“Watch those thorns over there,” I warn her, not wanting her to scar up her legs anymore than they already are.
Lily walks along a decomposing, fallen tree to avoid getting tangled up in the bramble. She holds her arms out to her sides and makes a funny continuous noise in her throat.
“What is that noise you’re making?” I inquire.
“I’m humming. My mother used to sing and hum to me at night.” She continues to hum and jumps off the end of the tree, landing beside me.
Humming? I’ve never heard anything like that before. She sounds happy, so I don’t tell her to stop. We trudge on through the woods while Lily hums a sweet tune and skips when she can. I become so engrossed in the new sounds that I don’t notice the rumblings of other people until we are almost right on top of them.
“Lily. Quiet,” I whisper, as we step into a large clearing.
There are a little more than a dozen people here, and they all come to a dead stop when they see us enter their meager village. Three men stop digging as they work in a vegetable garden. Another man stops skinning a small furry animal. Several women crowded around a pot, in the center of a fire pit, also stop their work. Children poke their heads out of tents made from animal skins, scraps of metal, and cloth.
Lily and I stop as well. “Just passing through. We mean no harm,” I say in an even non-threatening tone. I let my hands leave the security of my knives and raise them high in the air. No one says a word back to me, so I yank Lily by the shoulder and pull her along after me. “Come on,” I whisper to my small companion.
We cautiously cross the clearing as I fight my instincts to exterminate these people. I know it’s wrong, so why would the Republic demand such a thing? It makes no sense. I choose to keep walking instead of questioning the Republic’s intentions anymore.
We make it safely back into the woods without being shot at or attacked. I let go of Lily’s dress and push her in front of me in case anyone decides to follow us into the tree line. She’s not humming anymore, so I listen for sounds that don’t belong to us.
After an hour of keeping Lily ahead of me, I let her fall to my side once we make it back to the interstate. There are abandoned vehicles littering the pavement as far as the eye can see. Most of them have rust completely covering them, unlike what I’d seen previously. We must be close to the coastline. The salty air has been eating away at the vehicles’ metal for a very long time. There are gaping holes clean through some of them. These vehicles are definitely not good for sleeping. We keep moving.
“We’ll have to keep walking for a while, until we find somewhere safe to sleep. Okay?” I break the news to Lily as sympathetically as my brain and mouth will allow.
“Okay,” she sighs.
We walk for another hour until the sun has begun to set and our stomachs are growling. I have to find somewhere to stop for the night. I search for a vehicle with less rust or a spot in the brush that will provide some cover, but nothing seems adequate. Finally, I see a large, moving truck that must have run off the road. It’s almost buried in the brush just inside the tree line. “Wait here,” I instruct Lily as I leave her tucked behind a rusted vehicle. I approach the moving truck from the side with a knife in each hand. I check the cab first. There are human remains crumbled on the floor of the driver’s side. The passenger side is empty.
At the cargo door, I unhook the latch and slide the rolling door up several inches, enough to get a peek inside. It’s empty as well, so I push the door up higher to get a better look. A waft of stale air hits me in the face, making me cough.
When I recover and look back inside, I realize this is a lucky find. The truck was sealed off from the elements, so the contents were left virtually unharmed. There’s a sofa similar to the one in my parent’s apartment, four dining chairs stacked on top of each other, a dresser, and lots of boxes with “Kitchen” written of them. The lucky part of the find is the sofa. This will probably be the best night of sleep I’ll have outside of the Republic.
“Come on! We’re stopping for the night,” I call over to Lily.
“Yay!” She squeals with delight.
I’ve never heard that word before, but it must be good because she is smiling at me as I lift her into the back of the truck. I climb in after her and sit with my back against the wall. Lily has other plans, and after taking her shoes off, she starts digging through the brown boxes. She pulls out two dinner plates, two forks, two glasses, and a metal pot.
“We can have a real dinner tonight, like at Tom and Francis’,” she says with excitement.
