by Makansi, K.
In the awkward silence that ensued, Soren sat up and pushed his hair out of his eyes. He looked at me wordlessly and stretched out to try to kiss me again, but I was mortified. I told him I needed water, that I would be back, and I walked out. But I didn’t go back. I didn’t know what to say or do. So I’ve been sitting out here, keeping watch in the bleak, freezing morning air ever since.
Nothing’s happened, so I stand up to check on him. I don’t know how I feel. A part of me wants to go back and kiss him awake, curl up into his arms, and find that spark again. To have him devour my skin like a hungry animal, to feel his body connected deeply to mine. To finally let myself put aside the past and embrace the here and now. But something holds me back. I step inside the heated interior and shiver at the warmth. I crack the door to the miniscule sleeping area and peek in. Soren is passed out, his chest rising and falling regularly. Now that I’m gone he’s taken over the entire bed, a mess of arms and legs draped over the thin mattress. I shut the door, satisfied that he’s content and resting, and tiptoe back outside.
The cold air cuts at my eyes, but there’s a tiny bit of light in the world now. The sky is dark and blue, the river and the trees around us a deep, dusky grey. I hear a splish off to the side and wonder if the fish are waking up, too. But then I hear it again. Splash. I peer around the bow of the boat, but I see nothing. I check over the sides, but there’s nothing there. Satisfied but still nervous, I settle back down in my chair and watch the world drift by as we meander downriver. I feel the air change somehow and notice raindrops pattering on the deck, on the roof over my head. Maybe that’s the noise I heard. Raindrops. I stare off into the distance and am thankful that this looks like a nice, gentle rain. If the weather turned ominous and one of those devastating winter storms hit us, Soren and I, on this little boat in the middle of this river, could be in dire straits.
Is anyone searching for us? We haven’t heard any drones or seen any airships since the beach. It’s as if we’re the last people on earth. We’ve seen precious little but dull brown trees and water since we boarded, and certainly no people. Once we felt as though we were being watched, but it lasted for only a few moments and then dissipated as we headed around a bend and left whoever or whatever it was behind us.
I think about how long we’ve been gone. What day did we leave for the raid again? I do some quick math in my head and realize that yesterday was the solstice. Today is a new year. I think of the parties they’ll be holding in the capital and wonder what the Resistance is doing. Celebrating? Looking for us? Mounting a rescue attempt? A new year means one hundred and six years have passed since the founding of the Okarian Sector. Three years since Tai died. Four days since I was captured. Three since I last saw Vale. Two since Soren and I were tortured. Three hours since Soren and I kissed. How strangely relative time is. Enough has happened each day recently to fill the space of months or years.
I wrap the blanket tightly around my shoulders again, listening to the music of wind in the trees and rain on the tarp, the deck, and the water. I’m so stiff and chilled I can barely move, which is unfortunate because I hear the splash again, and this time my heart flutters, and I know something’s wrong.
There’s a knock against the side of the boat. I feel the deck beneath me rock slightly, dipping to one side as if something’s pulling at it. Instantly alert, my heart thuds in my chest and blood surges through my body like the opening of a dam. I don’t have a weapon, so I grab the first thing I can put my hands on, which turns out to be an old wooden crate. I crouch in the shadow of my hiding place. What is it? What’s happening? Before I can find an answer, I see the hand. Pale knuckles gleam as it grips the side of the boat, disembodied and foul. Then the leg, pants sopping wet, the long skinny foot with a dark slick coating of mud between the white toes, swings over the gunwale. The shapes are visible more as outlines than as actual tangible things, like phantoms stealing up from another world, monstrosities from the deep.
Indecision and fear paralyzes me. To scream will alert it—whoever or whatever it is—to my presence. Can I kill him myself? Or will I die quiet and alone? Still hidden, I see the rest of the man’s body land on the deck with a soft thud. He stands, turns, and bends over the side to help haul up a companion. The second man, who lands on his feet with hardly a sound, is much smaller. Who are they? Outsiders? Corine’s Black Ops sent to kill us in the night? I tense, tighten my grip on the wooden crate, and get ready to fight.
