The Human Wilderness (A New America Trilogy Book 1)

by S. H. Livernois

The strangers rushed to Frank and Jane. "Hand 'em over," a different voice said. Swishing and thumping and grunting followed, then hands ripped Eli's knife from his pants.

  "All right," a deep voice grumbled. "Let's get them home to see the boss."

  Chapter 10

  Five men and a woman shoved Eli, Frank, and Jane down a well-trod path that wove through a stand of red pine. Dusk brought rain; fat drops pelted a carpet of amber needles underfoot.

  "Where are they?" a voice whispered behind Eli, strained and hoarse.

  "Who?" Eli asked.

  "You know who. Dana, Megan, and Bonnie. What did you do with them, you fucking pervert?"

  The man poked Eli in the back, the tip of his spear digging in hard next to his spine.

  "We don't know who they are," Frank said.

  A man who appeared to be the leader, stocky and clothed in red and black fleece, aimed a crossbow at the back of Frank's neck.

  "We've seen you before," a woman said. She had a thick black braid and held a knife at Jane's back. "We know it's you who took them."

  Eli, Frank, and Jane had been stripped of their weapons and supplies and were outnumbered, six to three. Fearful as he was, Eli couldn't stop staring at the strangers. He hadn't seen so many new faces in three years.

  "Where are you taking us?" Eli said as he tried to jiggle loose the rope tied around his wrists.

  "You never mind where we're going," the man in the fleece answered. He squinted over his shoulder at Eli. "Where are they? You kill 'em? Keeping 'em somewhere?"

  "Let's talk." Eli twisted his wrists until his skin was raw and his right hand began to slip out. "We got the same problem —"

  "Yeah, let's talk." Eli's captor jabbed him in the back again, and pain sliced upward to his neck. "You tell us what you did with our girls and then we can tie you to a tree as bait for the animals. How's that?"

  Eli's hand slipped free as a grunt sounded to the right. Eli turned to find the woman with the braid bent over double and Jane stumbling back. The woman caught her breath, raised her knife, and lunged after her.

  Eli had a second to act.

  He whipped around and met his captor, a man with black hair and shocked green eyes that flicked to Eli's unbound hands. He clenched his spear and raised the point to Eli's face. Everyone froze for a split second. Then weapons whipped through the air. Feet scraped pine needles. Eli's captor glanced left and Eli kicked out his foot and cut him off at the ankles. He crashed to the ground and the spear tumbled from his hand. Eli grabbed it and flung it into a bush.

  All six of their captors ringed around him, six weapons thrust into his face. Eli spotted Frank sprawled on the ground and Jane coughing violently, her hands on her knees. Everyone else was panting heavily.

  Eli put his hands up. "We didn't take no one. We're looking for someone, too."

  The leader's eyebrow twitched. He glanced at his friends. "Who?"

  "My daughter, Lily," Frank croaked. "Someone kidnapped her."

  The group traded looks.

  "When?" the leader asked.

  Jane put a hand on Frank's shoulder and stepped forward. "Yesterday morning."

  "Who took her?"

  "A man named Simon. Cocky little prick with a brown beard."

  The strangers scowled as one.

  "How 'bout yours?" Eli said.

  The leader's face fell. "Six months ago." He bent down and fetched the spear from a bed of needles and pointed down the path with it. "Home's that way."

  Frank caught Eli's eye and read his friend's thoughts: more girls, more victims.

  They were all untied and led through the forest in silence. After half a mile, the narrow path stopped abruptly at a wall. A man was perched on a platform built near the top of one of those tall pines; he peered down and gestured to someone on a platform on the other side. A small door cut into the steel wall creaked open; they entered and it slammed shut behind them.

  The metallic screech was oddly comforting and Eli's heart skipped into a slower rhythm. A hard knot, which formed in his chest the moment he'd found Ben outside the wall, began to ease.

  The man in the fleece lowered the wool from his face, revealing hollow cheeks and a bristled beard underneath. He peeled off his gloves as his partners scattered. "We call it Penelope. After the boss' wife. I'm Jack." The man stuck out a hand. Eli took it.

  He took the warm, unfamiliar hand. "Eli. That's Frank and Jane."

