.
Lookout Dude stopped waving his flashlight around and shakily pointed his pistol at me.
“Yeah, that’s good,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “You come on over here, you little faggot, and I’ll take care of you first.”
He wasn’t a huge guy, but he had more than six inches on me. It looked like the road had taken a toll on him, though. Whereas I was strong and fit from three square meals a day and my work on the Utility crew, he was emaciated. He looked like one good puff of wind might blow him over. The hand holding the gun was wavering all over the place. Unfortunately for me, it was wavering from my head to my chest to my gut and back again. My legs weren’t working too well. I stumbled, went down hard on all fours, then slowly picked myself up.
I now had a handful of dirt in my right fist. Maybe I could throw it in his eyes and blind him for a second. I could scream too, but that might startle him into shooting me or East sooner rather than later.
“That’s right, keep coming,” he breathed.
It was hard to keep an eye on him and the gun while scanning the ground in the moonlight for a stick, a rock, anything I could use to bring him down. Unfortunately, Death By Pinecone was not among the repertoire of dirty tricks Gabriel had taught me. Strangling was, though. If I could somehow jump him from behind and get an arm around his neck, I might have a chance.
One more step. And another.
“Stop right there,” he commanded. “Turn around and put your hands up.”
I slowly did as he said. And took a deep breath.
“Now, in the name of the Ship of—”
My schoolmates had made the mistake of thinking such a small person as I would never conceive of fighting back. They were wrong. So was Lookout Dude. As he ceremoniously laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, my fist flew back and opened wide as I flung the dirt in his face. I ducked and threw myself backward into his legs, knocking him down as he squawked and scrabbled at his eyes. His flashlight flew off into the shadows.
“Run, East!” I yelled. He bucked and heaved beneath me, throwing me to one side. Before I could get away, he was on top of me, pinning me down with one hand on my throat, the other still holding the gun, unfortunately. He grabbed my collar and hauled me to my feet, his ugly face just inches from mine.
“Say your prayers, abomination,” he whispered.
I closed my eyes. Sorry, Gabriel, I thought. Sorry, East.
The shot was so loud I jumped and then felt myself falling, falling onto a soft dense bed of pine needles. I hadn’t expected to feel anything. Ever again.
“Kell! Kell!”
Voices. Two voices. I didn’t feel any pain yet. I found I could open one eye.
So many stars. And two faces bending over me—East and Nancy. East looked appalled, Nancy stern but with a gleam in her eye.
“You do realize you’re not actually shot, right?” she said.
“Uh…what?” I sat up, checking myself for bullet holes, but thankfully finding none.
I jumped up then, not seeing Lookout Dude anywhere.
“Holy shit—he missed!” I cried. “Where’d he go?”
“Shh,” Nancy said, finger to her lips. “He didn’t miss, Kell. And neither did I.”
I belatedly noticed her large handgun. She shone her flashlight at a dark mass at the foot of a tree. Lookout Dude, dead. A bullet hole in the center of his forehead and a real mess coming out the back.
“Holy shit,” I said again, though less loudly.
“We don’t have much time,” Nancy said. “Pinto and the others will have heard the shot. Some of them will be here soon. They won’t hurt you, but they won’t let you leave either.”
“Are you going to stop us?” East asked her. My tongue was still stuck on “holy shit.” I kept patting myself to make sure I really was alive.
“I’m not going to stop you. In fact, I’m going to help you.”
She strode quickly to the edge of the clearing, then returned a moment later with her arms full. She tossed a small bag to me, which I promptly fumbled and dropped.
“It’s not much, but there’s a few days’ worth of food in there. And here, Elino
r—thought you could use a sleeping bag.”
She helped East secure it to her backpack while I shoved the food bag in my own pack.
“One more thing,” Nancy said. From the back of her waistband, she pulled out my gun, now ensconced in a worn leather holster, and handed it to me. “You’re gonna need this on the road, kid.”
“Thanks, Nance!” My brain was finally restarting. “But how did you know we were leaving tonight? How did you find us up here?”
“Because if I were you, this is the night I would have chosen. I signed up for Security tonight so I could patrol this hill. I was down at the bottom when I saw a light waving around.”
Our eyes met for a long moment. We are the same, hers said. I owed this woman so much.
“Time to go, chiquita.”
She shone her flashlight on a spot behind us.
“There’s the path that will lead you down the hill. Be careful and use your flashlight—I’ll distract them up here. They’ll be focused on our dead intruder, I promise you. No one will know you’re gone ’til tomorrow.”
She pulled us both in for a hug.
“Thanks, Nancy,” I said, holding her tight, my throat closing up on me. “I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done. You and Marta and Alma.”
Her eyes sparkled with tears as she let us go.
“Until we meet again,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-one
The End Of The Road
It was weird being back on the road. Weird and yet familiar. East hardly spoke a word to me the first few days. That was fine—I had a lot on my mind too. Like what an idiot I probably was for walking away from food, water, shelter, fire. Pudding. While at the same time, I was excited to be heading toward Segundo, toward my sister. It was all right—I was used to the duality. Sadness/excitement. Fear/freedom. When you’re a boy in a girl’s body, you’re more aware than other people, perhaps, that most things have at least two sides.