I cook some of our beans in the metal pot, and then hand them off to her. She smiles from ear to ear as she hands me my dinner plate with a heap of warm beans in the center. “Thank you,” I say as she hands me a fork.
Lily shovels in a mouthful and mumbles, “You’re welcome.” A couple of beans fall back onto her plate and she giggles. I ignore her childish behavior and eat quietly.
In the middle of our meal, Lily looks up at me with her big blue eyes. There are questions burning inside them. Uh Oh. “Why don’t you ever smile Mena?” Lily asks.
“I can’t. I mean, I used to, but now I can’t,” I answer, though I’m not sure what that even means.
Lily screws up her face and grunts, “Huh?”
“I don’t know, Lily. Just eat your food so we can get some sleep.”
I quickly finish the rest of my beans, clean up the scratches on Lily’s legs with some water, and then crawl over to the truck’s rolling cargo door. I inform the exhausted child that it’s time to sleep, and then pull the door down. I leave it open just enough for airflow. I pull my bag right up next to the sofa where I lie down next to the sleepy girl. She nestles up against me when she senses my closeness.
I don’t think my life could be any more different than I’d planned. I am positive Ethan and Val aren’t behaving like me. They probably don’t have a child following them around either. None of the other trainees are experiencing my weaknesses. I know it. But in the back of my mind, I secretly wish they were acting like this, because if they’re not, they’re murdering a lot of innocent people.
Exhausted, my brain finally shuts down and I sleep.
We sleep, until I awaken to the sound of the metal cargo door lifting. I am on high alert now.
FIFTY-ONE
I inch my hand over the side of the sofa and carefully pull a dagger out of my backpack. The door lifts a few feet and the outline of a figure appears. It’s still dark outside, but the low moon casts an eerie glow into the truck’s storage space, enough to backlight the figure. None of the person’s features can be made out.
Man? Woman? One of the people I didn’t kill when I should have? It doesn’t matter. I dive off the sofa and straight into shadowed figure’s chest. We tumble to the ground, struggling and rolling in the cold dirt.
I can tell now that the figure is a man and a very strong one. Regular humans shouldn’t be this strong. He pins my arms above my head and straddles my raging body. The man bangs my hand on the ground until I drop my dagger.
I keep twisting and trying to buck him off of me. “Stop! Stop it, Mena!” he yells.
I freeze. Who is this? He brings his face closer to mine and then I know. His sky blue eyes shine through the darkness of the sunless morning. It’s Ethan. My body instantly relaxes under him.
“Mena? Is everything okay?” Lily peeks out of the truck, holding one of my knives.
“Yes. Go back in there and give us a minute.” I push Ethan’s solid body off of me and walk over to the truck. Lily inches back inside toward the couch. I pull the door down, closing her inside.
“Who’s the girl?” Ethan asks with hatred in his words.
“Her name’s Lily. She’s been following me since I killed the men that murdered her mother.” I walk over to a rusted pickup truck by the interstate and turn to face him. Ethan’s face is uneasy, but I don’t give him time to question me any further about Lily. I quickly ask him, “How did you fin
d me?”
Ethan doesn’t answer straight away. He follows me over to the truck, but doesn’t speak. He squints at me and watches my movements for what seems like forever. “What’s wrong with you? Why did you get back on the Pump?” he finally asks me.
“I didn’t.” Did I? I think back to my last night in the Republic. The details are fuzzy. It was the night of the banquet, and I had to go to the bathroom. Why am I just now remembering this? I start telling Ethan the events of that night as I recall them. “Dr. Fredericks confronted me the night of the banquet. He and two of his bodyguards cornered me in the restroom. He told me that he knew I was off the Pump, but I was too valuable to dispose of. I was outnumbered. I couldn’t do anything. He had two syringes. I guess one was the Pump and the other a sedative. He injected me with both of the syringes, and then I woke up in the middle of a street, out in some abandoned city . . . I guess I should be grateful that they still want me and didn’t punish me.” That must be why I haven’t had any emotions lately—among other things. The Pump has been keeping me from questioning all the strange things happening to me. It’s been keeping me from questioning the Republic again.
