The fire is an easy-to-follow beacon and we stop shy of the makeshift alarm, to the left of the latrine. I’m hoping to see Halla, thinking she might have been brought out for dinner, but she’s not visible. Neither is the man or woman. I wonder if they’re all in the hut, retired for the night. If so, it’s going to be harder to slit the rear flap and steal Halla away. Right then, the woman brushes through the scrap of fabric covering the opening, her hand clamped around Halla’s arm.
“Gawdamn breeders, needin to piss twenny times a day,” the woman grumbles, hauling Halla toward the latrine ditch, mere feet from where Wyck and I crouch. I feel him looking at me in the darkness and we freeze—no time to back away. Halla’s hands are tied behind her and her feet are roped together, so she moves with an awkward shuffle. There’s a scrape on her cheek, but otherwise she looks unhurt. She’ll be able to run, I hope, once we cut her bonds. Her torn and muddied tunic falls mid-way down her thighs and her leggings are missing. With a lurch of my stomach I realize it’s so she won’t need to have her hands free to use the latrine.
The woman shoves Halla toward the ditch and stands there, arms akimbo. I don’t see or hear the bearded man. Maybe this is our chance. Apparently, Wyck thinks the same thing because he surges forward, hurdling the alarm wire and the ditch where Halla crouches, sticking the beamer almost in the woman’s face before she can react.
“Cut Halla loose,” he calls to me.
The woman lets out a shriek. “Armyn!”
Swinging the beamer sideways with both hands, Wyck smacks her across the face and she falls. I dash to Halla. She’s standing, confused, and looks at me like I’m a ghost.
“Everly?”
I draw her toward the fire so I can see well enough to slice through the ropes binding her wrists. “What? You thought we’d leave you?” I can’t resist giving her a quick squeeze. “We need to get out of here before that man gets back.”
A crash and a roar from behind us tell me it’s too late. I press the knife into Halla’s hands so she can cut her ankles free, and pick up my rifle. The man barrels forward, face a mask of confusion and rage behind the ginger beard, tossing aside the five-gallon container of water he’s apparently hauled from a nearby source. It lands near the fire, sluicing it out, and the sudden darkness leave us disoriented. I hear Wyck’s weapon go off and let loose a shot toward where the man was standing when the fire died. I don’t know if it hits him.
Scufflings and grunts come from beside me and I think the bearded man is fighting Wyck. The meaty thwack of fist on flesh tells me someone’s landed a punch. A heavy body thuds into me and I grab a sleeve instinctively. By the gamey smell, it’s the man. He jabs his elbow back and it smashes into my nose. Searing pain fells me, still clutching a handful of his shirt. The man staggers. The shirt rips free. Wyck’s on the man before he can regain his balance, the barrel of the beamer jabbed into his throat. I can just make out their silhouettes in the darkness.
“I gots her, I gots the breeder.” The woman’s voice rings out triumphantly. “Leggo my son!”
A horrible gurgle follows the last word. A cloying coppery odor bites at the back of my throat. I suck in a deep breath, fear turning me cold. “Halla?”
“Maw,” the man bellows. He lunges forward, and Wyck fires. The man collapses, moaning. I can’t see where he’s hit.
It has all happened so fast, I’m momentarily disoriented. I can’t breathe right; there’s blood in my mouth from my broken nose. The man struggles to rise, a crippled mammoth. I bring my gun up. I hesitate. I can’t make myself shoot him, not when there’s any other option. “Run,” I yell, heading to where I last saw Halla.
I trip over something and go sprawling. It’s yielding and warm, with a ripe odor. My palm lands in a pool of slickness.
“Everly?”
It’s Halla’s voice, barely more than a whisper. I scramble up, and bump into Wyck who grabs my hand. We head toward her voice. Behind us, the man bumbles around and knocks into something that clangs. A moment later, there’s a whumpf and a ball of pink fire boils up. The Psyche still. We can’t help but pause to look. The gas hangs in the air like a weird pink fog, tendrils spreading toward us.
