Carry the Flame

by James Jaros

  “I’ve got a small blade,” she said.

  “Me, too.” He held his up, but she could barely see it.

  She retrieved her knife, thumbing the edge without thinking. Sharp enough for surgery, according to Hannah. But Jessie knew nothing short of her rifle could stop a Komodo.

  Burned Fingers walked the pit’s perimeter, running his hands over the hard wall. His shadowy form looked like a hunter circling in the night. He stopped once to tap a surface. It sounded wooden. When he’d circled back around and stood only feet from her, his hands moved over what looked like a gate about eight feet wide and six feet high. Big enough for that monster, she thought.

  Burned Fingers knocked again, and she saw he was trying to gauge the gate’s thickness and strength. But the noise roused the saurian and it thundered immediately to life when the creature charged the barrier. The wood shuddered and metal hinges screeched like they’d shear off. Burned Fingers forced his shoulder against the gate and dug his feet into the sand. Jessie joined him.

  With every thrash she felt the dragon’s crushing weight and strength. When the lizard settled, they backed away and Burned Fingers pointed to a wooden bar on the door.

  “That’s the only thing keeping him in,” he said in a markedly soft voice.

  “That was another gate over there?” she asked, nodding at the other side of the pit.

  “Yeah, about the same size, but the smell wasn’t so bad so I think it’s empty. It’s probably for the one in the wagon.”

  Two Komodos? Jessie returned to thumbing her blade. What good is that thing going to do you? Then she thought of her carotid artery, and how she’d slit her neck before letting some giant goddamn lizard swallow her whole. She’d rather bleed to death from her own hand than die like that young woman.

  The clawing resumed, rhythmic, relentless. It was as if the Komodo, as prehistoric as any creature that stalked the modern era, sensed that nothing—not wood or steel or even the hardest stone—could thwart its unshakable appetite for long.

  “I think they’re keeping that one hungry,” Jessie said, eyes back on the gate. A warm sticky weight slid over her foot. She jumped aside, stifling a scream.

  “What?” Burned Fingers whispered.

  “A snake!”

  But when they looked down, they saw the Komodo’s forked tongue protruding from under the bottom of the gate. Burned Fingers waited for the slimy length to discover his foot. When the tongue was fully extended, he pounced on it and stabbed the thick mass, then raked the blade down to the fork, opening a deep, two-foot gash. The dragon snapped back its bloody organ and smashed the gate, this time with such fury that Jessie feared it would shatter. She and Burned Fingers pressed against the wood once more.

  “You think cutting him is actually going to slow him down?” she asked above the din.

  “He smells and tastes with that goddamn thing, right?”

  She nodded, and the beast did sound pained, banging its huge head against the gate.

  A dull light appeared on a wall to their right. Burned Fingers pocketed his knife, and Jessie stashed hers in her waistband. They looked up to see the Mayor step to the edge of the pit. His boot tips cast small, crescent-shaped shadows on the wall. An older bald white man held a lantern. He and two Latino guards flanked the Mayor but stayed a foot or two back.

  Jessie glanced around the pit while they had light. About forty feet in diameter. Not a lot of space to share with a fast, ten-foot predator. The walls were smooth, made from hardened clay, and bore dark stains that looked like blood splatters. Tall, too, about fifteen feet high, as she had guessed. She saw no way to climb out; even if they found hand- or footholds on top of the gates, neither of them could reach up to ground level. The pit reminded her of a small Roman coliseum, replete with man-eating animals.

  The Mayor looked down into the pit. “What did you do to Chunga?” he asked. The beast quieted as the walls brightened.

  Chunga? They’ve got names?

  “I stomped his tongue when he slid it under that thing,” Burned Fingers said defiantly, gesturing at the gate.

  The Mayor shook his head. “You are lucky he did not tear it down. He has done that before.”

  Jessie noticed the bald white man studying Burned Fingers with such intensity that she found it unnerving. She figured there must be a huge bounty on his head. Burned Fingers ignored the man.

  “That would spoil all the fun, wouldn’t it?” he replied. “If he eats us when no one’s watching.”

  The Mayor glanced at his aide, who took the Mayor’s attention as permission to speak.

