The Human Wilderness (A New America Trilogy Book 1)

by S. H. Livernois

  Eli sat on a rock overlooking a gushing black river that smelled cold and earthy. He pierced an earthworm with a fish hook; it writhed and curled in his fingers. With a little swing, he plopped the line into the water, wrapped the other end around his finger, and waited.

  It was just after dawn, and a fire crackled behind him in his camp, sending little plumes of smoke into the sky. Eli stared at the line in a trance, tufts of white puffing from his mouth to hover over the water, cold nipping his fingertips. He rolled his head back and stared blankly at a sheen of white clouds glowing through the forest canopy above.

  Find Becky. Don't let anyone hurt her.

  I won't, I promise.

  And how was he to keep his promise? He was just one man in hundreds of miles of forests and meadows stretching to the horizon forever, not a flickering light in sight. So many girls were waiting to be saved, and Eli had no idea how to do it. As he watched the river slip over the rocks, he felt like one of the little amber pebbles sitting on the riverbed, the water rushing above and wearing him down.

  Something tugged the line and Eli pulled, but not fast enough. The fish slipped away. He plopped the line back in.

  Eli gazed across the gurgling river to the steep riverbank on the other side, where a row of towering black willows grew. Among them he imagined Bill, his crazed and smiling eyes peering through the green. A girl with curly hair and knobby knees appeared beside him and Bill ogled her, licking his lips. He clasped her by the arm, yanked her backward, and like that, she was gone. Bill's manic voice rasped in his ear.

  Maybe when I see her again, I'll take her behind a tree. I can tell her to think of you, if you like.

  The line tugged again and Eli yanked it back. A slick gray fish slid from the water, writhing, flapping and twirling on the hook. Eli swung it up to plop beside him on the rock and knocked it dead. The fish was too small for two. Then, with a sickening jolt, he remembered that didn't matter: Jane was gone.

  He'd tried to find her. When the sun rose, Eli followed the smear of blood into the woods, but it vanished. He combed the forest floor for proof she'd been there, for signs of where she went, but found none. He crept back into town, searching its decrepit buildings and houses, until he was too close to the probing eyes of the courthouse patrol.

  There was no sign of her there, alive or dead, infected or healthy.

  As he'd left town, he passed that puddle of blood, drying in the late afternoon sun. The howls still echoed; so did Jane's trembling voice.

  Promise me, Eli, that you'll never stop looking. That you'll protect us.

  She'd be angry at him for wasting time. So he forced himself to walk away from Elsberry, his body heavy and sluggish with grief.

  Now, in the light of day, he struggled to go on without her.

  Eli took the fish back to camp, filleted and set it over the coals, then gathered his canteens and went back to the river. On his way, a sharp howl cut the air and he flinched on instinct. The creature yipped and barked and its shrill voice vaulted over the treetops again. It was just a coyote, but sounded eerily like a Parasite.

  Eli rubbed his eyes and wondered where that "amazing place" was, why girls were being dragged there, what was happening to them. What Bill meant when he said they have purpose and value. More questions swirled in his brain. Who were the kidnappers? What were they doing to Lily? How could he hope to save her? No answers followed. Panic consumed him, and the river's steady pulse faded to a distant thrum.

  "What do I do, Jane?" he muttered.

  Figure it out, she'd say. She'd curse at him that he always cowered and put his head down, that he needed to suck it up and fight. If he did nothing, something worse would happen.

  A chickadee twittered in a branch nearby. Eli held onto the sound and the bird sang again. His lungs filled with fresh air and the world around him steadied. He pursed his lips and whistled back.

  Eli squatted at the river's edge, dipped his canteen into its cold depths, and pulled it out. Frigid rivulets dripped down his hand and into his sleeve. He trudged back to his camp and found the fish cooked, ate it in two bites, reignited the fire, filtered the water, then set it over the flames to boil. He sat down on a log and watched the flames lick the bottom of the canteen.

  Lily. Rooney. Meagan. Dana, Lynn, Bonnie. Jane.

  Only he was looking for them.