  Frank nodded, but Jane ignored Jack. Instead, her gaze flitted over her new surroundings as if searching for something.

  "There isn't many of us. Just thirty. How many of you are there?"

  "Seventy-five or so," Eli said.

  Jack shook his head with a smile. "Glory be. Who'da thought?" He led them down a flagstone walkway and into the settlement. "Let's go see Amos."

  The walkway bisected a muddy strip of tilled land dotted with skinny plants, where a gaunt man hunched in the dirt, tugging weeds. After the garden was a mess of ramshackle cabins, cookfires, and tree stumps, where emaciated people tended to chores: skinning a rabbit, stirring something in a pot over a fire, stacking wood, milking a goat. A small hill rose opposite the wall, and on its crest stood a massive building with tall, tinted windows overlooking all of it.

  "Here's where we all hang our hats."

  Jack led them past a wooden sign — which identified the building as the Pine Grove State Park Visitor's Center — and down an intricate brick path to the front door. Beside the building was a muddy clearing of land, where someone watched the strangers arrive with eyes quivering inside a hollow, wasted skull. The rest of him was skin and bones wearing only tattered shorts, his head and skeletal arms hanging from a stockade.

  Eli turned to Jack. "What did he do?"

  He paused in the doorway. "Killed a man. He's being sentenced in the morning. Hard labor, most likely." Jack spoke the words casually, as if speaking of the harvest, and stepped inside. "Let's go, folks."

  Eli tried to keep his face blank and ground his teeth as they followed Jack into a cavernous building, its ceiling stretching high overhead to wooden beams. Candle flames sputtered throughout, revealing paintings of landscapes, closed doors leading to unknown rooms, a reception desk.

  "What's this?" The brisk voice snapped like a gunshot into the quiet. It was followed by a slender figure and a severe face: cheeks pitted with acne scars; a thin-lipped, frowning mouth; and a crag of a nose. Steely eyes flitted in their sockets, studying the unfamiliar faces.

  "Caught 'em in one of the traps." Jack introduced them, and the man tipped his head forward slightly in greeting. "Folks, this is Amos Moore. He runs this place."

  "Nice to meet —" Frank began.

  "Why aren't they in the jail?" Amos cut in with a disbelieving voice. He advanced on Eli. "Where I can question them without interruption."

  Eli clenched his fist as a hot flash whooshed over him and nerves pricked the base of his skull.

  "They're not the kidnappers, Amos," Jack said.

  "So why are they here, then?"

  Frank glanced at Eli, and his anger ebbed at the sight of his low brows and drooping mouth.

  "We were just looking for my daughter," he whispered.

  "And who are you looking for?" Jane's voice snapped through the cavernous room. "I think it's time we got some damn answers."

  Amos' thin lips crept back from crooked teeth to form an unsettling grin.

  "We're looking for a group of men stealing girls."

  Once night fell, the gentle, pattering raindrops transformed into a torrent that thrashed the building. Eli watched the storm from a tall, tinted window as thunder split the sky and lightning cracked. Its light flashed bright against the wall, reminding him he was safe. His heart thumped slow and calm, but he nervously chewed away a half-moon of nail from his thumb.

  The dark, dangerous stretch of wilderness loomed in the back of his mind, threatening.

  "Come get supper, Eli," Jane cooed in Eli's ear.

  Lightning bl
azed again. Eli smoothed his hair and shirt — though it was dirty and sweat-stained — and followed her to a long table a few feet away. The room was probably once a conference room. Now, a half dozen people gathered around the conference table for dinner, their small voices bouncing off an invisible ceiling, their faces lit by flickering oil lamps. They were all sickly: thin, with bulging eyes and yellow-tinged skin, some with missing teeth and sores.

  Jane motioned for Eli to a seat between her and Frank. Amos sat at the head of the table, upright and stoic.

  "It's not much," he said. "Enjoy if you can."

  Eli looked down at the meager plate set before him: cornbread, a meat patty, a couple small slices of tomato. Everyone at the table had exactly the same dish, and everyone scarfed it down in under five minutes.

  "So, tell me about your settlement," Amos asked when they were done.

  Frank took the helm. "Been around since the start. We have two walls. A mill, few dozen animals. How long has this place been here?"

