Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  They rode single file. She could watch Lou’s back and Mouse’s swinging black tail and powerful golden hindquarters, but she couldn’t actually talk to Lou. Seeing her sister had devolved into dynamics a lot like the ones she and Lou had stuck to when she was five and Lou was eight.

  Maybe family was always that way.

  Right after they found out how their parents died, she had been the strong one, at least for one day. Lou had needed her. No matter what Lou said right now, or how childish they both acted on the surface, it felt exactly like that time. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly why, but she knew Lou needed her.

  Riding hurt. Riding down the steep side of a hill made her afraid of falling. Based on how everyone else was acting, riding shouldn’t hurt. Blessing and Day talked back and forth easily. Blessing turned around casually in his saddle from time to time. Matchiko sang softly under her breath, as if singing to her horse.

  When they finally reached the bottom of the hill they rode in shadow, since the sun had fallen over the top of the hill without much notice. It still lit up the scarps and crags of the far mountains with magical golden yellows. Heat turned quickly to chill, and if it went through a comfortable phase she didn’t notice it.

  They rode close to the herd but not inside of the river of backs and snorting great noses. The ground was so torn up by hooves she wasn’t sure how Blessing, who was in the lead at the moment, could see the trail, or even if he could see it.

  She directed River up beside Mouse, looking up at Lou. “What are our plans for the evening?” she inquired through chattering teeth.

  Lou glanced down at her. “We have two more hours on the clock. I’ll be taking pictures of this—” She swept her hand down toward the ground, indicating the torn-up dirt. “—then we’ll ride to one of our smaller outposts and spend the night. It’s about an hour away. We’ll have dinner there.”

  Coryn smelled secrets. “And what happens at the smaller outpost?”

  Lou didn’t look happy. “It’s Bartholomew.”

  “The one who was going to kill me and steal my robot?”

  Lou’s reply came sharp and fast. “The one who is doing some work for me.”

  “Aren’t you snippy.” Coryn frowned. Why was she losing it like this? Maybe just because her legs hurt and she was tired. “Sorry,” she told Lou. “I’m cold and hungry.”

  “That happens a lot out here. You’ll have to get used to it.”

  “I’m trying.”

  Lou glared at her, and Coryn decide to change tactics. “Are you happier out here? I can’t tell.”

  Lou seemed surprised by the question. “I . . . of course. It’s more real out here.”

  “But clearly you could die.”

  “Some of my friends have.” She pulled Mouse to a stop and called out, “Fifteen minute break! Blessing and Day on guard.”

  Everyone else dismounted. Coryn swung off by herself and fell on her butt. She managed to get up, red-faced, before Paula or anyone else could get to her. “But you’re still happy? Would you be happy if I had died?”

  “Not if I’d known about it.”

  But she probably wouldn’t have. That was something to chew on later. “Will you ever go back to the city?”

  Lou smiled. “Ever is a long time.”

  “How come you never answer any direct questions?”

  Lou reached up and pulled her camera from Mouse’s saddlebags and gestured for Coryn to come with her. They had left the buffalo behind now, although they walked beside the churned earth of the herd’s passing.

  When they were a few hundred feet away from other others, Lou spoke in a harsh whisper. “Look. I have a reputation here. More, I’m saving the fucking world. I know you don’t understand, and I promise—I promise with everything I now am—that I will tell you why and what it’s about. But . . . it’s complicated. I can’t give you three sentences and have you understand. It’s not possible. So I need you to just relax.” She snapped a few pictures, some quite close to the ground. “Follow directions. Don’t challenge me in public. Let Paula look after you.”

  Coryn refused to answer that at all. She stopped right where she was and watched Lou walk away from her, taking pictures. She moved with purpose, a lone figure with more energy and anger than size. The light had almost left the tops of the mountains, and it was becoming hard to see fine details and easier to hear the river, the birds, and the stamping of the horse’s feet.