“Did Dr. Fredericks confront you too?” I ask Ethan.
Ethan shakes his head and lets out the deep breath he’d been holding while I told him about my last moments in the Republic. “No, he didn’t. I’m sorry that happened to you. Val and I were looking for you at the end of the banquet, but your parents said one of the bodyguards told them they took you early. They didn’t give your parents a reason. No one seemed to think it was unusual.”
“How did you find me?” I ask him again.
“I didn’t actually know you would be in there when I rolled up that door. I was looking for food, but then I saw you. I quickly realized I found something much better—that is until you tried to kill me.” He gives me a half smile as his eyes seek mine for some kind of emotional response. He doesn’t find what he’s looking for.
“So what’s with the girl?” Ethan asks about Lily again.
I respond hesitantly, not knowing what his reaction to her being with me will be. “I told you, some men killed her mother. I killed the men, and she’s been following me ever since. I tried leaving her with an older couple, but she wouldn’t stay put. I think she’s getting attached to me. I’m not sure what to do about her.”
“You leave her. That’s what you do. I know we can’t go around killing innocent people like the Republic expects us to do, so leaving her behind is the better option. She can’t come back with us.”
“I know, Ethan.” The intensity of my headache and nausea increases as we discuss Lily’s future. Maybe food will help settle my sour stomach. “Come on, I’ll get you some food. We all should eat before we set off for the day.”
“I’m not eating with a marauder, Mena. I don’t want anything to do with her. Let’s just go. We can still finish first together. That girl is only going to slow us down.” Ethan’s words sting, but I understand where he’s coming from. Exalted don’t mix with citizens, and they especially don’t mix with marauders.
“Do what you want Ethan, but until I have a better plan, Lily is coming with me,” I snap at him. I roll the metal door up and jump into the back of the truck. After handing Lily a piece of dried meat, I split the remaining sliver in half and throw it over to Ethan.
Ethan waits outside the truck for us to finish gathering our things. He has a disgusted look on his face and backs away from Lily when she jumps down from the truck. She lands too close to the Exalted trainee, causing him to lurch back. Lily sticks her tongue out at him in response.
I look between the two of them standing on either side of me. They’re both staring at one another with cold expressions. “Let’s go,” I tell them and set off west, toward the Republic.
FIFTY-TWO
Ethan, Lily, and I traveled in silence for two full days. Lily’s pace was too slow for Ethan’s liking, so I spent the majority of the two days running with her on my back while Ethan carried my pack. He refused to touch her.
The first night with Ethan was quiet. Ethan hid nearby in a tree, while Lily and I slept in a large concrete cylinder. I believe it was originally use as some type of drainage system.
The next morning, Ethan woke us up several hours before dawn to get started for the day. Lily pouted when realized how early it was. She stomped her feet for a good 15 or 20 minutes until her soles had enough. Surprisingly, Ethan never yelled at the girl. He just completely ignored her, as if she didn’t even exist. I guess it could be worse.
Now, it’s the end of the second day’s travel with Ethan. We leave the interstate and head south toward the Republic. There are abandoned vehicles, torn up asphalt, building rubble, and ruined remnants of the old world obstructing our path home.
I have to put Lily down as the landscape becomes more treacherous. We climb over heaps of concrete and around small craters that the bombs left behind. We have to crawl through vehicles at times. Weeds and grass have covered almost everything, which makes finding safe footing difficult. It becomes even more difficult when the sun sets.
I call ahead to Ethan, “We have to stop for the night.”
“We’re almost there. We only have one more day!” he calls back to me.
“We’re going to end up killing ourselves before we make it back. I’m not going out that way!” I yell in return.