  Amos sat back and rubbed his temple. "Year and a half, maybe." He smiled; Eli read both triumph and despair in his face. "We'll see how long this place lasts."

  "You've all been out there recently, I take it," Eli cut in.

  "For the most part."

  "Any more settlements?"

  "I don't really know. The earliest ones are gone. So are many of the newer ones." Amos gestured around the table. "We all came from such places. Trust me, whatever settlements remain won't last long."

  "How did these other places fail?" Frank asked.

  Amos sighed and twirled his cup between his fingers. "Parasites got in, for the most part. Other groups just ate themselves from the inside out. Starvation or sickness took others." The faces around the table darkened. "How 'bout you? See many survivors out there?"

  Eli focused on the smears of food on his plate. Blood warmed his hand. A blade punched through flesh. A man pretending to be a Parasite cried for help.

  "Not a soul," Frank said.

  "What about these kidnappers?" Jane cut in. "Where do they come from?"

  Amos stared blankly at the center of the table and shook his head. "No idea. We didn't think anyone was left until they showed up one day."

  "What happened?" Jane fixed her sharp eyes on Amos.

  Everyone at the table dropped their heads as if in prayer.

  "Dana, Lynn, Megan, Bonnie, and Dominique went to the river that day to get water. It was washing day. Only Dominique came back. She'd gone off to pee and this young man came out of the woods, chatted with the girls, led them off somewhere." Amos kneaded his brow with his fingers. "She followed them for a while. This man took the girls to a small cabin, and some other men dragged them inside. A few minutes later, a whole crowd of girls came out, Dominique said."

  Eli pictured the cabin, the footprints littered inside.

  "How many?" Jane asked.

  "She thinks a half dozen," Amos said.

  Six girls, six months ago. Eli frowned at the table, trying to understand it. When he did, he only imagined Lily being hurt. His throat tightened.

  "You know the rest, Tim." Amos pointed to a young man at the table with slouched shoulders and a thin black mustache. "He's a scout."

  Tim coughed and his lungs rattled with phlegm. "I seen them twice since. Just a few of them at a time, always headin' west."

  "Who are they?" Jane pressed.

  "Don't know, ma'am."

  "Why didn't you go after them?"

  "I was alone, ma'am," Tim said. "There was three of 'em altogether."

  "And we need everyone here to keep this place going," Amos added coolly.

  Jane huffed and fell back into her chair. She glowered at Tim with narrowed eyes.

  "We set the traps in the area Tim saw them pass through," Amos said. "No luck catching anyone till today."

  The only woman at the table stood and started collecting plates. Their glassy clang echoed off the shadowed ceiling.

  "How many traps you set?" Eli said.

  "Half dozen," Amos answered. "Why?"

  Every face turned to him; his skin warmed from the attention. "They all a spring snare?"

  Amos nodded.

  "You up your chances with a net trap," said Eli. "Lay 'em out in their path, nice and wide, disguise it, and they're sure to step on it."

  "You built a trap like this before?" Amos said.

  "Sure, sure. You'll need lots of cordage. Takes a while, but they work." Lightning cracked and the wall glimmered bright and strong. Eli held on to the soothing sight. "Catching 'em sounds better than trying to track 'em in the woods."

  The words had tumbled out before he could stop them. Jane glared at him with an eyebrow crooked.

  Frank folded his hands on the table. "And what's your plan if you catch them?"

  Amos grinned. "That's easy. First, we figure out what they did with our girls." He leaned back into his chair, shadows pooled in the pits in his cheeks. "And then we kill them."

  The words squirmed in Eli's mind. He'd thought of it himself, of killing Simon, but murder as justice? No matter how much his fingers itched to squeeze the kidnapper's throat, it wasn't right. He peeked at Jane, hoping to find the same thoughts reflected in her face. Instead, she was chuckling.

  "That's the smartest thing you've said all night."

  Everyone at the table had a laugh at that and Amos' grin broadened. "There may not be any laws left, but that doesn't mean there can't be justice."

  "Here, here," the table said together.

  Eli thought of the man captive in the stockade and the life sentence he faced the next day. Skeletal faces smiled around the table and he shivered.