  The bad energy between her and Lou could ruin everything.

  She found Paula, took Aspen from her, set him down and let him run. At least he was smart enough to stay away from the horses’ feet.

  When Lou had to pass her to get back to Mouse, Coryn used the same harsh whisper Lou had used on her. “I love you, but don’t expect me to take your orders and shut up. I know it’s complicated. So was our parents’ death. So’s the city. Everything is complicated as far as I can tell. But secrets and lies are more complicated than anything else.” Her voice rose, her words coming out faster and tighter. “If you’re the only family I’ve got, then I’m the only family you’ve got. You might want to consider that.”

  Lou stared at her, open mouthed. “You haven’t heard a word I said. Your life may depend on listening to me and to Paula.” She gave Coryn the big-sister look. “Drink some water,” she said. “Horseback riding is more work than it feels like.”

  “Fuck you,” Coryn muttered, too low for anyone but Lou to hear. She handed Aspen back up, wriggling, to Paula. He yipped and squirmed so much that Paula handed him back. “I think he wants to run.”

  “Okay.”

  Coryn climbed up a little more gracefully this time, and waited for Lou to lead them off. Lou made a clucking sound with her teeth as she and Mouse surged ahead of Blessing, taking the lead. Mouse tossed her head and held her tail up so it streamed in the wind.

  Blessing drifted back to ride beside Coryn. “Not many people can piss her off so easily,” he said.

  “It’s a talent I have.”

  He laughed, the laugh clear and light and brightening.

  She smiled. “Did your mother name you Blessing, or did that become your name because you make everyone smile?”

  “I don’t remember my mother,” he said. “And I don’t remember how I got the name, but I like it.”

  “How’d you meet Day?”

  “I can’t remember a time I didn’t know Day.” He turned toward her, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “Please don’t unbalance Lou. There’s a lot of very hard things going on, and a wrong step could cost us years of planning.”

  So he was in Lou’s keep-it-all-secret camp, too? “What do you mean? What could I do that would hurt?”

  “If you distract her, she could make a mistake.”

  “So will you explain some of this to me?”

  His lips thinned, although not enough that he lost any of his ethereal beauty. “I’ll answer questions.”

  “Okay. Tell me why I didn’t know anything about this from Inside? All the stories are good stories, or no stories. Or once in a while whispered real horror stories, stuff like everyone who leaves the city dies, or the ecobots will kill you if you litter. Nothing I learned Inside was anything like the truth. And I did research!”

  “That’s a good question.” He didn’t answer it right away. He rode quietly, looking around. After a few minutes, he asked her, “Where did you do your research?”

  “On the Internet. In libraries.”

  “Did you ask any librarians for help?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “Depends on the librarian. I know some wicked good ones.”

  “So you’re from the city? I had the impression you were from here.”

  “One of my friends on the farm used to be a librarian in the city, and she told me they knew how to find all the real news. I thought that was pretty cool.”

  “Were you born out here?” Maybe she could at least understand this one person, and if she understood eno
ugh people out here she could understand the place as a bigger entity.

  “Outside, but in California. I worked my way up here slowly. I worked for the farm before Lou did, though, taught her to ride.”

  “All right. But I searched every newsfeed and website I could find.”

  “Do you know who owns most of those?”

  “No.” But why would Blessing know that? River stretched his neck out, trying to eat some tall dry brush.

  “Don’t let him do that,” Blessing cautioned.

  She pulled back on the reins, and River stopped.

  “Now tell him to go.”

  She made the same clucking sound that she’d heard Lou make, and River broke into a trot. She gasped, bouncing in the saddle.

  Blessing’s voice sounded warm and patient. “Lightly pull on the reins. Lightly.”

  She did. When River slowed, she smiled in relief. “Thanks.” She took a deep breath. “I guess the feds own some of the websites, and the city some, and the big corporations, too.”

  “That’s close to right. Add in a few individuals, some of whom are more interested in how many people believe their stories than in the truth.”