“Don’t breathe it in,” I tell the others, pushing at them to get them moving again. The pink fog disperses around us. I cough. “Run.”
“Maw, Maw! Where are you? Talk to me, gawdammit, Maw.”
He knows. I can hear the grief in his voice behind the rage, the dawning awareness of his aloneness. Great sobs, the bawling of a wounded animal, wrench at me as we run and run.
I plough into the snakes hanging from the tree. There’s more of them, a curtain of sleek, scaled bodies patterned in mottled grays and blacks, in copper and geometric shapes, in red, black and yellow stripes. Pupils that are vertical slits regard me from beady eyes. They’re still alive! They writhe and hiss, striking at me. I bat at them, terrified, and they swing toward me. One sinks its fangs into my arm and another latches onto my face. Their poison courses into me. I’m screaming and flailing my arms, trying to get away as they detach themselves from the tree and begin to twine around me.
“Everly, there are no snakes.”
Someone is shaking me.
“No snakes. It’s the Psyche. You’ve got to be quiet.”
A hand covers my mouth, smothering me. It’s not a hand—it’s a snake, oozing into my mouth. I can’t breathe. I buck.
“Please, Ev.” The voice is desperate. “He’ll hear you. Take my hand.”
I do as directed, grabbing tight to an offered hand, and run. The snakes are still with me—we’re not outrunning them—but ever so gradually they begin to fade as my system metabolizes the Psyche. I realize I’m holding Wyck’s hand and let go. I’ve got a raging thirst, a product of the Psyche, but we don’t stop. I’m not sure how long we run, bunched in a group, separating only to go around trees and other obstacles. We eventually slow to a walk for Halla’s sake, and continue in silence until we reach the edge of the swamp. We stand within the tree line, drinking water, and contemplate the expanse of nothingness stretching before us. I want to keep going. The swamp provides more cover, but it gives me the willies.
“I am so done with this swamp.” I dribble a little water into my hands and rub them, trying to get rid of the crone’s dried blood. At least the snakes are gone. Hopefully, the Psyche is well and truly out of my system. I’ve heard it can cause hallucinations months or even years after inhalation.
“What was it like?” Wyck asks.
“Horrible. I can’t believe people give ration credits to experience that.”
Halla fumbles awkwardly with her water bladder and the rising moon shows me that she’s still clutching the gory knife. Horrified, I gently pry it from her hand. Without saying anything, she sucks greedily from the water bladder.
“We should keep going,” Wyck says. “We don’t know how badly hurt that guy is.”
“Halla, are you able to keep on?” I ask.
In answer, she steps forward and strides into the open. Wyck and I follow.
The moon is full and the walking is easy, at least compared to the swamp. The moonlight gilds the occasional tree or rock and makes deep hollows of slight depressions in the landscape. The quality of sound is different in the open. In the Okefenokee, the insect chirrings and flappings and whinings were practically deafening, held in, perhaps, by the moisture and the denser vegetation. Out here, it’s so quiet it’s echo-y. I feel like a whisper would carry for miles, all the way to the stars blinking so high above. We walk until almost midnight and then, weary and hungry, stop for food and water.
“How’d they catch you, Halla?” Wyck asks, scooping up the nutrient-dense mush from one of the IPF food pods.
I’ve been carefully not intruding on Halla’s silence, giving her some space, and I frown at Wyck. He doesn’t notice because he’s looking at Halla.
She starts to say something, but her voice doesn’t work. She clears her throat. Her drawl is more noticea
ble than usual when she speaks. “When I first took off on the scooter, I was panicked. I think I skimmed around in circles before I finally thought to check my compass. Once I figured out which way to go, I didn’t have any trouble at all, other than worrying about you. I got almost to the rendezvous point and stopped to rest. I was so worried about you, wondering if you’d manage to get away from the soldiers, hoping you weren’t hurt, that I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have. That man snuck up behind me and picked me up, like I was a doll. I never even heard him coming. He carried me to their camp and handed me over to his mother like . . . like I was a special kind of mushroom, or tasty snake he’d found in the swamp.