“Kill whatever moves,” the smaller man says quietly, and I can barely hear his voice over the wind and rain. His hand disappears under his shirt and reappears with the glint of a blade in it. “It’ll be easy. They’re probably sound asleep.” The big man grunts and starts for the cabin door.
Almost without permission, my body surges into action.
“Soren! Soren!” I scream like a battle cry. I launch myself at the man with the crate and swing it into his head like a cudgel.
“Shit!” the big one gasps as my crate connects with his face and sends him backward, stumbling into the smaller man, blood pouring from his nose and face. Still holding the crate, I try to whirl it around and bring it down onto the smaller man as well, but he’s too fast. He ducks away and then tackles me, his knife hand ready. I grab his wrist, forcing it up and away from my belly, and bite, sinking my teeth deep into the flesh. I swear I can feel bone. He howls in pain and drops the knife, which I promptly dive after, but it slides out of reach. I scramble after it, lose my footing on the rain-slick deck, and fall. My butt slams into the deck hard, and I twist to try to get up, get my feet under me. As I roll, I feel the thick handle of the man’s knife dig into my hip, and I thrust my arm underneath my body to pull it out. The smaller man throws himself at me, pushing me back, trying to reach under me to grab the knife. I scream for Soren again and see the big man look back and forth between me and the cabin as the light of understanding—there’s someone else in there—dawns on him. He puts his hand on the doorknob and turns.
Just as soon as I see the glint of silver appear in the larger man’s hand, I manage to bring my knee up hard, a violent thrust into the little man’s crotch, and feel his ooof of pain as he rolls off me. I twist aside, grab the knife from beneath me, and without thinking, rear back and throw it with a hard flick of the wrist. I’m hoping for a distracting flesh wound, something that will keep the big man from opening the cabin door, from walking right in and murdering Soren in his sleep. What I get is a direct hit to the jugular.
Everything stops.
The dying man’s eyes widen in surprise, and he drops his own knife as his hands fly to his neck. He grabs the hilt of the weapon and pulls it free.
“Sam!” the little man cries, agonized. He dashes to the dead man’s side as his knees buckle beneath him, and he slumps against the door. Soren appears at the window and begins to push against it, sliding the man’s body across the deck. He slumps further down, legs spread out before him, blood pumping from his neck like a hose. The deck is stained a wet, rainy red.
Then it hits me. The dying man—Sam—still has his knife in his hand. I dive towards him, shoving the smaller man out of the way. I grab the knife and pull it from the big man’s hand just as he dies, the light in his eyes extinguished as abruptly as if someone had pinched out a candle flame.
I did that.
I killed him.
I scramble backwards and stand, panting, trying not to look at those lifeless eyes. I hold the knife at the ready. The smaller man crawls to his companion. He clutches his sleeve around his bleeding wrist and cradles the dead man’s big head against his chest as Soren pushes against the door, cracking it just enough to open it.
“You killed him.” The little man’s voice is quiet, despairing and exhausted. He doesn’t look at me. He takes his friend’s dead hand in his own and holds it tightly.
“You would have done the same to us,” I say, my voice shaking, though my hand, holding the knife ready to throw, is still. The man doesn’t seem to be a threat
anymore. He makes no attempt to move.
Soren steps over the two men and comes to me, enveloping me in his arms. “Give me the knife,” he says, as he pries it from my hand, which is gripping the hilt so hard he has to unwrap my clenched fingers. My hands, my whole body, won’t obey the signals my brain is sending. I feel like I’ve been turned into a stony statue, frozen in time, forever immortalizing the moment when I first took a human life. Soren’s voice is the only anchor I have to the idea that I’m still alive, that things might someday be okay even though a man is dead at my feet. At my hands.
“Who are you?” Soren asks calmly, as the man huddles over his friend’s body.
“No one,” he responds, and his voice is muffled, lost. Is he crying?
Soren releases me from his arms and walks slowly over to the pathetic, shivering form. He turns his head to Soren’s advancing figure. Soren crouches down in front of him and points the knife at his throat very deliberately. He speaks, calmly and quietly.
