Stefani said something to Jeff in a whisper, no doubt sharing her cynical view. Carlee didn’t want her influencing him that way, but she hoped her actions would speak louder than Stefani’s words. Helping people was never a waste. And deep down, she believed that Stefani felt the same, no matter how much she complained about these visits.
An old woman lay in the bed, looking like she was a heartbeat away from leaving this world. A much younger woman rested by her side, holding the dying woman’s hand. She gazed at them with an inevitable look of grief. The air felt stale inside, thick with dread.
“Who are these people, Matt?” the younger woman said.
“They are doctors,” Matt said. “We found them down south.”
“Why are they here?” she asked. Her voice seemed to be channeling her grief into anger.
“They said they could help, Catherine,” Matt said sheepishly. “For a meal or two. I figured it . . . they could be the answer to our prayers.”
“Oh, Matt . . .” Catherine used the voice that Carlee’s mother had before she had left with the vagrants.
“We can help,” Carlee said. “I promise.”
She didn’t wait for further approval before she pulled a small device from one her pockets and knelt next to Heather. Catherine started to protest, but she stopped as Carlee looked Heather over. She checked her dim eyes and put her head to Heather’s chest to listen to her heart. Carlee frowned.
“I need to draw a little blood,” Carlee said. “Just a prick.”
“I don’t think—”
Carlee pushed her small device up to Heather’s arm and held it there for just a moment. Heather stirred slightly at the touch. Catherine didn’t look happy, but she didn’t say anything.
“She has cancer,” Carlee said.
“My God . . .” Matt said.
“I thought as much,” Catherine said. She leaned back in her chair. She looked dazed and resigned.
“I think . . .” Carlee trailed off as she ran her hand over a number of different pockets in her uniform, making a show of it. “That I may have something!”
Matt started crying, and Catherine stared up in wonder. Carlee pressed in the medications she needed over the rocks that had been in her pocket in a blink of an eye. Sometimes, it still surprised her just how easy lifesaving miracles were for her.
“Yes! Here it is!” Carlee opened a pocket and pulled out a small bottle with pills and a syringe. “I knew I would find the perfect person for this someday. I’ve been carrying it for a decade! I’ll be so glad to be free of it finally.”
Carlee uncapped the needle and cleaned the skin with the liquid it held before stabbing the needle into Heather. The woman jerked in bed and gasped.
“I can’t believe it . . .” Matt sobbed as he fell to his knees.
Stefani breathed in deeply behind Carlee, obviously trying to control herself. Carlee felt guilty for feeling relieved at focusing Stefani’s angst elsewhere. Hopefully, it would keep her from asking questions that Carlee wasn’t allowed to answer about what was really pushing the vagrants down their current path.
“She’ll need to take one of these pills each day for the next week,” Carlee said. “But I anticipate a full recovery.”
“I knew it . . . I prayed for it . . . I prayed and prayed . . .” Matt continued to cry his eyes out with his gun at his feet.
His unashamed show of emotion and faith was too much for Stefani.
“Someone mentioned a decent meal?” Stefani asked.
“It’s a miracle,” Catherine said. The thirty-something woman with dirty hair tied up in a bun looked like she was having an out-of-body experience. Carlee brushed Heather’s cheek, which was already improving. She’d helped people in worse shape before.
“You said there are others who need my help?” Carlee asked. She didn’t make any effort to correct them, to tell Matt and Catherine that it wasn’t some divine intervention and that she was a vagrant. It felt strange to play off their faith, but perhaps God had guided her here. Besides, she was in favor of anything that helped people get through this life—and that kept them from killing her for being a vagrant.
“Yes! Yes! There are others! We’ll have them come!” Matt was jubilant now as he climbed to his feet. He was halfway out the door before Carlee could stop him.
“She needs her rest,” Carlee said. “Perhaps I’ll visit the others while my colleagues eat.”
“Of course,” Matt said. “Whatever you want.”
He held the door for them while they exited the yurt. Catherine was still in her seat, mumbling a prayer.
Outside of the dwelling, it looked like the rest of the small community had gathered. A hundred adults of various ages and the same toddlers as before stood before them. Their faces were all anxious.
“Oh, boy,” Stefani mumbled. Carlee was thankful that Stefani limited her reservations to that brief comment. She had always been one to wear her true sentiments on her sleeve, and Carlee envied that about her. Unfortunately, Carlee was better at keeping things hidden.
“They had the cure!” Matt shouted. “Heather is going to recover!”
The cheers started slowly at first, but they soon spread through the small village.
11 A WARM MEAL
“IT’S NOT AS BAD AS some villages we stop at,” Stefani said. “At least this food is cooked. And no one held on to our feet, crying. Yet, at least.”
She took another bite of her nearly burned chicken leg, and Jeff watched as Carlee moved on to another yurt. She was making speedy progress, moving from yurt to yurt every few minutes. At her current pace, he wasn’t sure that he’d be finished with his food before she finished attending to all of their sick.
“So, this is what you guys do?” Jeff asked. “You go around to different communities and help them? Ease the pain?”
