“Nicely done, boys,” Cyrus said. “Nicely done.”
When they’d finished with their making up, Mason addressed the pair. “Come on, you two, let’s get this pemmican sorted out once and for all.”
As they wandered off, Cyrus turned to David. “I saw the way you looked at Mason when he came into the yard. You got a problem with the man who saved your hide?”
David’s old prejudice came bubbling up. “He’s not a man, he’s a mutant, and I’ve got a problem with all mutants.”
Cyrus looked hard at something a thousand miles away before nodding and sighing.
“You know what, David? I don’t know how they did things in – what was it called?”
“Amat.” The word a sullen lump in his mouth.
“I don’t know how they did things in Amat, but we Zeros don’t discriminate, and as far as I’m concerned, Mason is one of the best men I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Whatever problem you have with mutants, you’d better get over it quick if you’re going to be one of us.”
“Who says I want to be one of you?”
“What else have you got?”
Cyrus walked off and, after a glowering moment, David followed.
He didn’t want to think about his problem with mutants, because that would lead him to thinking about Einstein and that in turn would take him to Sorrel, and he’d been trying really hard not to think about her.
Even when he uttered Amat, he’d blocked her from his mind. He didn’t want to think about her because he was too scared of where his thoughts would take him. About what he’d done and what he’d lost and what had become of her, and now he was thinking about her. He missed her so much it hurt.
“What’s pemmican?” he asked when he’d caught up with Cyrus.
Cyrus gave him a sideways glance before deciding to answer. “Dried meat, and not much more to it than that. Lance and Gilligan have been squabbling about the right way to prepare it ever since Gilligan showed up. They’re best of friends really, one’s like the shadow of the other. The truth is, those boys can’t be doing without each other and I can’t be doing with the aggro, especially not while we’re dealing with the Sawneys. All this talk of pemmican’s making me hungry. Let’s go eat.”
As he walked with Cyrus to the fire pit, David blocked out his thoughts and feelings for Sorrel and instead thought about all he had seen. Sure, they were growing plenty of food in the yard, but when he looked to the Wastelands beyond the tiny Zero settlement, it didn’t look like rich pickings for hunting. In fact, it looked like a person could go a long time without seeing a hint of any living thing out there. After his encounter with the Sawneys, David wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to his question, but he asked it anyway.
“Where does the pemmican meat come from?”
Cyrus glanced at David. “We hunt for it, where do you think it comes from?”
“Hunt where – out there?”
Cyrus stopped walking and turned to David. “I get it – you think we’re like the Sawneys – eating people and making ornaments out of their bones.”
“No – it’s not that – well, maybe – I don’t know.”
Cyrus put his hand on David’s shoulder. “David, we’re not going to eat you or anybody else. That’s their game, not ours, okay?”
David looked Cyrus square in the face and saw that it was not only exposure to the elements that had etched his skin, but loss and pain and loneliness. He wondered what kind of ill wind had blown Cyrus here, but that was a question he wasn’t prepared to ask. Not yet.
“Okay. But-”
Cyrus laughed. “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that. We send out hunting parties, some solo, some in pairs. Nice and simple. What’s less simple is the distance they have to travel and the places they have to go to find anything worth hunting. The mountains mainly, but they have to stay off the paths well trod and make their own roads. Sometimes they come back with goat or badger. Sometimes they don’t come back at all.”
“Goat?”
“They didn’t have goat in – where was that place again?”
“Amat.”
“They didn’t have goat in Amat? Then you’re in for a treat when we get some. Real tasty. Too good for pemmican, but needs must.”
Just as David mentioned the word Amat again, a man emerged from the Garden Centre. Cyrus talked on, but his words swirled around David’s head and drifted on without David hearing them. His attention was all on the man.
Although he’d only seen him from behind, David immediately recognised him as the solitary figure from the yard, but that’s not why he stared so hard now. He stared because he couldn’t believe what his eyes were seeing. Maybe it was the talk of Amat that caused it, but whatever the reason, David’s mind was spinning and his body was reacting.
One part of his brain was telling him that what he was seeing was real. How could it be any other way? But another part was telling him it couldn’t be so. His stomach clenched, stress flashed across his shoulders, his heart pounded, and he had an overwhelming urge to do something, but what that something was he didn’t know.
Oblivious to the turmoil he’d caused in David, the man walked past, the shadows of his loss trailing behind him.
“David. David.”
It felt like Cyrus had been saying his name for a long time before David heard him.
“David, talk to me. Are you having a flashback?”
David looked at Cyrus without seeing him. Slowly, his vision swam back into focus. He saw Cyrus, a man he’d known for less than a day, but a man he had already decided to trust.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Cyrus led David to one of the seats by the fire pit and sat him down.
“Nice and easy. Just relax and you’ll be fine. Anything bad you’re seeing isn’t real, David. It isn’t there. You’re safe. I’m with you and I’m not going to leave you.”
“Is he real?” David pointed to the solitary man.
The man was sitting at a table, eating from a bowl. David watched as Cyrus looked at the man.