“This weapon is proof that you were going to kill us. You boarded our boat and were going to murder us in our sleep. Your friend is dead, and you are lucky to be alive. But if you don’t answer our questions, you won’t be for very much longer.”
The man then turns and gently lays his companion’s head on the deck. The gesture is tender, soft. The full force of what I’ve done hits me, and salty tears and rainwater course down my cheeks. I close my eyes and lean my head back, wishing the rain would just dissolve me and carry me with it, with the blood and sweat and bones down into the river to be diluted and purified. When that doesn’t happen, I open my eyes again and fall back into my chair, watching as the man kneels over his companion and pulls his lids down, erasing the surprised, wide-eyed expression forever. He smoothes back the dead man’s hair and whispers something. A prayer, maybe. Or a pledge.
Then he grabs hold of the railing and starts to pull himself to his feet.
“Not so fast,” Soren says, standing up abruptly and waving the knife in front of him. “Keep your hands visible.”
He holds his hands up in the air and looks at Soren wearily.
“Can I stand now?” he asks bitterly. Soren glances back at me, and then beckons him to stand up. He grabs a piece of rope from the deck of the ship and uses it to lash the boy’s hands behind his back. His wrist is still bleeding where I bit deep into his skin. That’s what he is, I realize. A boy. I knew he was small, but standing in front of us now, it’s clear he’s even smaller than I thought. He’s closer to my size than Soren’s. He can’t be any older than fifteen or sixteen, but the expression in his eyes makes him look like he’s closer to a hundred.
Soren drags the boy inside to the tiny kitchen area and sits him down at a little table just behind the helm. I follow reluctantly, not eager to face the child whose friend I have murdered. But it’s warm inside, and I’m cold, wet, and maybe in shock. I need to warm up. I sit down at the controls, a little apart from them. Soren starts heating up some water, and I watch blankly.
“I know who you are,” the boy says. “You’re Soren Skaarsgard.”
Shit. I turn my head to the boy and stare at him. He’s recognized us. Soren and I lock eyes briefly, and the flicker of understanding that passes between us means we don’t tell him anything. Not until we know more about him. Soren goes back to preparing tea.
“Who?” he asks nonchalantly.
“I saw you years ago. You were visiting our Farm with your mother when she was chancellor. You played the piano for us. Some piece called Chopping,” he says, and I almost laugh out loud. I choke it back and turn it into a cough, but he looks at me somewhat indignantly.
“What?”
“Chopin,” Soren corrects gently, more tactfully.
“So you are Soren!” he exclaims, his eyes lighting up.
“Just because I know what Chopin is doesn’t mean I’m this Skaarsgard person. You’re from a Farm?” he asks, handing me a mug of tea as he sits down across the table from the boy.
“I know you’re him, so stop pretending you’re not. And you’re Remy Alexander,” he says, nodding purposefully at me. Soren and I look at each other again as we realize the charade is up.
“How do you know her?” Soren asks, speaking for me, since my throat still doesn’t seem to be working.
“You’re famous,” he says simply. “You were all over the official Sector broadcasts. But I know you,” he says, nodding at me with a glint of anger in his eyes, “because of Sam. When the massacre at the SRI was on the télé, we all heard about it. Sam couldn’t get enough of it. It hit him hard, the deaths of all those students, and especially ... your sister.”
I think back to those months after the killings. The endless broadcasts, the analysis of the killer’s psychology, the speculation about why he did it, the photos of all the students’ faces shown over and over again on the Sector programs. They made the students into martyrs and the Outsiders into murderers.
“‘Elle était si belle,’ he always said.”
She was so beautiful, I translate, remembering how strong the old French influence is on the dialects outside of the capital.
“He adored her. He just couldn’t get over it. And so we watched the broadcasts, and they always showed photos of you. You’ve grown up, but not so much that I wouldn’t savvy you anywhere.” He takes a deep breath. “Sam hated the Outsiders after that, and was always talking about how if he ever met any, he would kill them. That’s what we thought you were, when we saw the boat on the river. Outsiders.”
