Light Bearing

by Ben Woollard

  Chapter 11

  We spent the next couple of days in the same way: helping cook the food to eat and listening to music. By the end of the third day Angela had finished making new clothes for Shiloh and Theo, and had even made me a new shirt, since mine was torn in the back. The clothes were rough and baggy, but we were beyond thankful for them. The couple tied up a sack of food for us, and gave us each a sown skin for water. We had spent a good amount of time by then familiarizing ourselves with the area, and Angela and Mikelo had done their best to explain how to find the road that would take us back towards Columbia, or wherever we might choose to go.

  We thanked the family for everything they’d done for us, knowing no words could ever repay the kindness they’d shown, and promised to come and visit when we could. Truth be told I think we were all a bit reluctant to leave; they’re way of living seemed so picturesque. We hugged each of them in turn, and Simon tried to punch my nose as I was standing up from hugging him. Guthrie said something about the green grass, and as we left I glanced back to see the four of them standing in front of that leaning tower, transmissions of the old songs that could still hold a person together if they were lucky enough to stumble into them. They seemed like silhouettes with golden lining, backlit by some bright but far off source.

  “You know, Theo,” I said as we headed into the wood. “Why don’t you come back to Columbia with us? At least for a while. It doesn’t sound like you’ve got much to go back to at your settlement. Don’t you think, Shiloh?”

  “Definitely!” Shiloh agreed. “I’m sure Momma wouldn’t mind, and you and Grandpa would get along.”

  “That’s nice of you two to offer,” Theo said. “But I don’t think the city life is right for me. I want to find a place where I can settle down, grow some food, live like Mikelo and Angela, y’know? Maybe I’ll find a place outside the city, and you two can come whenever you want.” We were disappointed but understood. I couldn’t help but feel a bit of the same myself.

  After walking most of the day we came to a wide dirt road and started down it in the direction Mikelo had told us would lead back west. We were worried we might run into some Gov patrols but didn’t see any. Besides, we didn’t look as if we were doing anything suspicious at that point, just travellers through the wastes.

  We walked for four days, passing through a number of settlements where we were able to find a place to sleep, thanks again to the generosity of strangers, something that never ceased to amaze me. As we got closer to Columbia we saw some Gov patrols, a few of which stopped us and rudely asked us questions, but didn’t bother us otherwise. We parted with Theo in the last settlement before Columbia, a place called Linhof. He said he was gonna find work and go from there. We promised we’d come by and see him; it was only the better part of a day’s walk away.

  We walked back into the city through the tumbling dust and rubble. Nothing had changed, but the place looked smaller, more desolate and lonely in the center of the circling ruins. When we got home Momma was at work but Grandpa was there. He jumped up when he saw us, and I thought he might pass out. When Momma got home she cried and nearly fainted herself, so relieved she said she was by our return. We sat around and drank tea and listened to the little radio that played the songs Marco and Angela were still broadcasting from out in the woods. We told them everything that had happened to us, though we both did our best to try and keep some of the details a little nicer than they were.

  Things were quiet like that for a while. Me and Shiloh went back to scavenging; the Gov had relaxed for the most part, not much for them to rail against, although they kept up with their daily announcements blaring through the city mornings. As we worked we talked about moving out of Columbia; neither of us trusted The Gov, and both of us still felt nostalgic for the ‘stead that we’d stayed at in the woods. Truth be told I’d lost a lot of faith in people after looking down into them like I had at Alexei’s Grove. I felt like I needed to leave Columbia, to get away from all the rubble and the loudspeakers and the ever-present Gov that I’d seen drag a boy to death. We knew that Momma wouldn’t want to go, though, and even if Grandpa liked the idea we couldn’t traipse out into the wilderness with someone as old as him with no prospects for food or shelter. We talked about it a lot, and after a while we came up with a plan: one of us needed to go and establish ourselves out in one of the settlements, then once things were going smoothly, come back and get the rest of the family. Shiloh said that he would stay, said that I was better at those kind of things anyway, and that he didn’t mind too much staying behind for a while. I think that he hadn’t quite given up on people or the way they organize themselves as much as I had, but Shiloh hadn’t seen what happened on that stage, either. Not that I was sure it would have made much of a difference; he was just a hard guy to disillusion. We figured it was worth trying the settlement Theo had moved into. At least there I would have some kind of way to make a start.

  When we told Momma about our plan she wasn’t very happy.

  “I just got you back and already one of you is going out there again for who knows how long,” she said.

  “It’s not like that Momma,” I told her. “I’m just going until I can get established enough that you can all come out and live. Aren’t you tired of Columbia, of the weaver’s factory? There’s no life for us here. You know that, right?” She sighed and hung her head.

  “You’re right Sam. There’s no life to be made here other than to toil under the Gov. Still, it hurts to see us separated. After you left to get Shiloh I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see either of you again, and now I feel like I’m right back in that same position, the world on the edges grinning with fangs to eat my children.”

  “It’s really not so dramatic, Momma,” Shiloh had said. “I know it’s been a long time since you’ve left the city, but it’s wonderful out there. Not like the greys and dirty brown of Columbia. Think about it: we can all live out there and make a better life in a better place.”