“Him there?”
David nodded.
“That’s Loner. He’s real enough.”
“Then I’m not having a flashback.”
David got up, went to the man and stood before him. The man paused with his spoon halfway to his open mouth and stared up at David. He’d changed since David had last seen him. His eyes, which had once twinkled with mischief, were now empty shadows. Before he’d been strong, healthy, but now he looked as though he was held together only by the knots in his sinews.
“Hello, Valen,” David said.
The spoon resumed its journey, delivered its contents and scooped up another load from the bowl.
“Don’t you know me?”
Cyrus came up behind him. “You know this man?”
David nodded. “I do.”
Unless he was staring at a ghost, the man he was looking at was Sorrel’s father.
4.
Incoming
“He was almost naked when I found him. And if you think there’s nothing to him now, you should have seen him then. He was a walking heap of bones. No food, no weapons, no gear of any kind.”
“Where did you find him?” David asked.
“Up north. Near Desolation Road. You know it?”
David nodded. “Part of it ran close to Amat – within a day’s walk.”
“I don’t know how close it was to Amat where I found him. He was wandering around in a meadow. It was lush-looking, you know – plenty of foraging – but when I saw the state of Loner – Valen – I didn’t want to hang around. He had these marks – big red circles – looked like bites – all over his body. And scratch marks. I think he’d been clawing himself and that’s why he was mostly naked. He’d taken off his clothes so that he could itch the bites.”
David and Cyrus were sitting at the table with Valen. David watched Valen, but if the man heard, let alone understood what they were saying, he wasn’t let
ting on.
“Valen, it’s me, David – don’t you recognise me?”
David was right across the table from Valen, so when Valen stared ahead he was looking David’s way, but his eyes remained empty.
“I couldn’t leave him there, and I wasn’t about to hang about to find out what did that to him, and so I took him with me.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“Not a word. But he didn’t resist when I took him by the arm and led him out of that place. He’s been with me ever since. Still hasn’t said a word, but I know he can hear, because when I tell him to do a thing, he gets it done.”
David leant across the table and studied the bleak landscape of Valen’s face. Deep furrows around his eyes and mouth told of profound loss and heartache. His lips, pale and thin as a crescent moon, had long since seen a smile, laughter so far gone it wasn’t even a distant memory, while the skin beneath his eyes was bruised purple from haunted nights.
He searched Valen’s eyes for a glimmer of recognition, but found none there. Yet, somewhere within him the man knew he had lost something.
“I don’t know what goes on in his head,” Cyrus said, “and I wouldn’t like to see the pictures he sees, but somewhere deep inside, the man he was is struggling to get out. He’s been close to the surface a couple of times – I’ve felt him there. Just out of reach.”
“I’m going to reach him,” David said, “and I’m going to keep on trying until I do.”
“Good luck and I hope you succeed, because the way he’s living is no kind of life at all.”
David looked back at Valen. “You have a daughter, Sorrel, and a son, Eli. They’re alive, Valen. Sorrel and Eli are alive.”
When Valen did not respond, Cyrus asked David to take a walk with him. They were beyond the shacks and tents when Cyrus asked his question.
“What you said back there – was it true? About Valen having a daughter and son – still alive? Cause I don’t want you to be raising false hopes in the man just to shake him out of his departure.”
David looked out across the expanse of the Wastelands. Somewhere out there, Sorrel was looking for Eli.
“It’s true, Cyrus. Sorrel is my – my –”
“She’s your girl, huh?”
Cyrus laughed when David’s face flushed.
“Yes, she’s my girl.” David shook his head and laughed too. It felt funny saying it out loud, felt good too. But then he stopped laughing. “At least she was, until I made a mess of it.”
“This the kind of mess you can make up for, or the finishing kind?”
“I hope we can make up. I’m going to try anyway.”
“Good lad. Where is she?”
“Out there, looking for her brother.”
“She alone?”
David chewed on his lip.
“Let me guess,” Cyrus said. “She’s not alone and you’ve got a problem with him who’s with her.”
“Yes, but it’s not what you think.”
“No?”
David shook his head. “He’s a mutant.”
Cyrus’s face hardened. “I told you – we Zeros don’t discriminate.”
“You don’t understand – our village – Amat – it was mutants who raided it. They took some of us to sell at the thrall markets in Dinawl, and killed the rest. My father, Sorrel’s mother and baby sister included.”
Cyrus put his hand on David’s shoulder. “I hear you David, but tell me this – was Mason one of the mutants who tore up your place?”
David sucked in a deep breath and shook his head.
“And the one who’s with your girl, Sorrel – what’s his name?”
“Einstein.”
“This Einstein – was he one of the ones who tore up your place?”
“No.”
“Well it sounds to me like you’re hating all mutants for a crime committed by a few. Tell me this – has any man ever done you wrong?”
A host of faces – the laughing guards at the thrall market, Black Angus, Niven – crowded into David’s mind. He nodded.
“But you don’t hate all men?”
“It’s different.”
“Different how?”
“Because mutants are monsters.”
