Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1)

by Jae Hill

  I quickly ripped some cloth from a blanket and made a bandage for Rebekah’s leg. I stripped the belt off of a faceless body and tied it tightly around Rebekah’s leg wound. We’d have to sterilize the injury later, but for now, we had to get clear of the camp.

  I grabbed my bag and stuffed a few more items in it. Rebekah did the same with her beat-up rucksack. We heard the sonic boom as the dropship entered the atmosphere and I knew that I had only a few more minutes to get clear of the site. Food. Clothes. I wadded my undamaged tent into a ball and tucked it under my arm. I’d repack later.

  “That’s their ship. We need to go,” I ordered Rebekah. “Now.”

  She sniffled at the sight of her family, dead on the ground. I tried tugging on her arm but she wouldn’t move.

  “We can’t leave them like this,” she said. “It’s not right.”

  “You believe in heaven, right?” I asked. She nodded.

  “Then they’re there right now, waiting for you. They’ll understand. We need to go.”

  Her feet started moving and we walked as quickly as we could down the hillside, following the creek away from the grisly scene above us.

  We walked all day and she said nothing. She limped, but didn’t complain. I stopped to change her bandage and was relieved to see the wound had clotted. She winced when I applied direct pressure. She still said nothing.

  By nightfall, we must have hiked fifteen kilometers, so we were now well outside of the boundaries of the Yellowstone Preserve. I felt like it was safe to set up camp. I set up the tent and put all of our gear inside. Then I set up the cook stove and heated some salted bison meat over the flames. Rebekah wasn’t hungry. I was famished, and despite pointing forkfuls of food in her direction, she wouldn’t eat.

  I finished the meat and then coaxed her into the tent. Rebekah lay down on her sleeping bag and immediately fell asleep on the opposite side of the tent.

  The next morning, I awoke to find her awake and poking at the cook stove. She said she was hungry, so I set about getting some food out of the backpack. I should have rationed what little food we had, but this was still my first time out in the wildlands and I didn’t know exactly what I was doing.

  Rebekah nibbled on some dense, nutty bread that I can only imagine was baked by one of the women in her clan. Her eyes had that far-away look and glistened with what might have been a waterfall of tears at any instant.

  “Good morning,” I stated, trying to get her to speak.

  She grunted in reply: a small step.

  “We probably need to figure out where we’re going to go,” I suggested.

  She said nothing and just kept chewing.

  “We really need to figure out somewhere to go,” I repeated.

  Rebekah shrugged. “Where can we go?”

  “Do you have any other family?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Where are they?”

  She shrugged.

  “Rebekah, I’m not kidding. We’re not going to last long out here by ourselves.”

  She stared coldly at me. “If you had just let that thing kill me, I’d be with my family.”

  “I couldn’t let her hurt you,” came my timid reply.

  “How did you know that thing?!” she screamed.

  “That ‘thing’ used to be a friend of mine. Is a friend of mine. Her name is Adara. We grew up together. Went to the same school. She was a year older, so she underwent the surgery before I could.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  I told her about LEO and GEO. The space elevator. The space colonies. It was all way too advanced for a girl who probably couldn’t even spell her own name. She seemed incredulous.

  She said, “Daddy told me they tried to fly to heaven hundreds of years ago and that God became really angry and that’s why he smote the Earth with plagues and famines.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been there. When I was a little kid I rode the elevator up there.”

  “Are you for real?”

  I nodded.

  She looked even more dismayed than before.

  “So is God real?”

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Probably not. Scientific theories prove more than the Space-God myth ever could. That’s why my society is flying across the stars and yours is….”

  I stopped myself, but it was too late.

  “Dead?!” She yelled in my face. “Mine is dead! But you know what? At least we don’t become gross metal robots! We become angels and we sit with the Lord!”

  She stormed off into the woods. I contemplated chasing her but felt like giving her space was better. She didn’t have any gear, so she’d be back. What I didn’t anticipate was that she’d be gone so long. It was hours before she wandered back into the camp.

  “I hate you,” she said. “Grampa said there’s no place for hate in our hearts because that’s room we don’t have for Jesus. But I don’t care. Your people are why my family is dead. Your robots are why I’m all alone in this world.”

  “I’m the only reason you’re alive! Think about it. You’re a smart girl. If there’s no God…if this life is the only one you get…then you just got another chance because of me. And you’re not alone. I’m here too.”

  I could see her eyes darting back and forth as she struggled with the mental gymnastics of undoing seventeen years of religious dogma and brainwashing.

  “You and I…we’re all that’s left,” I continued. “I can’t go home either. You can’t go home. We have to go somewhere together. I don’t know much about life out here in the wild, but you do. You don’t have the equipment that I do. We have to work together. I’ll help you get home. That’s the least I can do.”

  She stewed over the thought in her mind for a bit, and finally agreed.

  “Okay. We’re going to my kin. They have a home about a two weeks’ walk from here in Magic Valley.”

  I pulled out my digital notebook and brought up the map on the screen. She had never seen a map before. When she touched the screen and the map moved, she was startled.

  “Well ain’t that the darnedest thing?” she remarked.