  That made her think of Julianna Lake again. If only she’d been able to spend more time with her. His tone of voice puzzled her. “You sound bitter.”

  “Sorry.”

  She was still puzzled. “Don’t we have free speech? Like we can ask the librarians and they can tell us. We have free news—news-bots are more protected than anything else in Seacouver.”

  “Someone has to care enough to talk for free speech to matter.” His face looked almost as bitter as his voice sounded, and the whole conversation made her uncomfortable.

  She frowned in frustration. “That still doesn’t explain why no one told me how bad it is out here. People care.”

  “How did you search?”

  A bird flushed from just under River’s nose, and he crow-hopped a little under her. She nearly fell off and had to take a moment to calm him. “I must have run hundreds of searches. Not one site gave me the idea I could be killed any old day out here.” She fell silent for a while, listening to the horses’ hooves and the wind in the small trees they were riding through. “If they told us, we’d be afraid, and they don’t want us to be afraid.”

  He smiled. “That’s good. And what do they get by not telling you?”

  They rounded the line of trees and came up to a low bank that ran down to the Snake. Up close and in the near dark like this, the water looked almost black. It raced along inside its banks, one whole edge white-capped where a quick current met wet rocks. “If they keep us in the dark, they get people who aren’t afraid. But it’s worse than that. They get people who don’t know they should be afraid.”

  “Are you afraid?” he asked her.

  “Now? Yes.” She was, too. “The world isn’t at all what I thought it was.”

  Lou and Mouse had stopped in front of her, and she and Blessing came up beside them, and then the others, Paula on the end, looking as close to human as Coryn had ever seen her.

  “It’s beautiful,” Coryn said, kind of speaking at once to Lou and to Blessing.

  Blessing sidled up next to her. “And what would happen if everyone in the city knew that it was still so dangerous out here?”

  “We’d panic.”

  “Maybe. What else?”

  “We’d question.”

  “What do you do now?”

  She thought about all the reasons she had been happy once but hadn’t been happy recently, the reasons her mother had hated the city. All of the small things that didn’t matter individually but added up. Endless ads, constant opportunities to play games, being watched and watching others, which was in truth both a comfort and a pastime and bit creepy. Maybe that summed the city up—lots of energy and growth and entertainment, like a constant high point, like a dance, only if you were just a regular person you were dancing for all of the others.

  She didn’t want to talk about her parents or her vague unease with the city, so she answered simply. “Now? Now I look at the Snake River and I wonder where it goes. Not to Seacouver. Not, I think, to Portland. Then? At home? I watched a lot of entertainment, went to school, played games, rode my bike for fun, hung out with people. I spent my allowances on whatever I wanted.”

  “And isn’t that exactly what they want you to do? Buy stuff? Be docile?”

  She scowled. “That’s pretty dark.”

  “They’ll tell you that you don’t have to know it’s dangerous out here, you just need to know not to go out. But what if the Outside comes in? Will the city be prepared?”

  Prepared for what? “The city has defenses.”

  Blessing changed the subject. “The Snake goes where all water goes, to the ocean. It does go through Portland, only by then it’s gotten married to the Columbia. You can’t tell what drops of water came from which place by the time it’s all mixed up in the ocean. The water has no choice about where it goes. But you do.”

  Instead of answering him, she stared at the dark, gurgling water.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The sky darkened into a velvet blanket pricked with a million lights, maybe more. Coryn felt like she could reach up and touch the small hard diamonds of the stars. Looking up gave her a crick in her neck, but she didn’t care. The cold and the stars and the clop of the horse’s hooves in the vast emptiness made her feel alive.

  Cold had crept into her arms and legs until her whole body shivered, surprising her every few breaths. They rode toward a large house with an attached barn that perched on a hill overlooking the moving black ribbon of the river.