  “We would prefer to have an audience,” the man said dryly, raising the lantern to bleachers that looked like they’d been looted from a school gymnasium.

  “Our grandstand,” the Mayor said, “will be filled on Friday night.”

  Friday night? They still follow the days of the week? Not everyone did. “What day is it?” She didn’t assume that they used the same calendar, and wanted to know how long they had to live.

  “Wednesday,” the Mayor said. Same as ours. “Woden’s day,” he added.

  That meant nothing to her, but Burned Fingers snorted. “So you think you’re guiding the souls of the dead to the underworld?”

  The Mayor’s smile returned for the first time since he’d arrived at the pit. “You will be given swords. It will be a fair fight,” he announced. Jessie found his lordly swagger almost as repulsive as the prospect of taking on a Komodo. Or two.

  “Fair!” Burned Fingers shouted. “Has anyone ever beaten one of your beasts?” The Mayor didn’t reply, but continued smiling. “I didn’t think so,” Burned Fingers yelled. “But you’ll be placing bets on how long we last, won’t you? You and whoever’s filling up those seats.”

  “You are a mouthy man. It will be good to watch you fight. Now I will visit your daughter. What do you think of that?”

  “Hey, son of Chunga, they’re not mine.”

  The Mayor’s smile vanished, but only briefly. He turned and left with his entourage. The pit darkened.

  “What do you think you’re doing, setting him off like that?” Jessie demanded.

  “Leading with my nose,” Burned Fingers said. “If you’ve got any better ideas, let me know. I don’t know where this thing is going, but wherever it is, I want him off his game. I don’t want one of those goddamn beasts eating me alive.”

  Jessie closed her eyes, consumed with a different, no less horrifying fear: the fate of those girls in the hands of that man.

  Cassie curled up next to Maul’s body. Night was falling, but nothing frightened her as much as Maul’s cooling skin. She felt his life drifting away from her, and no matter what she did she couldn’t pull it back. Maybe that’s why she felt so cold. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this way. Her shivers lasted for a minute, sometimes longer, and made her teeth chatter so loudly she was afraid someone, or some thing, would hear her. Then the shivers would go away, but they kept coming back. And the bumps on her skin never disappeared.

  Everything was getting colder—Maul, her, the sand, air, even her tears. They soaked the front of her shirt so much she had to pull the chill away from her skin. Most days she couldn’t wait for the darkness, but tonight the twilight was terrifying. Nothing but emptiness surrounded her, and emptiness was death. It went on forever, and soon—when only the stars lit the sky—the beasts of the night would come looking for anything to eat. Anything.

  She stared at Maul’s belt, where the blood had stopped running down his back. He always carried a small axe, and a gun that he stuck in his pants. He was so brave, she figured it must have taken a ton of those crazy-looking men to make him run away. No. She shook her head, and more tears spilled from her cheeks. He wasn’t running away. He was coming after me. She stared at him. He got shot because of me.

  She pulled away from his body, scared of him, too. She’d heard plenty about ghosts. The older kids, especially the boys, Jaya and Erik, told all kinds of creepy stories, and
though she loved Maul, missed him like she missed her mom, dad, and Jenny, he might be angry at her. He might blame her for his death. Of course he would, she realized. You caused it.

  Her eyes lifted to where the truck and van had been. She wondered if other ghosts were stirring. But the dusky light still showed nothing but the emptiness. And only one bullet had been fired. “I’m sorry, Maul. I’m so sorry.”

  She fought her fears and huddled beside him, closed her eyes and clutched his shirt and hers together. “I’m really sorry,” she whispered again. “Don’t haunt me, please. Let me stay.”

  Moments passed. She didn’t know how long she lay by his body before the bumps on her skin vanished and the shivering ended. She thanked him for the comfort. He’d always protected her. He still is. She opened her eyes on his slack face. Someone should have protected you. There had been so much gunfire in the past few weeks, and none of those shots so much as scratched him. Then one tiny bullet, all by itself, killed him. It was so unfair. Maul was a thousand million times bigger than a bullet, and it killed him.