  The chickadee chirped again. Absently, Eli puckered his lips and called back as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the tattered map, with its blue lines of rivers and its tiny road signs. He traced his finger along a road leading north. At the end of the road was a name, typed in tiny letters: Inniswold. A black line encircled it and someone had written "home" underneath in block letters. The town was north of the courthouse. Robin said Rooney had gone north with Simon.

  What was there, waiting for him? How many men would he have to fight? Or, he wondered with a hard swallow, kill?

  Eli let his water boil another ten minutes while he collected his things, then quietly left the camp. The map told him he needed to head west to reach the northbound road. He glanced at the sun, turned his back on it, and disappeared into the woods.

  Eli found the road mid-morning, wide and flat and running straight on its way north. He listened for Parasites, but the world was quiet. He walked, knowing only that he had to keep going.

  All afternoon and into the evening, silence and empty space followed him. He walked with a crowd of thoughts, listening only to his own breath and his own steps on the road, without Jane. Wondering what had happened to her, what she was now. Was she trapped in the shell of her body, her soul suspended in limbo of some unknown hell?

  Jane would've waited somewhere. If not for him, then for Lily.

  At twilight, Eli spotted a lone barn buried deep in a field of goldenrod. He left the road and trudged to it. Inside, he started a fire and lay on the earthen floor, imagining Jane's rosemary smell. In the dark, he told her stories about his life that he never told her in person. He confessed about what he did at the courthouse but avoided other secrets.

  He drifted to sleep, and Jane's face greeted him there, gaunt and grimy with dirt. Her pointed nose had a sharpened bird's beak, and she pecked the flesh from his face. When she was done, his cheeks were hollowed and bleeding and she purred in his ear.

  Someone deserves to be punished.

  He awoke to sunlight peering through the slats of the barn and a fire burned down to ashes. He stepped outside to a humid, blue morning and hit the road without eating breakfast. The words Jane uttered in his dream pounded in his ears with every step as the faded road climbed a steep hill and swept around a bend.

  "I'm sorry. I'll find her, I promise."

  He repeated the words a few more times and told Jane more stories. About how he joined the Army to please his father. The one time his old man pushed his mother to the floor, cracking her elbow like an egg. How she taught him bird calls and how to bake cookies and that you caught more flies with honey than vinegar. He apologized for still not telling her the other stories and promised to tomorrow.

  At midday, Eli ransacked a wild, overgrown garden for his lunch and kept walking. A couple hours later, he came upon a small, half-buried sign announcing, faintly, that Inniswold was twenty miles away. Eli gazed down the road, cutting through a tunnel of trees, and imagined a crowd of girls with their hands tied and heads down, ushered down its length like cattle.

  If you do nothing, something worse happens.

  Eli adjusted his pack on his shoulders and continued as clouds drifted across the sky, blocking the sun. The sweat dried on his skin and the wind carried the scent of pine. He began to plan.

  Twenty miles was roughly a half day's walk, so he'd be close to Inniswold near sunset. He could make camp nearby and spend the night figuring out his next step. He couldn't walk up to the gates and ask to see Lily. He wasn't smart enough to investigate and manipulate and lie. And he didn't want to kill anyone to get to her.

  But he had to fight, one w
ay or another, and fighting always meant blood and death. So far, he'd been the kind of man who broke a man's bones and sliced open his skin until the secrets fell out. He wanted to be the kind of man who could inspire people with his words.

  The air cooled and the bugs came out to nip at his skin. The forest edged back from the road a little and Eli heard the river again. He climbed a slight rise and from its crest saw water skirt past in an open space where the road should be. At its edge, he peered over a scar of broken asphalt into a narrow chasm; the water rushed below. Downriver, four figures collected water from more placid waters. It was hard to tell which they were — Parasites or the healthy — but Eli hid all the same.

  He slipped the map from his pocket, unfolded it, and found the road snaking north to the bridge, now gone. The blue river flowed northwest. Inniswold was just a few miles north and upriver from where Eli stood. He made note of the three Parasites camps nearby, folded the map, and slid it in his pocket.