  After a few minutes of explaining what the “squiggly lines and fancy colors” were, she got a sense of what she was looking at. Her description of the route she took to get here—over Beartooth Pass—would require over 200 kilometers on foot to get to the ruins of Billings, in the region known as Montana.

  “If we only had a boat, we could get there a lot faster,” I surmised. “It’s 300 kilometers by river but we wouldn’t have to walk. I have a packraft—a small inflatable raft—in my backpack. But it’s only meant for river crossings. Not big float trips. And definitely not for two people.”

  Thanks to the satellites and space station overhead, I had a data connection to the main library at the capital. I loaded the “Pre-Plague History” layer on the map program.

  “There was an old town called ‘Livingston’ just north of the last set of hot springs. There might be a boat or something there. Maybe some supplies. If we head north for three days, we can probably float the rest of the way down to Billings.”

  “’Probably’?” Rebekah asked, annoyed.

  “Either we walk three days to save ten, or we walk an extra three days,” I chuckled, “It’s not like we’re doing anything else.”

  She was not amused.

  DRESS FOR THE OCCASION

  I felt like I could have hiked for weeks. My shoes were made of rubber and synthetic materials molded to my feet and designed to wick moisture away. My clothes were feather-light. My Norex coat repelled the occasional drizzle of rain as if it weren’t there. My pack was stuffed with a tent and other gear that hardly weighed thirty pounds on my back. It was beautiful country, and I sometimes forgot about the situation that had brought me here.

  Rebekah wasn’t as fortunate. Her shoes were very old, worn animal leather, made in the style of ancient cobblers with hammered leather soles. Her feet alternated between being drenched in her own swea
t or frozen by the cold of morning when we got on the trail. The soles of her feet were tough from years of rough footwear, but at night I could still see the blisters forming. She limped from her leg wound. Her linen dress and heavy canvas coat soaked up every drop of water on the trail or falling from the sky. She shivered. I offered her my coat or some spare changes of clothes. She always refused and limped along, hardly saying a word to me.

  We were only thirty-six hiking hours from Livingston, but trekking over the mountain passes, and Rebekah’s frequent need to stop, made the work difficult. I had originally thought we could pull twelve hours a day, but that was reduced to eight or nine, at best.

  By the end of the second day, we were rounding a bend along the river and saw steam rising from around the corner. I pulled out my notebook and saw that we were approaching the Mammoth Hot Springs, which used to be an ancient vacation spot dating back to the early 1900’s. I figured it would be a great place to spend the night and maybe soak in the warm-water pools.

  We walked among the ruins of what looked like a small town. A few stone chimneys and piles of disintegrating lumber were all that remained. A herd of elk grazed on the hillside to the southwest. Wildflowers were scattered among the still-standing dead trees and brown grasses. Just slightly up the hill were the billowing steam clouds, which were our destination.

  By the time we got up to them, the sun was setting over the hill. I wasted no time in getting the camp set up. Rebekah sat and watched as I set up the tent and camp stove.

  “We should go soak in the pools,” I commented.

  She looked at me, puzzled.

  “It will relax our muscles. And we’re dirty enough…we definitely need to rinse off.”

  “I don’t want you watching me,” she mumbled.

  “I won’t look,” I promised.

  We walked around with the lantern and found a pool that was not as hot as the others. It reeked of a sulfur smell, but the water was warm and inviting after a week without a hot shower.

  “I’ll hold the lantern,” I said to her. “We’ll take turns. You go first.”

  She undressed behind me and slipped into the pool. I heard gentle splashing noises and looked over my shoulder, cautiously, to see what she was doing, neglecting my previous promise.

  Rebekah had her back to me and was seated in the pool which was only deep enough to rise to just below her shoulder blades. She held her chocolate brown tresses up out of the water with one hand and used the other to cup water up and over her neck and shoulders. I heard her sigh a few times as she relaxed in the water.

  My arm was beginning to tire of holding the lantern, and I had fully forgotten about not peeking. I turned my head completely to watch her and felt a strange, animalistic stirring inside. I felt voracious, like a predator wanting to consume its prey. Every rivulet of spring water running down her back made me hungry. Every slightly wet tendril of her hair, dipping into the water, made me want to pounce. Four hundred years of my society trying to suppress these urges, and they welled up inside me like a gun ready to fire.

  Then I heard her start to cry. It started as a few sobs, then unleashed as a torrent of tears. She dropped her hair into the water. I think she forgot I was standing there. All of the raging hormones inside me dove deep under the surface as I watched her shaking in the pool.

  She had been through too much in the last few days. Rebekah had lost her whole family without so much as a good-bye. She had been forced to run off into the wilderness with a complete stranger. She was hiking across rough terrain to a town that probably didn’t exist anymore, hoping to find a boat that likely wasn’t there, to float to a town with distant relatives who might or might not take her in. Her life was uncertain, and frightening. Her silence over the last few days was indicative of mental fatigue and post-traumatic stress disorder. There was nothing I could do to help her except give her the time she needed.

  “Can you hand me a towel?” she asked. “But don’t look.”