“That’s the most of it. Not as glorious as you thought, eh? Vagrants get a bad rap, but we’re really not that exciting.”
“Well, I did see you destroy a giant spinning wheel of death . . .”
“Carlee likes it, though. She actually seems to think it’s going to make a difference.”
“I think she’s already made a difference,” Jeff said. He wanted to tell Stefani what he would give for Chad and his family to have a second chance like Heather had just received, but he held it in. “Didn’t you see the faces of those people back there? They practically worship Heather.”
“They’d be smarter if they did,” Stefani said. She took a swig of her drink and coughed. She had ordered the strongest thing they had available. Jeff would have done the same, but he was having a hard enough time thinking straight and walking as it was.
“What do you mean?” Jeff asked.
She continued to cough for a minute until finally getting a hold of herself. She immediately took another sip.
“You heard them in the yurt back there. Miracle. God. Jesus and all that. They still think there is something out there that thinks they’re worth half a thought.”
“So, you’re not spiritual.”
The bravest of the toddlers walked slowly up to Stefani and held out a small flower for her.
“Ah, thank you, sweetheart,” Stefani said. As soon as she accepted the flower, the little girl went running back toward the center of the yurts. Stefani had chosen to sit as far away from the other humans as possible. It was a choice that Jeff had supported.
“You’ve seen part of what we can do,” Stefani said as she studied the flower. “I could turn this flower into a gun. I could turn those stones over there into bread. I could turn your water into wine. Does that make me the son of God?”
“I didn’t say I was a believer,” Jeff said. “Don’t need to preach to me about it.”
“I’m a believer,” Stefani said. “I’m a believer that he was a vagrant. He even taught his followers to be vagrants. I believe it’s how the pyramids were built and how wars were won. Really, I believe that most people in history—those whose names we can remember�
��were vagrants.”
“It’s hard to see you press something and not think it’s a miracle. It defies logic.”
“And that’s the heart of it, isn’t it? They can’t explain things, so they just attribute it to some God. They think some magical, invisible hand brought Carlee here. My mother and my brother both believed. Even after they learned what pressing really was, they believed. Said it didn’t hurt anyone to have faith, but it sure didn’t help them.”
It was the first time that he had ever heard Stefani talk about anything personal. He wanted to know more, but those conversations had a way of becoming a two-way street, and he didn’t want to talk about his past.
“I just figure that if there is a God, he sure doesn’t care about us,” Jeff said. “I heard someone back home talk about how we were his children. That never felt right to me. I always felt like the Apostles would have been his children.”
Stefani crushed the yellow flower in her hand and dropped it to the ground.
“The only people worse than believers are the Apostle worshipers,” Stefani said. “Pisses me off just thinking about them.”
“Couldn’t agree with you more.” The Apostles were the living embodiment of evil. They had killed billions and stolen the planet from humanity. He had always feared the Apostles, but now that Horus and the white Apostle had taken everything he held dear, he hated them.
After he killed Dane, Sean, and the mayor, he’d use his pressing skills to topple the false gods that had destroyed his family. Although seeing Carlee help people tempted him, begged him to dedicate himself to a more peaceful cause, he wasn’t strong enough to take that path, as Carlee would call it.
“She helps them,” Stefani said, nodding to where Carlee had reappeared from another yurt. “Even the Apostle worshipers. She’s never turned anyone away.”
Jeff waved with his good arm when she made eye contact with them. It was getting dark now, and she hadn’t eaten yet. Carlee made it a few steps toward them before another villager grabbed her and pulled her in a different direction.
“Why does she do it?” Jeff asked.
“You’ll have to ask her. I just keep her safe.”
“And why do you do that?”
“Because it’s what I want to do.”
A woman started playing the violin, and cheers broke out across the small village. The villagers piled some torches together in the middle of their yurts, as they didn’t have any energy cells, and people started to dance. Soon the celebration spread to everyone in the village; even some of the teenagers guarding the fence joined them. Matt was dancing closely with a thin, curly-haired girl, and Jeff couldn’t help but smile for the boy.
“How can you do it?” Jeff asked. “I thought pressing somehow attracted the Apostles. Shouldn’t we be running away right now?”
“We might be.” She didn’t ridicule him for his question, and her tone wasn’t even condescending. It was surprisingly pleasant talking with her. “We don’t know exactly how they detect when we press. Jane and Carlee think that they can sense changes in matter and energy. When we press in something, like that slab of metal that stopped the laser from making me look like you, they can sense that matter was added. It sets off their sensors, and they come flying in for the chance to squash some vagrants.”
“But . . .” Jeff began, leading her on. He was going to learn to press one way or another, but he needed to know how to not get himself killed while he learned.
“But when we press something on top of an existing object, there is a smaller change in net matter. If we control it well enough, the Apostles don’t show up.”
“That seems risky.”
“Oh, it is,” Stefani said. “For more reasons than that.”
“Like?”
“Nothing is free. Not even pressing.”
“Besides Stefani’s ridicule,” Carlee said. “Otherwise, she’d be very rich by now.”
