by Hannah Ross
Ben moved on, passing shop windows and cars, people and buses, and shiny glass doors that led to tall office buildings. He stopped at a modest-looking food store and, in exchange for a couple of vouchers, got a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, a wrapped-up piece of sausage, some cheese, and a few apples. He sat down on a bench in a small park to enjoy his simple meal.
It took him nearly two hours to find the address Mrs. Stocking gave him. His heart began to hammer when he realized he was about to meet his family. He faced a simple, square apartment building and looked up, wondering which of the windows belonged to the Hursts.
He whispered, "Benjamin Hurst," testing the sound of it. In a fairer world, it would have been his name.
Slowly, he climbed the stairs. He had rehearsed the upcoming moment dozens of times. I'll ring the bell. Someone will answer with a blank look and ask, "Can I help you?"
His stomach roiled with anticipation and worry until he reached the landing and nearly collided with a wispy, white-haired old woman in a fluffy blue cardigan who just walked out of the very apartment he meant to get into. She was certainly too old to be his mother, and Mrs. Stocking never mentioned a grandmother who lived with the family.
"Excuse me," Ben said as the old woman peered at him through thick spectacles.
She smiled and said, "That's alright. Are you looking for someone?"
"Well, actually, I…" His voice trailed off as he gestured toward the small, neat plaque on the apartment door that read, Daniel and Rebecca Hurst.
"Oh. You're looking for the Hursts? They're on vacation, I'm afraid. Are you a friend of Kate's?" she asked in the benign, inquisitive manner of old ladies who do not have much to do.
Kate. My sister. "I'm her brother," he said before he could stop himself.
The old woman studied him for a few seconds before her expression brightened. "Why, you must be Jordan, then! We haven't met before, but then, I only moved into the building a couple of months ago. My name is Linda McEwan. Your mother gave me a key so I could water the house-plants and air the apartment once in a while until they come back."
The wheels of Ben's brain whirred. Jordan. Yes. The oldest. She thinks I'm him
Mrs. McEwan smiled again. "You do look remarkably like Daniel. So, you didn't you know your parents and sister went on holiday?"
"No, I did know that," he said, improvising. "It's just that I need to leave something in the apartment for my mother." He thrust a hand into one of his pockets and then another, feigning a look of concern. "But it seems I forgot my set of keys."
"Well, isn't it lucky you ran into me, then? Here, let me unlock the door for you."
With a brief nod and a word of thanks, Ben found himself standing in the home where he should have grown up.
The apartment was cramped but cozy, with faded couch covers and cheerful wallpaper in shades of yellow. Everything looked very neat. The place had obviously been tidied up before the family went on holiday. The magazines and books on the coffee table were stacked in meticulous order, the wastebasket was empty and the curtains were drawn. Ben opened them a little to let more light into the room.
A large photograph on the living room wall caught his eye. It showed a group of five. Two were a couple on their wedding day. The bride was radiant in her white dress, holding a bouquet. The groom looked very sharp in his tuxedo and bow tie. One was a girl, not too many years older than him. The other two were a middle-aged man and woman. The older man had his arm around the groom's shoulders, and the woman stood next to the bride. As soon as Ben looked at her, he knew. Excitement erupted in the pit of his stomach.
She's just as I imagined her. Kind and cheerful-looking. Her eyes are gentle, warm, the way a mother's should be. The way my mother's should be. "My mother," he whispered, feeling a lump form in his throat. "Despite everything, she never forgot."
His glance strayed to the other people in the picture. They must be my father and Jordan. I can see the resemblance. We all have the same chin and nose. Do I stand like them, too? And she must be my sister. Pretty.
Ben wondered what he should do next. He did not expect to find the apartment empty and the family gone and felt lost and disappointed. Well, at least I know they still live here. How can I get more information out of Mrs. McEwan without sounding suspicious?