“She knew right away that I was pregnant, and she was excited about it. She kept telling him how much money they could make selling me to Bulrush.”
“Who’s he?” I ask.
Halla shrugs. “No idea.”
“Did they hurt you?” Wyck again, with the blunt questions.
“No. She even knew how to stop my bleeding. She said it happens that way sometimes, that pregnant women ‘spot’ a little, and that it was nothing to worry about. She told Armyn that because he didn’t think it was worth feeding me. And then you guys came.” She offers a trembling smile.
I suspect there was more that happened between her arrival at the camp and our appearance, but I don’t call her on it. I lean over and hug her hard.
She pulls away after only a moment. “What happened with the soldiers?” she asks, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her chin on them.
Wyck and I are quiet for a moment. I think we’re trying to figure out how much of the truth to tell her.
“The scooters had transponders. That’s how they found us,” Wyck says. He pauses. “I shot one. He fell in the quicksand and disappeared. He was going to shoot Everly.”
“She was going to take my baby.”
I feel something happening between Wyck and Halla, a bond forging. They understand something about each other that I’m not privy to; at least, that’s the way it seems to me. I’m the odd man out. The realization hurts me and knocks me a little off-kilter. Before, I was kind of our trio’s common denominator; Halla and I were best friends, and Wyck was more my friend than Halla’s. Now, the dynamic has changed. No one has said anything, but I know it. I itch at a mosquito bite and break into the silence to tell about ambushing the second IPFer.
I finish by enumerating the supplies we got from the six-seater ACV. “We’re good for several days, even without your pack,” I tell Halla. “Then, well . . .” The barren terrain doesn’t hold out much hope for foraging success
“We should travel at night,” Wyck says, “and hole up during the day. We’re too easy to spot in all this”—he gestures widely—“emptiness.”
Halla and I murmur agreement. Halla stands. “We should go.”
Wyck scrambles up and joins her. I seal my backpack and follow, trailing them by two steps.
Chapter Fifteen
For almost a week, we travel by night and sleep by day, two of us in the camouflaged IPF shelter that alters color to blend with the environment, and one standing watch. We’re all starting to smell a bit ripe, and it’s most noticeable in the close space of the shelter. Wyck and I kiss again one night while Halla’s standing watch, and his unshaven whiskers scruff my face. The feel of his tongue against mine makes my body pulse with warmth but Halla’s there and we’re tired, so Wyck draws away after fifteen heated minutes and we fall asleep holding hands. We see a small band of travelers once, on the horizon, what looks like parents with two small children, but they scurry away when they spot us. It’s weird to think of anyone being afraid of us. We have to use the beamers to scare away a man who approaches our campsite near dusk one day; Halla wants to offer him food, but Wyck and I don’t like the look of him. The charge is getting low; we won’t be able to count on the weapons much longer. We come across a creek on the second night and are able to top up our water bladders, adding hydropure pills to be safe. We bathe in the running water, relishing the opportunity to wash off the blood that lingers under our fingernails, in skin creases, and in Halla’s case, stiffens the front of her tunic. In the dark, we scrub ourselves mere feet apart in the creek, afraid to separate. We continue on clean, not even minding the way our wet clothes chafe our thighs and underarms.
When we come across towns, we give them a wide berth even though, for the most part, they seem deserted. We catch a whiff of smoke one night and I think I hear voices. We hear an ACV not too far away another day. The countryside may seem lifeless, but there are people and animals out here, all of them as wary as we are, I think. I wonder about the people. Are they outlaws who committed some crime? Unlicensed parents who refused to let a Kube raise their children? Are they living apart because they’re scared of the flu returning? Before I left the Kube, I lumped all the non-city dwellers into the “outlaw” category; now I see that people have lots of reasons for striking out on their own. Every now and then I get the feeling that we’re being watched, but if so, it’s probably only because everyone is wary.
On the sixth night, the terrain changes. It’s hillier now, and there are more trees, most of them covered with a canopy of kudzu. We haven’t crossed even a small road in hours, and I get the feeling that we’re in a spot that would have been the middle of nowhere, even before the flu. Despite that, I feel uneasy and keep looking over my shoulder. With dawn approaching, we’re looking for a place to sleep when Wyck stumbles.