She held a plate of food in her hands and took a seat on a stump next to Stefani. After her time helping the sick people, she looked upbeat and recharged. In fact, she looked more energetic now than Jeff had ever seen her.
“I’m the richest person I know,” Stefani said. “Of course, that doesn’t mean much when you travel with a girl who keeps rocks in her pockets.”
He smiled at the cleverness of it. Carlee kept rocks in her pockets and then pressed the stuff she needed in the space they occupied. It was safe, and it had the added benefit that if people searched her, they wouldn’t find anything of value.
“I thought you were saying you were rich because of all the great friendships you have,” Carlee said.
“Well, if wealth is measured in friendships, then I think I better try to add to my retirement fund,” Stefani said. Her voice was coy as she stood up and walked into the darkness.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she’s going to go scout around because she doesn’t trust these people to keep us safe,” Carlee said. “And probably try to find a special friend for the night.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t the answer he was expecting.
“Don’t worry,” Carlee said with a laugh. “She’s rarely successful. Her standards are too high, I think.”
“I . . . that’s . . .” He gave up on trying to find something to say.
“That’s Stefani. She acts all tough and brooding. But there’s more to her than that.”
“I like her. I think.”
“Good—because she likes you.”
“Really?”
“She hasn’t stuck a force-field knife through your thigh yet. I’d take that as a good sign. Which reminds me, don’t ever agree to play games with her.”
“You two are good friends. She’s very loyal to you.”
“And I to her,” Carlee said. She smiled at Jeff after taking a bite of a beautifully cooked piece of chicken. Apparently, the villagers had favorites. “She’s my oldest and best friend. I’d do anything for her. We’re family.”
“I thought I had a friend like that. I pushed him out of the way of Horus.”
“When you were injured?”
“Yup. I saved his life, and then he left me for dead.”
“I’m sorry you went through that,” Carlee said. “I wish I could have been there to help you.”
“You did help me. I was a dead man. In fact, I thought I had actually already died before you found me.”
“Well, I’m glad we did find you,” Carlee said. “Your path didn’t end there.”
“Where does it end? Dallas?”
“You can stay here instead if you’d like. I’m sure Jane would be fine with that. This is a good village that could surely use your help.”
“I’d like to travel with you for as long as I can.”
She smiled at that, and Jeff replayed the words over in his head by reflex.
“I mean with the vagrants.”
“I know what you meant,” Carlee said, but there was a slight twinkle in her eye. She was beautiful.
The dancing was still going strong in the middle of the village. They looked like a group of people who hadn’t had something to celebrate in a long time. He was jealous of their lightheartedness. And of their ignorance.
“Why do you help them?” Jeff asked.
“Because they need help, and I happen to be able to give it to them,” Carlee said. “Trillions and trillions of decisions were made in the past by countless good people that presented me with the rare opportunity of becoming a vagrant. In this path, I am able to help put others on a better path themselves. I feel a responsibility to do so.”
“But to what end?” Jeff asked. “They are a small village. It’s unlikely they’ll survive. And Heather, you might have saved her for now, but she will die eventually.”
“As will you, but do you regret that I saved you?”
“Not yet. But truthfully, that may change.”
“Everything changes, but the one thing that remains constant is that we all select the path we go d
own.”
“Where did you learn to talk like that?” Jeff asked.
“Like what?”
“Like that. I mean, I’m not even sure what it meant, but I was touched by it.” They both laughed, and Jeff found himself staring at her.
“Being a vagrant gives you a lot of time to think about things,” Carlee said. “We spend most of our time traveling between villages, sitting in transports. We have to pass the time somehow.”
“Have you ever thought about doing more?”
“More than saving lives?”
“Yes,” Jeff said. “More than that.”
“Such as?”
“Trying to end the source of all the suffering in the first place.”
Carlee set her plate down and focused on Jeff.
“You’re talking about trying to kill the Apostles? Horus?” Carlee asked.
“I’ve seen what you can do. It has to be possible.”
“You really don’t know anything about the history of the Apostles, do you?” Carlee said. “Do you know how many people died trying to do what you suggest? Billions. The early vagrants threw themselves on the Apostles in the thousands, and they were slaughtered. And all of that fighting, all of that effort to destroy our own creations, brought our species here.”
“But—”
“And people still try. They try all the time, and they fail. You want to talk about wasted effort—that is the definition of it. Instead of making a difference in the lives of others, they go and throw themselves and their gifts away.”
Jeff hadn’t thought about how the conversation might go, but he didn’t expect Carlee to become so passionate.
“There has to be a way,” Jeff said softly.
“So maybe you get lucky and kill one of them? Where does that get us? They just replicate, or one of the newer generations will fill the void. There aren’t enough of us left to fight that battle. It’s over. We lost. And truthfully, it never even was a war. It was far too one-sided for that.”
“Then why help people at all?”
“Because the Apostles could put us out of our misery if they really wanted to, but they haven’t. So, we live on. And there is value in living, so we might as well do the best with what we can manage. Have the best lives that we can and help as many others to do that as well. Do more than just kill one another and survive—actually live.”
Vagrants (Vagrants Series Book 1) Page 8