Absent-mindedly, he strolled around, looking and touching things until he came to the desk with its computer and printer. This area was less neat than the rest of the apartment. There was a haphazardly stacked pile of papers at the corner of the desk. He looked through a pile of receipts and found ones for sleeping bags, a portable gas cooker, and other camping gear. Then he noticed something that made his breath catch in his throat. It was a print-out of an official-looking document, coffee-blotched and slightly crumpled. Large square letters were emblazoned across the top of the page: Application for Boundary Crossing Permit.
That's when it hit him. My family isn't on any holiday. They went across the Boundary to look for me.
29
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Rebecca, Daniel, Kate, and Tony kept on walking. During their first full day, they found the constant exercise left them with ravenous appetites, so they ate to match. It was not until day two that they realized they would quickly run out of food if they continued eating that way, so they agreed to strict rationing to ensure the food they had would last. They talked about supplementing their supplies by hunting, fishing, and foraging, but they had no firearms or fishing equipment and no one knew how to identify an edible plant, so they concentrated on walking and resting when they had to. The only silver lining was the pleasant mild weather which enabled them to continue relatively warm and dry.
When they started out, they thought the gallons of water they had would last through the trip and were quickly dismayed to find hiking a much more dehydrating exercise than they imagined it would be. They were somewhat reassured when, with only one gallon remaining, they came across a little stream with clear-looking water.
Rebecca insisted on boiling any drinking water so they stopped for an early lunch. After they ate, Daniel sat with his wife while Kate and Tony strolled along the stream and talked. The first kettle of water was cooling when Kate began yelling for her parents to hurry. When they arrived at the spot Tony waited, he just pointed and said, "Look."
In the claylike mud by the water on one side of a dirt trail, they saw hoof prints and a pile of manure.
"A mustang," Daniel said. "I've heard there are many of them out here."
"I thought so too, but mustangs usually move in herds, don't they?" Tony asked. "There aren't enough hoof-prints here."
"So what?" Kate shook her head. "Maybe it's an outcast or something. What does it matter?"
"Because of this." He pushed aside a clump of tall grass and they all saw what he meant. Close, to the hoof print was another print, one of a large, heavy boot. They all exchanged startled glances.
"Two or three horses with at least one rider stopped here," Tony said. "Maybe to let the horses drink."
"Look here," Rebecca said as she walked down the trail. "I can see more hoof prints. Whoever they are must be following this old path" She turned to the others and there was no mistaking the excitement on her face. "We have to follow them."
"Becky, wait," Daniel said. "That path leads away from the Boundary. I thought we agreed we were going to…"
"This changes everything, Daniel, don't you see?" Her eyes blazed with inextinguishable determination. "There are people somewhere nearby. People who ride horses. Government scouts don't do that. They must be the orphans. It might be someone who knows Benjamin!"
Daniel was about to argue, but Kate's hand on his shoulder stilled him.
"Mom's right, Dad. It would be a shame to turn back when we're so close to finding them. Are you coming, Tony?"
With an apologetic shrug in Daniel's direction, Tony nodded.
"This is insane," Daniel said. "Come o
n. Let's finish filling the water bottles and get everything together."
The horses kept to the trail for the hours they followed it until, late in the day, they came across the remnants of a small cooking fire.
The sight of charred bones and apple cores delighted Rebecca. "See, Daniel? We're on the right track! And look at all the boot prints. There are two or three riders for sure. Maybe they stopped here for lunch today."
Daniel cleared his throat. "More likely dinner last night. But…It's just… Have you thought about how certain we can be that these people are…well…friendly?"
"What do you mean?" Rebecca frowned. "We mean them no harm. Why would they hurt us?"
"Well, look at it this way. They have no citizenship, no status, and nothing to lose. As long as we had our Land Rover, it was an entirely different thing. We could get in and drive away at the first sight of trouble. But now we're on foot and completely at the mercy of whomever we happen to come across."
"I think you're exaggerating, Dad," Kate said.
"I certainly hope I am."