  I put down the lantern and reached into my bag for one of my two microfiber towels. It wasn’t very large—definitely not large enough to cover her—but the super-absorbent fibers would soak up every molecule of water on her skin. I tried to keep my eyes closed as I scooted toward the water’s edge to hand it to her.

  Suddenly, I felt myself falling as the edge of the pool gave away. I landed with a startled splash in the hot water. By the time I had wiped my eyes clear of the water and spit out a mouthful, I saw Rebekah laughing hysterically. It was the first time I’d seen her smile since before the raid. I had apparently doused her with water as I flailed into the pool, and her hair was soaking wet, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  She kept laughing, forgetting she was naked in front of me—not that I could see much in the dim light without the lantern. I splashed some water on her and she splashed some back at me.

  “Jerk,” she giggled. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I assumed it couldn’t be good.

  “Well I guess I don’t need to wash my clothes, now,” I laughed.

  She kept laughing, even to the point of crying. Her laughter kept me chuckling in the night sky.

  I kicked off my shoes and threw them up on the ground outside the pool. Her laughter slowed and some concern came over her face.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I needed to take those off. They can’t stay submerged or they’ll be ruined.”

  “You need to get out,” she said sternly, dropping all signs of happiness from her face.

  “You don’t get to order me around,” I said with an equally stern voice.

  “You don’t get to hang out in here with me. It’s not proper…and it’s not okay and it’s not…okay?”

  I was still for a moment, staring at her unblinking eyes and defiant face, not knowing what to say or how to respond. Finally, I broke the silence.

  “You’re all I have right now,” I said. “I probably can’t go home. I’ll probably be in real big trouble if I do go back. If I can even find my way back. So neither of us can go home. Neither of us gets the life we wanted anymore. Stop treating me like this is my fault.”

  I felt angry and sad and tired and lonely all at the same time. I realized that I was under a lot of stress too. Semper’s death. Adara’s transition to warrior form. The raid on the Zionists, with all the death, blood, and carnage. Running across the wildlands, taking responsibility for a girl who I barely knew for reasons I couldn’t even comprehend.

  I was out of my element. I had only ever been on backpacking trips. I had only ever camped within the glow of the city lights. I had never been so far away from home or from the safety of the Republic and all our technological advances.

  She looked at me, puzzled, as I alternated between screaming and crying and swinging my fists wildly against the cruel and unforgiving world. She moved toward me in the water, and put her arms around me—slowly, one at a time. After a moment of caution and bewilderment, my arms came up around her and pulled her against me gingerly, then slowly tightening.

  Neither of us made a sound. Neither of us moved. For minutes we just held each other close, recharging our emotional batteries. She breathed into my ear in long, soft motions punctuated by little ragged gasps. My lips grazed her neck and I felt her stiffen at the sensation. I started to pull away and she clenched me tightly. I could sense her confusion as she started to let me go, then pull me closer again. She then locked her arms behind me, as if to say she had finally decided I wasn’t going anywhere until she was ready to let go.

  I don’t know why, but I pressed my lips to her neck again, kissing her gently. She tilted her head away from me, exposing more of her neck, inviting me to kiss her more. I did, gently—then firmly—my lips wandering over her soft, milky skin.

  Rebekah turned to me in the moonlight, looking into my eyes. I could see her eyes sparkling, reflecting the glow of the moon and the twinkling of the stars wheeling overhead. Then she moved toward me slowly and pressed her lips to mine.<
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  Our lips nibbled and tugged at each other. She parted my lips with her tongue, which danced with mine. That kiss felt like it spanned an entire age of the Earth, which wasn’t nearly long enough.

  She pulled away and looked at me with an expression I’d yet to see on her face.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for saving me. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for taking care of me.”

  She paused. “You’re all I have left now, too.”

  We stared into each other’s eyes for another moment and then she smiled.

  “Now can you please get me a dry towel?”

  I slid out of the pool onto the dry bank and took off my wet clothes, down to my unds. She watched me the whole time, not even pretending to look away. I wrung my shirt, pants and socks out over the grass. I dug through my bag and found the other towel. I slowly inched closer to the pool. I didn’t want to repeat the previous fall. I stood back from the edge by a foot or two. Rebekah moved over to the edge of the pool and tried to reach up for the towel, but her modesty wouldn’t allow her to get up out of the water with me looking.

  “Just drop it,” she said.

  “No, then it will get wet and dirty,” I countered.

  She hesitated. “Come closer.”

  I shook my head, “That was fun, but I’m not falling in again.”

  She sighed and stood up fully, grabbing the towel from my hand. The water had obscured everything but her head and shoulders until now. It was only the second time in my life that I’d been confronted with a naked woman.

  “Do you mind?” she asked agitatedly.

  “Uh…umm…I’m sorry,” I stammered, backing away from the edge and turning from her to grab a blanket from my pack.

  She dried her hair and upper body and then tried to climb out of the pool, but the edge of the grass was just above her head. After tearing a few clumps of grass and mud into the water, she asked for my help. I reached out for Rebekah’s hand and pulled her up to me. She seemed much less embarrassed by her nudity now, and started to realize that we were going to see each other without clothes, and that was just a fact.