“That include Mason? Or Einstein?”
David stared into the distance, searching for the words to explain how much he hated mutants but no matter how deep he dug, he could not find anything to say to Cyrus that would explain his deeply ingrained distrust and loathing, not just for those who had raided Amat, but for all mutants. His biggest problem was that he couldn’t explain it to himself. It was something he’d been brought up knowing, the same as he knew how to breathe. Mutants were bad. They should be destroyed at birth. He had witnessed for himself what happened when they weren’t. And yet coming up against what he knew to be true was the fact that time after time Einstein had proved himself to be a friend. Not just to Sorrel, but to David as well.
When he did finally answer, David struggled to find his words. “No. I’m grateful to Mason, and Einstein –”
“What about him?”
David forced the words out. “He looks out for Sorrel.”
“Then be glad he’s with her and that she’s not out there by herself.”
David understood the sense of Cyrus’s words. The argument he was having was with himself.
“Let’s get back,” Cyrus said, “there’s work to be done.”
As Cyrus started to walk to the settlement, David called for him to wait up. There was something he wanted to discuss.
“I’m going to look for Sorrel and Eli, and I want to take Valen with me. It’s only right that he’s reunited with his family.”
“Maybe,” Cyrus said. “Doesn’t mean to say he’ll go with you.”
“He will if you tell him to.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, but I’d be in a better frame of mind for persuading him if you did something for us in return.”
“What’s that?”
“Now that we’ve found the Sawney’s lair, we’re aiming to waste them. This life of ours is hard enough – nobody needs to be making it any harder by eating their fellow man. They’ve taken too many of our number – they almost took you. What say you help us rid the world of this pestilence? In return I’ll gladly send Valen with you to find his family. In fact, if you help us destroy the Sawneys, I’ll come along for the ride. You have my word on that. What do you think?”
David decided in an instant. “There’s nothing to think about. I owe you twice over, Cyrus – once for me and once for Valen – so you can count me in.”
Cyrus grinned. “I knew you were a good ‘un. Glad to have you with us.”
“Glad to be with you.”
David meant what he’d said. Not since Amat had he had any sense of belonging. Even though he hadn’t been with the Zeros for long, and knew he wouldn’t be staying, at this particular moment, he fit right in. Besides which, he could see no downside to ridding the world of the Sawneys.
“One thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You said the Zeros don’t discriminate.”
“That’s right, we don’t.”
“Well what about the Sawneys?”
“No discrimination there, David. We’ll wipe them all out – every last one.”
The pair of them were still laughing when they arrived back in the settlement, but it wasn’t long before the mood turned serious.
“The pit where they kept David is here, the fire pit there, the cliff here.”
The Zeros had gathered round, watching as Cyrus used a sharp stick to mark out a map of the Sawney’s territory in the dirt.
“Last night, our mission was to save David from being et – a simple case of in, out and shake it all about.”
“It helped that we had the element of surprise on our side,” Mason said. “The Sawneys didn’t know what hit them.”
“That’s for sure,” Cyrus said,
but next time we’re not doing a simple raid – we’re going after them and it could get messy.”
“We’ve got to draw them away from the cliff,” Mason said, “and make sure they can’t get back. They disappear into that cave system and we’ve lost the best chance we have of wiping them out.”
“Maybe our only chance,” Cyrus said.
“When are we going in?” David asked.
Cyrus looked around the circle of Zeros and held up his hand, fingers spread. “Five nights.”
“Why not tonight?” David asked. “Get them while they’re still reeling from last night.”
“They’ll be jittery,” Mason said, “wary and watching out. Five nights from now, they’ll be settling down. Thinking it was a one-time thing.”
David nodded. He was aware of Cyrus scrutinising his interactions with Mason and he made sure there was nothing to see. Funny thing was, it wasn’t so hard, after all Mason had saved his life and, mutant or not, David owed him. The fact that Mason hadn’t made a song and dance about it only increased the weight of David’s debt. What he did have to hide from Cyrus was his increasing irritation at Mason’s ridiculous beard. Plaited and dangling like a hairy worm from his big chin, it quivered and bobbled every time the mutant opened his mouth. David would have liked nothing more than to take a sharp knife to its red roots and slice it off.
David’s attention shifted from Mason’s beard when he felt Cyrus’s narrowed eyes staring at him. Indignance brought a babble of protestation to his lips. He wanted to tell Cyrus that it wasn’t Mason being a mutant that irked him – it was the beard. But the glint in Cyrus’s eyes froze David’s words before they left his lips.
There was a chill note in Cyrus’s voice when he filled the void, and there was no doubt in David’s mind that the frost was aimed at him and him alone.
“It also means we’ll be going in under the cloak of a new moon.” Cyrus looked around the circle, his gaze taking in each Zero before coming back to David. “Too many of our number have met a pitiless death at the hands of the Sawneys. I say, no more. We have five days to prepare for battle. Let’s get busy.”
As the group dispersed in a hum of excited conversation, Cyrus leant into David and slid a cold warning into his ear.
The New Day Page 4