  “Ok. If you two really think it’s the right thing to do, I won’t stop you from going, Sam.”

  “And will you come to live out there once I’ve got things set up?” I asked her.

  “I will, but only once you’re sure we can all live out there without starving or freezing to death. I know you think so highly of the wilds, but I remember what they can do to a person; there’s a reason we live in a city to begin with, you know.” Grandpa, who had been silent the whole conversation, sitting at the table with his carved cane in hand, fingering the engravings and staring at the corner of the room, spoke up.

  “I think it’s one of the best ideas I’ve heard!” he said. “If I wasn’t so old, I’d go with you. As it is, though, I’m no good for manual labor, so I’ll have to wait for you to do the hard work.” I smiled at that; it seemed like we were all in agreement. I began to pack my things, and planned to leave in a few days.

  The day before I left, Grandpa came and sat down next to me while I was sitting in my room.

  “I want to give you something,” he said, and held his cane out to me.

  “C’mon Grandpa, I can’t take that. I know how much it means to you.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Sam. You’re going to need it a lot more than I am. This cane has brought me more than my fair share of luck and prosperity, and it’s time I let it go. Just don’t take it for granted; it’s a powerful thing.” I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but I promised I wouldn’t, and that I’d take good care of it. He smiled at me, and put his wrinkled hand on my shoulder.

  “You’re a good kid Sam. You gotta watch out for Shiloh and your mother. I won’t always be around, and I know I’m not much help as I am now, so it’s on you. Don’t forget that.”

  “I won’t,” I said, and meant it. Grandpa got up and left me to stare at the strange markings carved all up and down the cane, bizarre glyphs, some burnt in, some with fading colored pigment. I sat on my bed for a long time and looked at all of them; I’d never gotten such a close look at
the thing before, and I was struck by how ornate it was. He must’ve really put his time in to carving all this, I thought.

  The next day I hugged them all goodbye, and promised it wouldn’t be too long before I’d be back to bring them all out to what I hoped would be a thriving ‘stead. I picked up my bags and Grandpa’s cane, and walked out in the direction me and Shiloh’d come in from only a few weeks previous. I turned and waved right before they passed out of sight. I walked through the outskirts and onto the open road with a feeling of déjà vu. The dirt under my feet felt packed and dusty as I walked along, the winter grey beginning to fall under a slowly sprouting green.

  I headed towards Linhof. The signs I came across said it was about a day and half’s walk. After travelling for the better part of the day without a break, I made camp behind a knoll to the side of the road and lit a fire with the flint I’d brought along. I sat and chewed the bread and dried and salty meat I had inside my pack and watched as the light filtered itself down to amber and everything began to glow.

  Part 2

  Chapter 1

  The Memoir of Franz Thompson

  We dragged a boy to death out in the woods, and I can’t say if I felt bad about it or not. It was Remus who did it, but still, the rest of us let it happen. He was a Singular, we knew that by the robes, and we needed information from him. But I still grimace a little when I think about it. He begged us not to, but we had orders, and orders are orders, and none of us was going to let the kid get away without getting what we needed from him.

  It wasn’t like he would have survived long anyway. We all knew what would have happened to him if we had bothered to take him back to Columbia, or if we didn’t, we found out soon enough: no mercy for treason against the light of civilization that has already burnt so low. In that sense I guess what Remus did was faster than the alternative. I can still hear the sound of how the body scraped through the dirt when I shut my eyes, the groggy moans when the horse stopped for Remus to shout demands again.

  The boy died when his head went over a patch of stones. I think Remus actually took it the hardest; he was pale and I saw his hands shaking afterwards. We all did what we could to make him feel better, but it didn’t help much and he didn’t say anything for a long time. We all tried to remind him that it’s just how General Director Shilk always told us in his speeches at The Academy: any means necessary, the threat of collapse is always there, lurking in the shadows. We all knew what was at stake, we all knew what we believed in, and we all knew we were doing the right thing.

  Back in cadet training we had all been taught about the collapse and how division lead to economic gridlock, how that lead to scarcity and finally all out war. Those who were lucky enough to escape the murder of the cities faced starvation in the wilderness, wandering along the roads. This was hammered into our heads again and again from the earliest days of our education, and I doubt there was anyone among us that didn’t have nightmares about the possibility that something like that might happen again. So we killed the boy, and did it like it was our holy purpose, no matter how much our stomachs might have rejected the act.

  It wasn’t long after that that we found the place we were looking for. I think it was Jordan who first noticed the white flag waving on the tree in the distance. We had been following some little trail I was sure was made by deer. Right where it stopped, and just when we were about to turn back, we saw the grove outlined in the distance. As we got closer we saw one of them, the Singulars, lying in the grass. He didn’t seem concerned by us, and was just staring up at the sky, whistling to himself. We rode up and formed a circle around him, but he still didn’t pay any attention to us. We yelled at him, and he just rambled out something about the “the eyes of the bright blue sky”, or something like that. We were at a bit of a loss; we couldn’t get a coherent sentence out of him, much less anything resembling information, so we tied him up and left Klint there to watch him. As we walked away I asked Remus if he thought the man was really a Singular, the supposedly terrible rebels we had been hunting. He seemed more like one of the slow kids some of the unluckier women in Columbia had given birth to. Remus said he must be, judging from the clothes, but that he thought the whole thing was weird.