  The forest was dim and cool; dark slashes of trunks cut through pools of gray and black, and a breeze wafted the musk of autumn into his nose. He walked toward the river sounds and followed the black ribbon through the woods until it grew too dark to continue. Then he found a camp in between the river and a rocky outcrop.

  In the morning, he'd cross the river and march to their gates. The details of how and what he'd say eluded him, but he'd have to charm his way in. He rehearsed some lines as he set a few rabbit snares, collected pine boughs and firewood, keeping his ears peeled for the sounds of furtive footsteps and shrill howls. By the time he returned to his camp, the sun had vanished. He was leaning over a pyramid of beech wood, trying to coax a flame from his flint and steel, when a voice burst from the woods.

  Eli stopped to listen, half convinced the voice had come from his own mind. The shriek sounded again. Footsteps slammed against the forest floor. Legs slapped against brush.

  The sounds of running.

  He held his breath and set down his flint, flattened himself against the rocky outcrop protecting his camp, and listened. Picked out two sets of footsteps — one chasing, the other fleeing. Two voices, a man's and a woman's, shrieked with panic. Two others, both men, grumbled behind them.

  Not Parasites.

  The whistling swish of a crossbow split the air, and an arrow thudded into a tree trunk. The chased couple shrieked and their pursuers cursed. The voices rushed closer, their dark figures darting between the trees toward him. Eli dashed behind a bush and peered between its leaves.

  Two people emerged from the right. They raced to a boulder and hid behind it. In the moonlight, Eli spotted the whites of their eyes, wet clothes, the dark smears of blood across their faces.

  Their pursuers passed Eli, a blur of armed men in heavy vests. They disappeared among the trees and their curses echoed behind them. The couple hid behind the rock a few minutes and had a silent conversation. Eventually they pointed south, crept from behind their rock, searched the woods, and ran in Eli's direction. He ducked and backed up to stay out of sight. Suddenly his foot caught on something soft and he fell backward, landing hard on his backside. From the ground, he spied the strangers' feet flying over the forest floor and out of sight.

  Eli dropped his head to the ground and stared up at the sky, steel gray against the black bones of the forest canopy. He sensed a small, dark shape in the corner of his eye, turned, and found it inches from his face. His eyes focused on a pair of sneakers.

  Eli raised himself to his elbows. The sneakers were attached to a pair of feet, and they to scrawny legs, the shins scraped.

  Then knobby knees gouged with raw wounds.

  Cut off jean shorts, dangling white threads.

  Dark curly hair.

  Dimples.

  Little shadows, cast by the dying sun passing through the leaves, played across her silver face. The ground beneath her was sticky and dark. Eli raised a hand and found his glove coated in blood.

  It didn't look like her, not the girl he remembered. Not the face that had haunted his every waking moment and dream. Not his Lily. Eli lay a hand on her cheek to see if its shape felt familiar. The skin was frigid. How long had she been dead?

  As he lay in a comfortable bed, someone was killing her.

  As he ate dinner on the top floor of the courthouse, she lay here, alone and far from home.

  As he imagined her alive, her blank eyes stared up at a sky switching from day to night, seeing nothing.

  She was doomed the minute she stepped outside the walls.

  "No, no, no, no." Eli ran his thumb along Lily's cheek, willed it to warm, for her blue eyes to spark awake and flutter in their sockets. For her to smile. "I'm sorry."

  Eli knelt beside her, the familiar lines of her body and face sprawling, still and stiff on the ground. A sob clenched his throat and he opened his mouth to cry out. Grumbling voices echoed somewhere and cut him off. They spoke of losing someone, how "she" would react, if they should keep looking in the morning. Eli ducked down behind the bush beside Lily and waited for them to pass. Another sob burned his throat and the muscles spasmed. Eli buried his mouth in his sleeve and heaved silently into it.

  "She doesn't need to know," one voice said.

  "I won't tell if you don't," said the other.

  A pause.

  "I don't want a bullet in my head."

  Their voices faded to low mumbles and were swallowed by the night. Crickets and owls woke up to fill the silence, but otherwise, everything was quiet and empty.