Supper was a scant affair that night. They cooked a stew from lentils and some bits of dehydrated meat that had seemed very unappetizing when they packed, but now proved to be a wise choice of traveling food. Still, the portions were depressingly small, and their vulnerability was suddenly palpable. This feeling was exacerbated when, as the darkness deepened and the fire burned low, the howling of wolves sounded close.
"Can you tell which direction it's coming from?" Kate asked, zipping up her jacket against the evening chill.
"Don't worry," Tony said as he piled more wood onto the fire. "You and your mom can stay in the tent. Me and your dad will tend the fire and keep it burning all night. They won't come near."
Rebecca shuddered as Daniel slipped an arm around her shoulders. "I know what you're thinking, that we shouldn't have struck out here. We could have been a lot closer to home by now."
Daniel shook his head. "No, I'm not worried. We'll be fine. We need to follow this lead. You're right, Becky. We can never really let this go until we find out what happened to Benjamin."
By the time they stopped for lunch the next day, Daniel's doubts returned, though he kept them to himself. It was Rebecca who wondered about the wisdom of their decision to keep going, but Kate was optimistic.
"The riders passed here not long ago," she said, "We're bound to find them if we just keep going long enough."
Late in afternoon, their persistence was rewarded.
Rebecca grabbed Daniel's arm and said, "Did you hear that? It sounded like the neigh of a horse."
"It did."
"And look," Tony said, pointing to the left where wisps of smoke rose above the tree line. "That's probably a campfire and it's not too far away." He dropped the travois. "Come on. Let's find them before they decide to leave. We can come back for this stuff."
Ten minutes later, they were face to face with outcasts who lived beyond the Boundary.
Rebecca was pleased to learn her guess was correct.
Three riders. Two men and a woman. No. Two boys and a girl. They can't be more than sixteen or seventeen. But they carry themselves like adults. And none of them seem the least bit concerned about strangers showing up.
"Hello there," one of the boys said. "Didn't expect to run into anybody out here." Then he looked more intently at the newcomers, especially Rebecca and Daniel. "Hey. You're from in there, aren't you?"
"In there?" repeated Tony.
"The Boundary. You're from in there, right?"
"Yes. Yes, we are."
The two groups stared at each other, equally fascinated.
"Boundary people don't often wander out here," the other boy said. "Not on foot, at least. I sometimes see the tracks left by their car tires."
"Our car broke down," Kate said.
The boy grinned. "Horses are more reliable." He nodded toward their three horses, which were tethered to a couple of nearby trees.
"I'm sure they are," Daniel said. "So you actually ride them? We've been following their hoof prints since yesterday."
"Sure. We have lots of horses in our camp now. Horses are like people. Be nice to them and they'll be nice to you. I'm Patrick, by the way. Patrick Moon. This is Dan Crow and Tanya Snow."
"I'm Daniel. This is my wife, Rebecca, my daughter Kate, and her boyfriend Tony."
"So…" Patrick hesitated. "What are you doing here? Just raiding the abandoned towns?"
"No," Rebecca said. Her voice was calm, but her heart was pounding. She pulled a photograph in a clear plastic sheath out of her bag. "We're looking for someone. Have any of you ever seen this boy?"
Patrick squinted at the photograph. His curly dark hair and olive skin prevented Rebecca from fancying that he, himself, might be her lost son, but otherwise she could picture Benjamin being just like him, tall, gangly, tanned, and as wild-looking as the horses that roamed the plains.
"There's something familiar about him," he said. "Check it out, Dan."
"I really can't tell," he said after a long stare. "Might be I've seen him before, might be I didn't. What do you say, Tanya?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen too many such young ones lately."
"This photograph is five years old," Rebecca said. "The boy has changed, of course. But maybe he reminds you of someone you know."
"Why are you looking for him, anyway?" Patrick sounded suspicious. "Some government snoops have been in the area lately, but they weren't searching for anyone in particular."
"We're the boy's family," Daniel said.
Patrick was not convinced. "Family? None of us have any family."
