by Tara Brown
He looked up the hill we sat on, “We need to hurry for shelter. The midday sun is much worse than this.”
I frowned. “How do you know?”
He gave me a look but turned and started walking again. After sitting for the few moments, my feet burned when I stood. They bled inside of my shoes but I pushed myself on.
“I can’t walk anymore,” the man cried.
My brother turned and gave him a look that I had no memory of. “Then you will die out here. The sun will weaken you, and those birds flying above us,” he pointed upward at the group of them I had not noticed before, “They will eat you while you are still alive and fresh. You will die as they pick your body apart. So you may continue walking, or you may take your chances with them.” He turned and started walking again. We all looked up and saw the birds. They were much larger than anything I had ever seen before.
I scrambled after Greg, staying in his shadow the whole way up the hill. When we reached the top, I was near vomiting but I forced myself to keep it down. My lips bled if I moved them beyond a slight grimace. The metallic taste made me shudder. As we rounded the top of the hill, I got a full view of what was there. I dropped to my knees, unable to cry for there was no water. A sound escaped my lips. Greg lifted me off the ground, jerking me. “You walked freely. You have no right to complain. Not in front of these people.” My arm hurt where he grabbed, but I found my footing.
I sniffled, regardless of the lack of liquid in my nose. “How can it be more nothing?”
He pulled me down the hill. The moaning sounds of the dying people behind us increased as each saw over the hill and came to realize it was more nothing. Miles of nothing.
The hot sun burned my skin, and just as I was about to give up, a scream filled the air. We all spun around to see a screaming man surrounded by birds. They were nearly as tall as he was on his knees, when they pecked at him and made strange sounds.
He waved his hands and shouted.
One beak made contact, snapping at his skin. The scream that ripped from his lips made my entire body clench.
Greg ran, making loud sounds with the black thing. One bird dropped to the sand.
Greg dragged the now-bleeding man to us. The birds started to eat the bird that was dead from the black thing.
I pulled off a layer of clothing and wrapped it around the man’s arm. His blood soaked the thin white shirt instantly.
I pulled off another shirt and wrapped it around his burnt head. We turned, not speaking, and started walking again.
What had felt like an eternity was one morning. As the sun got high in the sky, we came upon something I didn’t recognize at first. It took me a moment before I could place what I saw.
“Is that a person?” the lady next to me asked.
I nodded. “A man, I think.” The picked-at foot that had cooked in the hot sun of the prior days looked like a man’s.
Our weakened group walked like we too were already dead and waiting to be picked over, until something happened.
I didn’t believe it was a truth at first. My mind had become unstable as my survival became less likely with every step. But I heard it a second time, making it even more likely to be real. I shook my head in crazed twitches.
But her dark honeyed hair and huge smile could not belong to another person. She ran, waving her arms and shouting at me. Shouting my name.
“GWYNNNNNNN!”
I looked around, wondering if the stars had come to bring me home to them, like the story my mother told me as a child.
Instead, I was tackled into the sand and suffocated by the spastic person smothering me in kisses. Noises filled the sand. Cries of joy and maybe desperation.
“You came, you came for me. You came,” she chanted into my hair, rocking us both back and forth.
I tried to hug her but a stabbing pain stuck my arm to the sand.
I could see blood pooling out of the shirts I wore.
“Knife,” I whispered and lost my vision. I felt someone touching my arm and a stabbing pain but I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. My eyes were dried shut. Water poured into my mouth like a river, splashing across my face. It soothed and then burned again. I gulped at the cool water, but it didn’t want to stay inside of me. I leaned across the sand, heaving my stomach into it. The cold water was splashed on my head and face again as I threw up again. My eyes opened to see my brother. His chapped and burnt face was stoic as he did something to my arm.
“A knife in your sleeve? Are you crazy?”
I shook my head. “Lyle’s dad, he told me to.” Amber wiped my face. “We need to get you to the shade.”
I was forced to my feet. There were many people there suddenly, like they had crawled from the sand. Men and women who looked like something from what I didn’t know. One man had a huge line on his face; it was red and angry looking. Another man had a nose so large, I couldn’t help but stare. They were unattractive and frightening. Amber looped her arm into my brother, hugging him tightly as silent tears claimed her face.
He held her tightly, putting a hand out for the man with the mark on his face. “I am Gregory Caddie. This is my sister Gwyndolyn.”
The man looked at his hand with a funny look. “I am Ron.” He put his hand out too. Greg grabbed it, shaking it. The man looked completely puzzled.
“Are you from the city? Were you kicked out as well?”
He shook his head. “No.” A sparkle of something filled his dark eyes. He laughed. “You mean from The Last City of Men?” Greg nodded.
The man patted him on the back and laughed harder. The rough-looking people with them laughed too.
“We are Freemen.”
I shook my head. “What’s a Freemen?”
They laughed harder. I tried not to throw up more. He nodded. “We are free men and women. We were born free and live free and die free.”
I noticed his dirty teeth and skin that looked almost like hide from an elephant.