  Barn and house were so dark as they approached that they had to use hand-lights to find the barn door. Coryn ran water, and Shuska and Blessing pulled feed down from the rafters, which Day and Daryl delivered.

  After the horses were cared for, they all trooped together into the house, where Matchiko fed fresh logs onto a crackling fire. The warmth felt searing and welcome. She almost collapsed with exhaustion before she made it to a spot on the end of the dirt-brown couch. The couch had an overstuffed arm, and she rested her head on it, pillowed on her coat, breathing in deep lungfuls of warm air and horse sweat from her sleeve. She stank. No help for it.

  The next thing she knew, Paula shook her arm.

  “Mmmmnnnnn,” she heard herself say, as if from very far away.

  “We have visitors coming,” Paula whispered.

  Bartholomew! Coryn sat up quickly, startling Aspen out of twitching dog-dreams.

  The door opened. Aspen lifted his small, white head and barked. Three people walked in: Bartholomew, his number two, and a small woman no bigger than Coryn herself but darker, with nut-brown skin, dark curly hair with a bright streak of yellow sheeting down the left side, wide lips, and a tattoo around her neck of a chain with a broken link.

  Coryn hugged Aspen close to her, paying close attention to names as she was introduced. Bartholomew’s second—the man who had marched her into camp—was Milan, the woman Jersey. Jersey sat beside Coryn and immediately began petting and cooing at Aspen.

  He licked her fingers and greeted her with a wagging tail. Traitor.

  Jersey smiled at the dog. “I’m glad someone took him in.”

  “So where did you see him?” The answer almost had to be at the massacre.

  Jersey made a vague shrug. Lou give Coryn the be quiet look.

  The conversation began with stilted small talk, greetings, and a plate of dried apples, cheese, and crackers shared out on the kitchen counter. Something hot and savory bubbled in a pot on the stove.

  Day threaded through the crowded room and brought her a tall glass of water and a bowl of thick soup. She smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  He sat on the arm of the couch while she ate, making a friendly barrier between her and her previous tormentors.

  The soup was a sickly green, with the occasional carrot it in, but it smelled of ginger and beans and tasted fabulous. S
he let Aspen lick the bowl and then got up to see what else she might feed him. Moving was hard, but apparently the soup had something magical in it, because her legs obeyed her.

  When she took her bowl into the kitchen, Day traded her a clean bowl of bread scraps and carrot ends. “That’s for Aspen.” He looked hopeful. “We didn’t plan for a dog.”

  “Thanks.” Aspen took the food from her hand bite by bite, constantly trying to lick her fingers. As she finished hand-feeding him, the people in the room settled into a rough circle.

  “All right,” Bartholomew said. “Let’s report out.”

  Lou glanced at Coryn. Coryn smiled back as sweetly as she could. It wasn’t as if Lou could exclude her easily, not in front of everyone. Lou sighed, looking torn, but she didn’t order Coryn into the back bedroom or give her some stupid chore in the barn.

  Bartholomew spoke first. “We’re ready. The hack worked, and it should be spreading at about five percent an hour. There’s no sign of detection yet. We have two more rolling versions ready to start on your command.”

  He had to mean the ecobots. It made sense. They hadn’t been hacked (or at least hadn’t been hacked by these people) when they saved her at Lucien’s command. But they must have been hacked before they started pouring into Bartholomew’s little makeshift town the night before last.

  At some deep level, this frightened her. She’d always been taught that the ecobots were the saviors of all mankind, and that humans relied on them to enforce the various climate frameworks. Without them, everything would burn and flood and die.

  But then, the city had clearly lied to her about many things. Just like Lou had.

  The conversation moved on as Lou asked Bartholomew, “What about other city systems? Which ones are finished?”

  He smiled and said, “Enough of them.”

  She said, “No. Tell me.”

  “It’s not your business.”

  Lou let out a long sigh. “Part of this deal is that we share information.”

  “And blame,” Bartholomew said. “What you don’t know is good for you and for us. It is enough.”