"You should have had," Rebecca said. "Just as I should have had my son with me. I… It's a long and painful story, but I'm his mother and I will find him."
The three orphans exchanged uncomfortable looks and shakes of the head. "This must be the first time anyone's mother came out here," Dan said. He looked at the picture again. "What's the boy's name?"
"Benjamin. He must be your age, or thereabouts."
"Benjamin," Patrick said. He stared at the picture again. "Hmm. That might be Ben Grey of the Eagles. Tanya. What do you say? Doesn't this picture look a bit like him?"
"Yeah. It could be him."
Excitement made Rebecca's stomach flutter. "Benjamin Grey was his orphanage name. Do you know him? Where can I find him?"
"If that's Ben Grey, we know him alright," Patrick said, "and his camp isn't terribly far. But I can't be sure it's really him."
"Please," Rebecca's breath caught in her throat. "Please can you take us there?"
Patrick hesitated. "I could tell you which way to go, but… Yes, I suppose at least one of us should go with you. Dan, Tanya, you'd better head back to camp. Raven will go bonkers if the three of us don't turn up by tomorrow."
Rebecca had no idea who Raven was, and at that moment she could not care less. She looked at Patrick, and her eyes misted over as she whispered, "Thank you, Oh, thank you."
Her tears embarrassed the gangly boy and he waved a hand. "No problem. I always like paying a visit to the Eagles. They're a good sort."
"You'd better take most of the food with you, Pat," Dan suggested. "We won't need that much to get home and these folks have nothing."
"We do," Daniel said. "When we saw the smoke from your campfire, we just dropped everything so we could move faster."
Patrick was impressed when he saw the travois and decided to walk with the others so the horse could pull it, which relieved everyone from having to carry anything. He led them northwest at a steady pace.
Everyone noticed their guide was carrying a rifle.
"That's a fine gun you've got there, Patrick," Tony said. "An old model, but a good one."
"That it is. She's been a true friend. I've got many a pound of meat for the camp thanks to her."
"Do you rely on hunting a lot, then?" Daniel asked.
"We've got to. Getting food is the big thing here. It's easy enough to set up a
shelter, and there's all the stuff in the abandoned towns, but food is a different matter. Once in a while we come across a store of old food that's still good, but that's rare. So we're on our own. Our camp has a large flock of sheep, but hunting sure helps. I'm not complaining. There's enough food out there for everybody. You just have to know where to find it."
Late in the afternoon, Patrick said, "If we can keep up this pace, we should reach the Eagles camp around noon tomorrow. But it's getting late. We could probably keep going for another hour, but not too far ahead is a nice sheltered area where we can make camp. If we keep going, we'll have to make camp in the open, which is okay unless a storm rolls in.
Rebecca would have been glad to keep walking all night long to get to the Eagles faster, but she realized that would be unreasonable and made stopping at the sheltered place unanimous.
In the morning they shared a quick breakfast. Patrick provided sausage, hard cheese, and dried wild apricots, while the travelers took out some of their remaining rice crisps, a can of beans, and a few protein bars.
Patrick stared at the food packages with undisguised curiosity. "We got out of habit of eating stuff like that," he remarked, nibbling on a rice crisp. "We mostly make all our food ourselves now." The cheese was very good, but Rebecca did not dare to ask what kind of meat went into the sausage.
The sun was high in the sky when Rebecca saw something that made her heart beat faster. Ahead was a field of corn – tall, lush stalks growing in neat rows.
"We're nearly there," Patrick said. "Let's go a little to the right so we don't trample the field. There's a girl in the Eagles' camp named Elisa, who's crazy about planting all kinds of stuff, and she won't appreciate my horse stepping in her corn."
Rebecca was hardly listening. She could see a farmhouse in the distance, a solid building made of stone, with a large extension of long dark logs. Unlike any other house they glimpsed beyond the Boundary, this one looked lived-in. The fences and outbuildings all seemed in good repair and a tendril of smoke rose from the chimney.