He wrapped an arm around Greg. “Come, you people need to rest.”
I didn’t trust them. They felt untrue to me. I could see the apprehension on Greg’s face. He felt it too. But Amber looked well. She wore clothes like I had never seen. They were dark gray and brown with jagged edges. Her whole leg showed in the shorts and her stomach showed in the shirt, but it was hot and the outfit made sense. Her skin was pink and red, and flaking in parts.
“It’s a sunburn,” she muttered, seeing my eyes.”
I nodded. “Does it hurt?”
She laughed and pointed at my face. “You’ll know soon enough.”
I wrapped my arms around her again. She nuzzled into my hair. “I can’t believe you came for me.”
I could barely see in the blazing heat of the sun, but I knew the look in her eyes.
“Have you slept yet?”
She shook her head. “I watched a lady reset yesterday. She has cried all day and doesn’t know where she is.” Her eyes flickered on the men in the group next to us. “They aren’t fond of crying.”
I nodded, drinking more of the water from the odd container she held for me.
They turned and walked away from us. One by one they disappeared into the sand.
When we got closer, I saw it. It was a strange hole that went from sand to stone. It was steep and went directly into the ground. My skin was almost shivering from the cool of the shade.
People laughed and joked amongst the ugly ones. The rest of us huddled together in a group, saying nothing but seeing the difference between them and us. They were bulging with muscles and marked by what I had to assume were untreated injuries that had grown over. A man with a white eye and a black eye watched me from the corner of them all.
I had a horrid feeling about it all.
“Are there others like us here?”
She nodded. “Yes. Many like us.”
I nodded and followed them.
A lady whispered into my ear, “We are going to be killed or worse.”
I looked a
t her and nodded. “We will stay together, as a group.”
I heard a noise suddenly, something unfamiliar. As we got farther down we all stopped and stared at it.
A frightening amount of water ran past us on the ground. It splashed and frothed.
“It’s a river,” someone spoke.
We all nodded, never having seen one before.
Greg walked over. “They have a city amongst the ruins of a place they do not know the name of. They call this place the River City. There are cave drawings here that discuss what you saw. They aren’t in a cave but they call them that for some reason.”
I met his blue eyes with concern. “This place scares me.”
He nodded. “I know, but what choice do we have?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” We walked until we reached something that again my people stopped and stared at. There, in the shade of the rock, we watched something remarkable. A city spread around a river basin, in the full light of the day. I had studied it in school. I knew about river basins.
People moved along the edge of the water, carrying things and talking to each other. They were like the ugly people we were with. There was something unattractive about them, but they were like us in many ways. They walked and worked and talked, ignoring us as we stood and watched them. They didn’t seem amazed by us, as we were of them. They also didn’t seem like they wanted to know us.
They were like what we had been, before we had evolved. I knew about evolution. I had studied it.
Their skin was darker, and looked like it might be thicker, from being against the elements. They had adapted to their environment, just as we had. We were delicate, lean, and beautiful. I could see that now. There was not one of us that wasn’t beautiful. The city was in the light of the day, but the walls were protected by the rock and the river. We walked along the edge of the river until we reached the first of the buildings. They were not huge like ours; they were small and thin. The roofs were shiny, reflecting the light back at the sun.
My lean, delicate body was battered and bruised and sore in ways I couldn’t describe.
I could see the sway in Amber’s walk. She would need sleep. She would reset and wake remembering nothing.
I missed Lyle and Bran. I hated the journey I had taken, but I hated the world I had come from even more. The people on the riverbank hurried and worked and lived in the world, the way it should have been. We never should have interfered with our minds. It had left us broken, confused and easily manipulated.
The people here seemed peaceful and busy. They didn’t seem war-torn and savage. No one relaxed. Everyone worked, even in the horrendous heat. They offered us rest and shelter and saved us from the desert.
A man greeted us. He had bright-blue eyes and a smile that made my already weak knees weaker. He opened his brawny arms and grinned. “Welcome, my people. Welcome to the Dustlands.”
He was one of us, but he had been here long enough that his skin had thickened and tanned. He had dark-blond hair and bright eyes and a perfect white smile.
Greg offered him a hand. He took it, clasping two hands around it. He shook with my brother.
“I am Michael. This is River City. We welcome all people here. There are rules. No weapons, no violence, no stealing, no fighting.” He winked. “Unless, of course, it’s a match we get to bet on.”
I frowned at that. What was a bet and a match?
“There is housing for the people like us. We may stay here, but we must work in whatever our work was back home.”
I bit my lip. How could I be an engineer of society here?
Amber nodded. “I can show them the way to the houses.”
Greg scowled. “Do many of us stay?”
Michael shook his head. “No. Many believe they can make it on their own. They don’t realize The Last City of Men is an oasis in the sand and all that is left is the Dustlands.” He winked at me. “We need to treat those burns and your fatigue. You will be given a few days to rest, but then you must start working within society and keeping your place here safe.”