  When we got into the grove, at first we thought we were wrong in thinking that it might be the place. There didn’t seem to be any buildings or anywhere for a group to hide. But then we found the hatches, and we new we had found it: the dreaded hideout of the Singulars. They were wide open, not even an attempt made to disguise them. We were confused to say the least. All we had been told is that we were looking for the Singular basecamp, which was somewhere east of Columbia. It wasn’t much to go on, and we weren’t even sure that we wound find The Device there. We had planned to scout the base and get whatever info we could before calling for reinforcements, but when we went down into the hatches, none of us were prepared for what we found there.

  Right away, on the stairwell leading down into the damp passageways that branched out underground, we found one of the Singulars, a girl of only fifteen or so, laying with her skull crushed in, blood pooling around her and dripping down the steps, where it congealed into a thick, scabbing brown. Things only got worse the further in we went, and we had to tie cloth around our noses to try and blot out the stench. The passages were littered with bodies. Some were laying on top of each other, looking as if they had strangled one another, while others lay as if they had been trying to escape, their hands still reaching towards the bloody stairwell. There must have been hundreds of bodies. I tried to stay calm, to keep a level head, but nothing I had ever learned could have made what I saw in that place sit right with me, and when we got to the center, to the main hall, replete with a stage at the far end of the room, I threw up, my hand leaning against the wall.

  The smell alone, which no amount of cloth inside my nostrils could cover up, would have done it: blood mixed with shit, vomit and urine. In the middle of the room there was a huge pile of them, their faces all contorted like they had been screaming. Some had their eyes scratched out, and it looked like a lot of them had done it to themselves. Others had apparently beaten and strangled each other to death, and some lay in puddles of blood from where it looked like they had been smashing their own heads into the concrete of the walls. Jordan took one look and ran while the rest of us just stood there dazed. It took us all a while to process what we were seeing, and it was only then that we noticed the machine sitting on the stage. It took us a moment to recognize it as The Device we had been sent all this way to find.

  We sent Jordan to request wagons so we could move The Device back to Columbia, the bulk of the thing being so heavy it took four of us to carry it out of those stinking catacombs. When we finally got it up the stairs, all of us heaving and sweating, we sat in the grove and listened to rustling of the leaves. I thought how deceivingly peaceful it was compared to the carnage just below us. One of our boys, Kelly, found another Singular, a woman this time. She had been wandering around nearby, making birdcalls and laying upside down on a hillside. We put her with the other Singular we had captured, who was tied and sitting where we could keep an eye on him. They sat there together having the strangest conversation that I have ever heard. One of them, the man, kept talking about some “green round ball”, while the girl laughed along and spouted about how “worms were a wriggling along with them that thought they’d had the heights.” I remember it word for word; it’s hard to forget something that bizarre.

  We camped and waited Jordan came back and told us the wagons were only a day behind him. It was good news for all of us; we were ready to start sleeping on something softer than the ground, where we didn’t have to think about all the bodies only a few feet below us. I suppose we could have searched the tunnels for bedding of some kind, but none of us had the heart to go back down there once we had gotten The Device out.

  The wagons arrived that night, and the next morning we loaded the bulky machine onto them, along with any other tech we had
found. The Device itself broke into three parts: the main unit, control panel, and the snakelike, helmet portion that I assumed was used to connect people to the thing. It was sleek and white, like the face of one of the mannequins that had been refurbished from the ruins and put in some of the Columbia stores. It took us three days to get everything back to the city. Even after seeing all the chaos at Alexei’s Grove, we were all still paranoid that the Singulars might launch an attack on us. We took our prisoners with us too, figuring the General Director would want to see them. Myself, I thought we should just let them go; they didn’t seem to think much past how a child does, and I knew the director wouldn’t have anything fortunate in mind for them.

  We made it back to Columbia in the afternoon, and went directly to Central. The capital building, one of the few skyscrapers left in the city, had been slowly slouching and no one had the engineering know-how to repair it, so plans were being made to move the leadership to a more stable location. When we got there men were in the process of carrying out furniture and loading them onto carts that were being taken to a building on the other side of the plaza. There was an officer waiting for us when we arrived, and he took us to General Director Shilk, who was overseeing the transportation of furniture out of his office on the third floor. When he saw us he became incredibly excited. This was the first time I had ever met the General Director in person, although I had seen him many times when he came to speak to the cadets at The Academy. He seemed a monumental figure to me then, and meeting him in person only strengthened this impression. He shook each of our hands in turn and congratulated us on our success.

  “You boys are some of the finest the UCG has,” he told us in a booming voice, and we all felt pride like we had been congratulated by our own fathers, who most of us hadn’t seen in years, the UCG believing that they were to act as our surrogate family. Shilk sent men to retrieve The Device, and move it to an unnamed location. I asked him what would be done with the prisoners we had brought.