  His murderer, Jester, probably took his gun. He’d yelled that he was looking for it. But then he swore and ran off. Cassie knew she should check. It was getting dark, and the hungry beasts would find her. She reached down and tried to slide her hand under Maul’s stomach but couldn’t.

  She started digging like a dog again, scooping sand until she could wriggle her fingers to where she thought the gun would be, right by his belly button. But it wasn’t.

  Then she looked around, listening for animals, and tunneled in from the other side, finding the revolver quickly. But it took another ten minutes before she hollowed a space big enough to pull it out. By then only stars lit the desert. They looked so close to earth they might have been beckoning her.

  Sirius was the brightest of them all, and other than the sun, it was the only star whose name she knew. When she picked it out, she heard welcoming words. Come here, Cassie. Come here. But not like a voice in her head. It was like the heavens were reaching all the way down to her. The stars could have been the eyes of her mom and dad and sister, and the words she’d heard could have been theirs, too, a chorus come to claim her. She opened her arms to hear it again, but now only silence settled over the land.

  When she was little and everything still seemed like so much fun, her mother told her the most amazing stories about the stars. Her mom cuddled with her and gave them all names, and some were mothers, some fathers, some grannies and granddads and uncles and aunts and cousins and friends. A whole world up in the heavens.

  The brilliant night sky was always so much friendlier than the sickly blue of daytime. After the Army of God, Cassie had lain with the other girls while they counted constellations or gloried in the full moon. And in a brightness you could know only in the deepest blackness of space, she listened to Teresa or Bessie, or sometimes Ananda, snuggling with M-girl, tell stories of their own about how good life would be in the North. They described fruit trees heavy with peaches and apricots and plums and maybe even apples, and rows and rows of strawberries blinking red in all that leafy green. So many strawberries they’d get tired of eating them, but they would because each one would taste so good. And there would be feasts with juices and cakes and swimming parties by the sea, and never a gun. Not ever.

  But she was so glad she had a gun now, even though she didn’t know much about them. Ananda, just three years older, had actually trained with them, but not the girls in Cassie’s camp.

  She caught starlight on the barrel, maybe all the way from Sirius, and looked into the muzzle. She couldn’t see a bullet, hard as she tried. Maybe you had to crank back the hammer. You couldn’t shoot until you did that, so maybe you couldn’t see a bullet till it was ready to fire, like it would say, “Okay, guys, I’m good to go,” the way Maul always said when he started the truck.

  She liked the idea of a friendly bullet.

  Slowly, she tried to pull back the hammer. It was much harder than it looked when Maul used his thumb. She finally held the gun on her lap and pressed the heel of her other hand down on the hammer. When she got it cocked, she stared into the barrel again. It couldn’t go off unless she pulled the trigger, so she wasn’t about to make that dumb mistake. This one had a “hair trigger,” whatever that meant. She guessed the trigger was thin as hair, but it didn’t feel that way. Right now it felt hard as the barrel or the bullet that made her smile. Okay, guys, I’m good to go.

  But even when she put the muzzle back up to her eye, she still couldn’t see the bullet. Why? She saw all the other ones in the cylinder. Sirius gleamed off every tip.

  Only one way to find out. She stood, moved the gun from her face, and pointed it toward the stars. She wanted to pull the trigger, and have the bullet pull her all the way to her mom and dad and sister in the sky. Now Maul, too.

  She wished so hard, she did pull the trigger. Hardly at all, but the report made the ground shake and her ears ring painfully. But she hadn’t moved an inch. Then she knew only one way a bullet could pull her to the heavens. It was sure as her finger, as bright as the memory of her loved ones.

  They’re waiting for me.

  So was the bullet, stealthy as a shadow. She found the hammer and pressed the barrel against her heart.

  Good to go . . .

  Her heart beat harder, quickly drowning out any other sound, any other thought, save the names she screamed to the sky one more time: “Mom, Dad, Jenny, Maul.”

  I’m coming.

  Guards marched the girls into the Mayor’s large bedroom, unlike anything Bliss had ever seen. Yellowed canvas hung from the ceiling like sails, and she wondered if they’d been salvaged from boats. The heavy cloth walled off a square space that overlapped in places, but also left small gaps every few feet. Brick pillars rose to the roof in each corner. The tips of what appeared to be long human bones—femurs or tibias—were mortared between the bricks or protruded from the columns, reaching like calcified antlers to the ceiling. The bones bore a grotesque resemblance to the rebar she once saw at a destroyed dam.