I look away. Sam, the one you killed … your sister … he adored her. So this is what I am. The killer. The girl who killed a man who adored my sister, who grieved for her, who wanted to avenge her. Just like I do. They would have killed us first, I remind myself. They would have stabbed us to death in our sleep. But that argument rings hollow in my head. I didn’t have to kill him. I could have stopped them some other way. I didn’t have to kill him to keep myself safe.
I don’t know who I am right now.
“So you know us,” Soren says, returning to the questions, “but we still don’t know who you are or why you and your friend saw fit to board our boat and try to kill us.”
“Like I said, we thought you were Outsiders. We saw your boat and thought there might be food and a fast way out. We were just trying to stay alive.” He talks like he wasn’t doing anything wrong by sneaking onto a boat and plotting to murder the people on it.
“By killing other people?” Soren demands.
“We didn’t have a choice. There’s a bounty on our heads, and we needed an escape.”
Soren glances at me, his eyes raised, nervous. Why were they being hunted?
“What’s your name?”
“Bear.”
“Bear?”
“I’m registered as Antoine Baier. But apparently I was a difficult child. My wet nurse complained that when I was hungry, I cried so loud and thrashed so wildly, I sounded like a bear charging through the woods. So, Antoine Baier became just Bear.”
“Okay, Bear. Tell us why there’s a bounty on your heads.”
“Because of Sam. His real name was Samuel, but everyone in the camp called him Samson on account of how big he was. He is—was my best friend.” His head bows momentarily and he stops talking. When he resumes speaking, his voice is thick and gritty. “He … was a few years older but for some reason got it in his head that I was smart and funny. He liked me. One of the few who ever did.” His eyes are downcast, and he swallows like he’s fighting back tears. My stomach churns and I look away.
“Anyway, he’d always been a bit of a troublemaker, but he was so strong—he could do the work of three men easily—so Boss put up with it. Until after the Alexanders disappeared.” I look up at the mention of my name. The boy is shivering, and Soren takes pity on him and pours him a mug of tea as well and puts it on the table in front of him. Bear clutches it between his palms and lets it warm him. He takes an awkward, slow sip with his bound hands and then sets i
t back down.
“What does my family have to do with you and Sam?” I ask.
“Sam got the idea in his head that not everything was the way we’d been told. He started asking questions. Like, ‘Where did Tai’s family go?’ and ‘How come they never held any hearings about the killings?’ and ‘How come nobody ever hears about the Skaarsgards anymore?’ He started telling the rest of us workers that the government hired the Outsiders to kill them. Then he stopped eating the food, saying he wouldn’t eat anything given to him by murderers. Finally, last summer, they put him on silo duty.”
“Wait,” Soren interrupts. “Who’s they?”
“They’re called the Enforcers, but we all just call them Boss. They’re the guards and the administrators at the Farms. They’re in charge of assigning tasks and passing out the Dieticians’ food and stuff like that.”
“So what’s a silo, and what do you do in one?” I ask.
Bear leans back. “There’s these tall structures, silos, where the grain is stored. When the grain is moist, it’ll start decomposing, and it starts to clump up and gets pretty nasty. We go in and break up the clumps.”
“Why are clumps bad?” I ask.
“Makes it hard to get out of the silo and into trucks for transport, I suppose. Maybe causes problems for processing, I don’t know. We just grow the crops. After it’s trucked away, I have no idea what happens to it.”
“Okay, so what happened in the silo?” Soren asks.
“I don’t know in his case. Sometimes a sinkhole forms and the grain turns into a giant funnel, sucking everything down. If you don’t have your harness on, you go down too and drown in the grain. Or if you’re walking on the top level, scraping clumps off the sides of the bin, the whole pile can collapse on you and one minute you’re breathing air and the next minute you’re ten feet under, breathing corn. Probably Sam’s weight collapsed a load of grain around him—everyone knew he was too big for the silos. That’s why it was so crazy when Boss put him up for silo duty. Anyway, if the harness don’t hold or your partner don’t pull you up, tu seras mort.”