Ethan continues trying to change my mind. “But if we keep going, we could be there by noon tomorrow. Our watches haven’t beeped yet. We could be first. Let’s keep going, Mena. Besides, we’re out of food.” He looks over my shoulder at the child with blonde curls and adds, “Leave the girl here. You know we can’t take her. Quit putting it off. ”
“What’s he talking about?” Lily questions me, her eyes growing big with worry.
“Nothing . . . I’m stopping Ethan. Go if you want.” I shake my head. It causes the constant headache I’ve been carrying to amplify. I consider what I would do if Lily weren’t with us. No, I still wouldn’t try to continue in the dark over this terrain. “Follow me, Lily.”
I stop in front of a wall of concrete. An enormous interstate once soared here, splitting the sky in half. Now it lays twisted and fallen before us. Metal boxes line a portion of the road. They are evenly spaced with room for a vehicle to pass between each one. I don’t know what they were once used for, but tonight they will be used as a place to sleep.
“Ethan, we’re going to sleep in one of those tonight.” I point to the row of boxes jutting out of the side of the interstate. “We can set off at first light. I promise.”
Ethan approaches me and takes my hand in his. The affection is unexpected, but I still don’t feel what I know I should feel when he touches me. The Pump is still coursing through my veins, stealing my emotions. I squeeze his hand in return, even though it has no emotional meaning to me. He seems pleased.
“Okay. We can stop, but no breaks tomorrow,” he says.
“Deal.”
The first metal box is too close to the ground for us to sleep safely, so we climb on top of it. Ethan hoists me up to the one above. From the second box, I look down to Ethan and Lily. They stand side-by-side looking up at me. He’ll have to touch her for her to make it up here. No one says anything as we all realize this at once.
In the dim light, I can see Lily looking up at Ethan and Ethan looking back down at Lily. They’re having a standoff. Lily wins. Ethan finally grabs her and lifts her straight up over his head by the heels of her feet. I have to slide on my belly, across the threshold of the box, and hang halfway out to catch her hands. Once I have a firm hold, I easily tow her in.
Ethan is last. I hang back out of the building ready to catch Ethan or do whatever I can do to help him reach us. He doesn’t jump up to me or scale the wall. He drops back down to the ground instead. “I’ll sleep in this one at the bottom. I can keep watch from there.”
“Are you sure?” I ask him.
“Yes. That box probably can’t
hold the weight of all three of us anyway.” As he says this, the box groans loudly underneath us. After a few seconds, it proves to hold firm.
“Okay. See you in the morning,” I call down as Ethan ducks into the box below us.
We all settle in for the night, hungry and exhausted. As Lily curls up next to me she asks, “Where will I go tomorrow when you leave me?”
I don’t answer her, because I don’t have an answer yet.
Darkness fills the floating metal box and my mind, as I drift off to sleep. And it’s darkness that I see again when I’m jolted awake by the sound of something smashing against metal and glass below me.
FIFTY-THREE
I cautiously poke my head out of our box and look below for the source of the sounds. Ethan is grunting as he struggles with someone. I can’t see anything through the blackness of the night, so I slither out of the box and dangle above the one Ethan was using. I let go.
After dropping onto the lower metal box, I crouch to get a better idea of what’s happening before I jump in to help. I see the shadowy outline of two figures throwing punches and slamming one another into the mounds of concrete all around. One is shorter and moves like Ethan—quick and powerful. He gets off two good blows to the attacker’s face and stomach, but the other figure is putting up a good fight. The attacker is leaner and taller than Ethan. He uses his height to his advantage when he fights. He whips Ethan’s legs out from under him in one swift motion.
This must be an Exalted if he’s able to hold his own against Ethan. Is it another trainee? I can’t place him as a trainee I know, by his build or his movements. He fights with precision, but there’s something extra there; a rawness that our trainees don’t have.
EXALTED (An Exalted Novel) Page 23