  Six torches blazed on tall stone stands. The air was smoky, and the movement of the girls to the foot of the bed stirred the flames and shadows and smells, casting a strange play of light and dark on the canvas.

  Jaya and Erik, and the adults captured in the raid, were forced at gunpoint toward the other end of the City of Shade. Beaten and bloody, they complied quietly. So had the girls now gathering on both sides of Bliss, as if seeking protection from the only one among them who had proved herself in battle.

  The largest bed Bliss had ever seen squatted in the center of the room, not flush against one of the canvas walls. Its placement appeared odd, the mattress amazingly real. A lush-looking turquoise quilt with an elaborately embroidered black-skinned knight on horseback covered the expanse. He was armed with a silver lance that shimmered in the torchlight from thin metal strands woven into the fabric. She noticed still more of the metal in the armor protecting the knight and his horse. A green plume rose whimsically from his helmet. Another glance showed the feathers to be real. Then she saw that shorter ones formed the red lion on the knight’s yellow shield.

  Bliss longed for the quilt more than any comfort in memory. She could already hear her mother saying, “In this heat?” But the fifteen-year-old wanted to lose herself in a fantasy world filled with forests and cool shade and icy streams, and tournaments where knights jousted for the amusement of maidens in long, pretty dresses. She looked up from the bed wondering what it would feel like to be protected instead of trying to save everyone else, this time in a room made from bricks and bones and—no doubt—blood.

  Long fat pillows extended the full width of the bed, which could have slept five or six girls easily. Bliss noticed a quill poking out of the one in the middle. It might not have caught her eye but for the dark down puffing out below the pale tip. She’d heard of goose down and thought it possible that geese had survived in the North, but how did their feathers get all the w
ay to the desert?

  She wished she could spread out on the quilt, rest her head on one of those fluffy pillows and close her tired eyes—but not with the Mayor pushing aside the canvas only feet away.

  He strode into the room like royalty, four subalterns by his side. One of them carried the M–16. Since the attack on their camp, Bliss had rarely seen the rifle out of her mom’s hands. She had little idea where they’d taken her mother, only that she and the girls were pushed into the City of Shade far from where Jessie and Burned Fingers had disappeared into the shadows.

  She flinched when the Mayor took the weapon and, beaming oddly, swept the muzzle past each of them. Having fired the M–16 on full auto, she knew how easily you could work the trigger. She was considering the potential mayhem when the Mayor lowered the rifle, still smiling “like a bounty hunter.” That’s how her father once described a man who loved to ensnare people. The Mayor sure did.

  He waved away all but two of the guards, leaving one on each end of the line of girls. Everyone but Imagi was quiet. The round-faced girl sniffled noisily.

  Bliss glanced at the M–16 as discreetly as she could. It was the single weapon that could allow her to blast their way out of the City of Shade. Whatever the Mayor wanted to do with them, short of murder, it wouldn’t be with the rifle in his hands. She might get a chance to grab it. “You makes your own breaks” was another line her dad had favored. But he’d never caught a break with Burned Fingers, whose marauders bashed in her father’s head and put him in a coma. Killed him. If anyone from the caravan had to die in this cesspool, she hoped it would be that son of a bitch.

  She looked left, sizing up the guard, who couldn’t have been older than twenty.

  The Mayor caught her glance. “You like the young man?”

  Bliss shook her head, but let a smile crease her face. Better to have the Mayor think she found the guard appealing than to divine her deepest impulse: murder.

  She wasn’t squeamish about shooting anyone who threatened them, and when the other girls, or Jaya and Erik, passed the time arguing about the morality of killing, she remained quiet. Debates did not interest her. She had already slain Zekiel, the man who called for the massacre of her camp, saving her mother from him in the end. Survival trumped all. She would do it again—now, if she had even a small chance of succeeding. Everything she had witnessed in the last few hours convinced her the horrors begun in the desert would only worsen in the shadows.