“Well, lucky Gwyn and I have our memories.”
Michael‘s face tightened. “You have your memories?”
Greg nodded. “We do. Do you?”
Michael smiled bitterly. “How else do you think I got such a wonderful life as this one?”
We followed Amber to a pair of small dirty houses with broken windows and a generally dirty look to them. She nodded, looking like she might cry, “These are the houses we stay in until we have earned a place in their world.” An animal I didn’t recognize scurried along the ground from the house. People in our small group started to cry. Others like us came to the door, smiling weakly at us.
I swallowed and climbed the rickety stairs. I had never seen a building in such disrepair. It was disturbing. The houses and buildings surrounding the basin looked dirty and very shack-like but this was bad. The hills on either side of us were sharp and jagged. I could see some of the houses were built right into the rock. It was so much smaller than our city, maybe the size of the Gas District. The sand was beige but the rock was a reddish orange. It was stunning against the bright blue of the sky. I had never seen the sky so bright before. There were no clouds, just shadows cast in the red rock from the angle the sun sat at.
We walked into our new home, a fragmented and disheveled group of people. Tears were silently cast about the room, as the eyes wandered into places feet dared not walk. Things scurried about the floors and dust sat on everything.
The people who were there already hugged us. Gripping us with desperate fingers and a tremble to their embrace.
“This is disgusting.”
I looked back at the crying man with the bloody arm. “It is far worse than that.” I started to laugh. They laughed with me. I was on the brink of insanity.
Greg tested the stairs with hesitant steps. Each board creaked, and from somewhere in the fibers of the wood, dust shot out. It filled the air. The more we stirred up the air, the worse it got.
I swallowed, looking around. “We need to clean this up.”
One of the men gave me an angry look. “Who are you to talk for us all?”
Amber stood in front of me. “She was a superior engineer.”
Their eyes lowered. I put my hands out. “I was nothing. But don’t you recall from school—the history lessons? The reason the old ones got sick was the filth. Did you see the skin and condition of the people who live here? They do not heal the way we do. We could turn into that over time or we could clean this place, and still be the people we were yesterday.”
Heads nodded. I nodded with them. “Now, I’m exhausted and I feel something I cannot name, but it chokes me inside. I will remember today when I wake tomorrow, but you all will forget. You will wake to this heap of a house. You will be scared and believe yourselves in a horrid dream.” I looked around. “Or we clean it and you wake to less of a horrid dream. I will explain to everyone tomorrow what has happened. But let’s make this place livable.”
Greg came back down with a pile of bedding. He kicked it down the stairs. “We need to find soap and clean this bedding. It’s not so bad. It needs to be swept and wiped down, but with clean bedding, it will be livable.”
One of the women started dragging the laundry outside. Amber smiled at me. “You always were meant to be a leader.”
I shook my head. “We are equals here. No one is our leader. We can’t afford to place someone above the others and answer for any of their mistakes.”
She laughed. “That is true.” She stepped into me. “I am sorry.”
I sighed. “Me too.” My insides rotted but I said it anyway, “It’s partly my fault you’re here.”
She gave me an odd look. I shrugged. “Let’s get something to sweep with upstairs and I’ll explain everything.”
The man in dust
“We were forced from the city. We are safe here and soon you will remember all of this. Anna, you asked me to remind you daily that you
like this life better. You like being here. You have been teaching the children of these people. The river people.” I smiled at the woman I had come to know as Anna, the schoolteacher.
I nodded toward the crying man. “Henry, you asked me to remind you to be brave, like your mother always did.” He ate the bowl of slop we had come to know as porridge.
I smiled at Amber. “You wanted me to remind you that you were still angry with me for getting you into trouble.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to be angry with you. Don’t plant that seed.”
I laughed. “You also say that every morning.” I grabbed her hand. “I love you.”
She nodded, fighting the tears many of them had succumbed to. “I love you too.”
Greg walked in, giving me a look. “They want us to follow them this morning.” He had become a liaison for us between the river people and our people. We all looked up at him standing there in his black pants with large pockets and black sleeveless shirt.
He was getting bigger and his skin was getting thicker.
“How many days is it, miss?”
I wiped the sweat from my filthy brow. “My name is Gwyn. Twenty-two since we were kicked out. We have been here for twenty-one days.”
Helena, the lady who always whispered to me, nodded. “I remember something.” Her brow turned quizzical. “I remember eating from a dirty bowl, eating a stew of meat called buzzard.”
I clapped my hands together. “Yes. That was two days ago.”
A slow smile crept across her face. “Yes, yes, I told an untruth about liking it. I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the large woman cooking it.”
I laughed. “You remember.”
She started to cry. “I want to go home. I want to forget what it’s like here. What if I forget home instead? Everything was white and clean there. I miss it.”
I grabbed her hands, fighting my own tears. “We will find a way to make this better.”
I settled into my seat and sighed. “There is a man named Lyle. He is like Greg and me. He remembers yesterday and is working to destroy the control over the city and the people. One day, we may very well go home.”