  "Best we get to bed now. These folks have had a long day." Amos stood and signaled for the others to follow; they rose one by one and disappeared down a dark hallway. Candles were snuffed out and the room plunged in darkness. Amos took an oil lamp in hand and gestured for Eli, Frank, and Jane to follow him to the door, then led them silently down the hall. He paused in the doorway to a small room.

  "Your quarters for the night," he said. "I hope it's comfortable."

  Eli, Jane, and Frank filed in. The room was vast and outfitted with three cots, the wall opposite lined with towering black windows. Their packs had been brought in and laid on the floor. Amos set the oil lamp on a table by the door.

  "We'll give you your weapons back when you leave," Amos said as Frank and Jane found a cot and sat down. Eli stayed by the doorway. "But I'd suggest you stay. Help us catch these guys, find your girl."

  "Sure, sure," Eli murmured.

  Amos backed into the hall, his pitted cheeks and steely eyes vanishing into shadow, but the light still traced the crag of his nose.

  "Sleep well," his voice echoed from an invisible mouth, and he clacked the door shut.

  Silence settled on the room for a minute. Then Jane erupted, every pointy feature of her face sharpened by light and shadow.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I just want to help," Eli said. "They're trying to do someth —"

  "They're doing nothing." Lightning glinted in Jane's sharp eyes. They detected, once again, what Eli wanted to hide. "You want to hole up with them?"

  "I'm not saying anything like that." Eli stared at his feet. Spoken out loud, the idea shamed him. He wanted to keep hunting for Lily, but staying behind safe walls, protected from whatever was out there — from himself, especially — was still alluring.

  "Look me in the face when you lie to me," Jane spat.

  Thunder grumbled. Eli peeked at Frank first. He stood with his arms crossed, eyebrows low over his glasses, the details of his face shrouded. Eli imagined his familiar wrinkles lined with anger.

  His fear took over.

  "It's not bad plan," Eli said. Frank rose from the cot and strolled to the window; the glass gleamed silver with lightning. "They'll catch 'em. We could lose her trail in the woods. We could get killed —"

  Jane's voice grew soft and dangerous. "Then you're a co
ward, just like them. I thought better of you, Eli."

  Frank stood by the window with his back to Eli and his arms crossed. Eli swallowed hard through the thickness gathering in his throat, the souring in his stomach.

  "Why do you think they kidnapped her? And the others?" Jane's voice rose with another roll of thunder and she bent at the waist, thrusting her finger high with every point. "Do they know what men do to girls? To women? You heard Amos. There are no laws. People can just do as they please. Men can..." She drifted for a moment, scratched near her eye, and continued in a softer voice. "We're easy victims."

  "And every minute we wait here is another minute my little girl is being hurt," Frank said, his voice monotonous, tired. "And you want to leave her out there. That's the kind of man you are?"

  Eli would rather Frank have hit him. "I don't know what kind of man I am."

  The room shrunk. Eli stared at the carpeted floor, the cots, a painting on the walls of rolling, forested hills. Thunder rumbled and the walls shook, lightning flashed, and a sickening, heavy silence fell.

  "I'm going to sleep," Frank said.

  Jane glowered at Eli one last time, shook her head, and dropped to her cot. Frank lowered the wick on the oil lamp. A warm glow remained, just enough for Eli to see the shapes of his friends in the semi-darkness, laying down on their cots, shifting to their sides so their backs were to him. He stood there a few minutes, watching, counting the lighting flashes. Waiting for courage.

  "I coulda saved her," Eli finally said. He fidgeted with his nails, the edge of each chewed down. "Saw her go into the woods that morning. Didn't know. Shoulda." He paused, sinuses burning. "What if I lose her again?"

  Neither Frank nor Jane stirred at the sound of his voice. Thunder cracked and Eli felt it cut through his chest. Eventually he gave up, moved to his cot by the window, his cowardly words haunting his mind. His friends' soft, steady breathing soon filled the room.

  Eli didn't lie down. Instead, he watched the lightning glimmer across the scene outside, a dozen feet from his window: the prisoner in his stockade, thrashed by sheets of rain, head drooped and hair hanging in wet clumps.

  Thunder growled through the night sky. Lightning spotlighted the prisoner again, his head now craning around, perhaps searching for rescuers. He killed one man. Eli didn't want to count how many he'd killed, or go back outside the wall and add to the number.