“Ow.” He bends to loosen the teeth of the concertina wire wrapping his ankle. He looks up. “Wow, what is this place?”
Wyck wears the NVGs most of the time, but I motion for them now. Spools of concertina wire trail from listing metal poles. There’s an inner and an outer fence, both sagging, with two watchtowers on the north and south sides. What looks like a short runway stretches away from us on the far side of the compound, whatever it is. There are no structures except the towers. I suspect that before the locusts this facility would have been almost invisible, surrounded by forest and far from any form of civilization.
“Not a clue,” I say, handing the NVGs to Halla.
“There’s a sign,” she says, pointing to a metal rectangle secured to the fence’s metal links.
I put my face close to it, able to make it out as the first hint of light streaks the horizon. There are no words, just a stick figure getting zapped by electricity which tells me the fence used to be electrified. “Not much of a welcome mat.” I look around. “I can’t imagine what they wanted to protect—there’s nothing here.”
“Nothing we can see,” Wyck says. His curiosity clearly aroused, he squeezes between a gap in the fence and begins to look around.
“We should keep going,” Halla says uneasily. “It’s getting light. We need somewhere to camp.”
“This is as good a place as any,” Wyck argues. “We can sleep up there.” He gestures to one of the towers. “There’s got to be something here. I’m gonna check it out.” He moves further into the compound. After a moment’s hesitation, I follow him. Halla lingers on the other side, but then wiggles through the fence to join us.
Wyck goes straight for the runway and walks its length, inspecting the cracked and frost-heaved pavement. “There used to be a hangar here,” he said, sweeping his arm over an area where I can make out the marks of a rectangular foundation.
“Why? And why ‘used to be?’”
“To build and supply something. And then to hide what they were doing,” Wyck says enthusiastically, walking a grid pattern to the west of the runway.
“Who’s ‘they’?” Halla asks.
Wyck shrugs. “Depends on how old it is. Drug lords—this would have been a good place to grow marijuana in the old days. Well, it would have been before the locusts. Man, can you imagine a bunch of high locusts, buzzing around, bumping into each other?” He laughs. The sound ring outs, happy and almost carefree, and it makes Halla and me smile. “More likely, it was Psyche
manufacturers and distributors, like that pair back there, but on a more commercial scale.”
He is a ways away from us now and has to raise his voice. The ground slopes uphill slightly as I follow him.
Halla hangs back, “I don’t want to find whatever it was,” she says. “Let’s keep going.”
“In a minute,” Wyck says absently. His foot knocks against something and he bends. He scrapes away a layer of dirt with one hand. “Look at this, Ev.”
I hurry over. There’s a grate inset into the ground, covering a two foot wide pipe. Wyck kneels and puts his eye to it. “That’s why there’s no foundation marks, except for the hangar,” he says, tugging at the grate. It doesn’t budge. “It’s underground. This is probably an air ventilation shaft. There’s got to be a door.” He jumps up and renews his search.
I look up and scan the area. Other than the three of us, there’s no sign of life, and yet I get the twingey feeling between my shoulder blades that we’re being watched. You’re paranoid, I tell myself. We are in the middle of freaking nowhere—there’s no one here. I wiggle my shoulders to make the feeling go away.
“Aha!” Wyck’s shout comes from a hundred yards away. With a glance at the disapproving Halla, I hurry over. His fingers curl into a barely visible crevice and he pulls. Nothing happens. “This has got to be the door,” he says. He examines the surface again.
I look at the surface he’s uncovered—what looks like a smooth steel plane—and notice something. “Wyck.” I draw his attention to the bio hazard sign.
He doesn’t respond. After a moment, he tugs on the apparent handle again, from the opposite direction, and a deep creaking sound issues as if from the bowels of the earth. I spring back. Wyck grins. “We’re in.”
“Not me,” Halla says. She crosses her arms over her chest and puts on her mulish look. “I am not risking my baby’s health by going down in some bio-hazard pit.”
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