  Eli bent over the forest floor and vomited the meager contents of his stomach over dead leaves. When he was done, he breathed deeply and sat there as a cold moon rose in the sky, bathing Lily's corpse in silver light. The fear and brutality that had been rotting inside him filled every limb and nerve and cell until he became nothing but rage. One face now floated behind his eyes: Simon.

  He killed Lily. Eli knew it like he knew his own evil deeds.

  And wherever he was hiding in this empty world, Eli was going to slit his throat.

  Chapter 23

  Eli stared at a peeling white sign with half its letters falling off, houses sprawled beyond it. A voice in the back of his mind told him he needed shelter, and his feet carried him forward.

  The light was dim and tinted yellow, but Eli didn't know whether it was dawn or dusk. Identical white houses passed by on the right, their dark windows staring out at the street like dead eyes. On the left were the charred remains of their neighbors.

  How did he get here?

  He remembered digging a grave for Lily with his bare hands and dropping her into the earth. From the bottom her skin glowed silver, like a lamp in the dark. He covered her with dirt and whispered goodbye. He left her there.

  Was that last night? This morning? A week ago?

  The voice told him he was supposed to find a river. Inniswold was on the other side and he needed to get there. Somehow he'd ended up here, where all the houses looked the same, and Eli knew he should turn around.

  But Lily was in the woods behind him, dead and buried, and he didn't want to go back. Someone had spilled her blood across the forest floor. Simon. Tears burned his nose and throat and Eli forgot about the river. When he opened his eyes next, the light was darker and more houses unfurled behind him.

  Inniswold. Eli forgot where he put the map. He gazed at the sky to find the sun, but it had disappeared. Heavy gray clouds loomed overhead, grazed by the yellow leaves of a maple tree that had turned too early.

  Or was it too early? When had he left Hope? When did Lily die? Who killed her? It might have been him. It sounded like something he'd do. He couldn't remember.

  And so he walked.

  Sights floated by: a flag pole without a flag, a pickup truck with rotted wood piled in the bed, butterfly decals stuck on a window, a fridge standing alone in the frame of a blackened house.

  The voice told him he was lost. Eli turned to ask Jane where they were, but she'd left him. He looked for Frank, to ask him where Jane
had gone, but Eli couldn't find him either. Then it all came back.

  Lily, white in her earthen grave. Jane, running into a meadow. Frank, lying on the forest floor, staring at the sky.

  And Simon — the explorer, the troublemaker, the charmer — with his dirty hands clutching a knife.

  They were all gone. He'd broken his promise. He had nowhere to go.

  The fog cleared again. Eli looked left and saw the shell of a car parked in a driveway. On the right was a wooden swing set, its wood cracked and chains broken. His legs buckled and he fell hard onto his knees. The voice told him the Parasites would be along any minute to take him away to relieve this pain and welcome him into a tribe. Then he'd never be alone, go hungry, suffer, or worry about anything ever again.

  He waited, lifting his face to the sky with closed eyes. Rain misted the air and it coated his skin like cold steam.

  Any moment now.

  His knees began to throb and gravel dug into his skin between the bones. Raindrops pelted his head and shoulders and he shivered. Voices mumbled behind him. Eli waited for the creature's sharp nail to graze his neck or teeth to rip into his flesh. He tipped his head slightly to make it easier.

  A hand seized his shoulder. Male and female voices shouted close enough to ring his eardrums. They were beckoning to him once again. This time, he was ready.

  Please. I'm so tired.

  Eli was dragged down the street and steered up a sidewalk. Shadows enveloped him and a door slammed. He was pushed onto a couch, his jacket yanked off, and a blanket wrapped around him. A figure bent over something and after a few minutes, an orange light filled the room. Eli was warm.

  "What the hell were you doing?" a voice spat. It sounded like Jane, but it couldn't be. Eli drifted off, pretending that she was in the room, cursing at him again. Lights and sounds faded and his chin fell to his chest.

  Sometime after, he opened his eyes on flames dancing in the dark and logs spitting embers into the air. The firelight traced the edges of a TV mounted on the wall. Pictures had been hung next to it: family portraits and pictures of several kids, all smiling through white dust.