Carry the Flame

by James Jaros

  Now X-ray directed the slaves to move themselves and the Mayor away from Bliss and the white guy. “Let her do this. The guard’s got it coming. If she needs help, she’ll ask for it. Right?”

  Bliss nodded, turning to the man who’d made her life so miserable. “Why were my sister’s pants pulled down?”

  He shrugged. “Talk to him,” the guard said, glancing at the Mayor.

  “That is a lie,” the Mayor replied indignantly. “I told him to stop.”

  “Ananda?”

  “The guard!” her sister said, pointing defiantly to him.

  “Get on the floor,” Bliss ordered the prisoner. The moment he hesitated, she shot out his knee. “Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with now?” she yelled at him. “Some girl you’ve got chained-up? Get down!”

  The Mayor smiled, even with a rifle muzzle jammed under his chin.

  Bliss watched the guard drop down.

  “Let’s try this again: Why were my sister’s pants pulled down?”

  When he didn’t answer, she shot him in the crotch. He rolled screaming across the floor and crashed into the armoire. The chain hanging from the handle fell onto his face.

  “I’ll need that help now,” she said to X-ray. “Can you guys grab his arms and legs?”

  Four of them helped themselves to a limb and dragged him to the middle of the floor. Bliss pinned the guard’s head between her ankle bones, bent over and shot him between the eyes, certain that she was treating him more kindly than he’d planned to treat her.

  She looked up at the Mayor, who stopped smiling and shook his head rapidly. “You heard your sister. It was not me. I told him to stop.”

  “And that makes you a good guy? Because you didn’t fuck a twelve-year-old? You just sell them to men who do?” Bliss shook with rage. “I hate you, you bastard.” She wanted to shoot him, too, but couldn’t. She’d made a deal with X-ray, and he had kept his word.

  She turned around and walked into Ananda’s arms. When her sister hugged her, Bliss saw that a big section of her braid had been burned away. She could not bring herself to ask about it. Not now. It was enough that her sister was alive and still sane after the City of Shade.

  She gave Ananda another squeeze and nodded at the twins, who had not moved from the armoire. They appeared thunderstruck. “Are they okay?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Ananda replied.

  The heavy chain on the floor caught Bliss’s eye. “Did they lock you guys in there?”

  “For a long time.”

  “We need to get them out. We’ve all got to stick together.”

  While they tended to the twins, the slaves surrounded the Mayor, drawing lots to see who would pluck out his eyes. There would be only two winners, and nobody wanted to lose.

  “You guys do not want to see this,” Bliss said to the younger girls.

  “They shouldn’t do that to him,” Ananda said vehemently.

  “Don’t try telling them that,” Bliss said.

  The men wrestled the Mayor to the ground. His screams might have reached all the way to the wrecking yard.

  “Now what are we doing to do to him?” Moore asked jovially.

  “Kill him,” several slaves shouted.

  “Kill him,” quickly became a chant, which X-ray quieted with a command.

  “He’s not getting off that easy,” the slave leader said.

  Bliss and Ananda led the twins away from the armoire, and everyone left the room. Two of the slaves gripped the Mayor’s arms, guiding the moaning man brusquely. The slaves with guns walked point, or guarded the flanks. Bliss and a thick-necked, rifle-toting man covered the rear, with Ananda and the twins in front of them.

  Morning had broken, but the torches were useful for peering into shadows. Moore spotted a man and raised his weapon to shoot. The target dropped down, but not so fast that Bliss failed to recognize Burned Fingers.

  “Don’t shoot!” she yelled. “That’s— Wait, that’s my mom!”

  Jessie had stepped from behind the marauder at the sound of her daughter’s voice. Bliss and Ananda raced to her and the three of them embraced. Bliss found herself crying as hard as when she’d heard of her father’s death. She was thinking of him, too, feeling both relief and grief.

  Bliss looked at Burned Fingers then. She kept an impenetrable wall between them. Her dad was dead because of him, yet she knew her mother had survived because of the marauder. Another squirrelly deal.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say. He nodded.

  X-ray had stationed two guards to protect them during the reunion. Now, as they approached him, he was briefing the others about the new arrivals.

  “. . . and then they were both in the pit getting ready to fight the dragons when this one,” he pointed to Bliss, “jumped in to help them.” The slaves stared at her in open awe, which X-ray must have noticed. “That’s right,” he added with a touch of pride. “She jumped into that thing and grabbed a sword, and stood back-to-back with her folks. So don’t go shooting up this family.”

  Folks? Family? Bliss wanted to scream, and at any other time she would have. Now, she just winced.

  Burned Fingers walked up to the Mayor, staring at his empty eye sockets, then turned to X-ray. “What are you going to do with him?”

  “I’d like to feed him to his goddamn dragons.”

  “I might be able to help you.”

  Sam assembled the caravaners behind a dune, out of sight of the city, and handed Bessie a .32 with a wooden grip. The big-boned redhead and her dark-haired friend, Teresa, had volunteered to escort the children to the wrecking yard. Bessie had said she knew how to shoot. She certainly appeared to know how to handle the semiautomatic, one of the precious few still working. Sam watched her pop the clip to check the load, snap it back into place, and rack the slide. Ready to shoot in about three seconds.

  “On the fourth row,” Sam explained to the two young woman, “you’ll see a truck trailer. It’s the only one in the whole yard. Knock three times, then twice. Helena’s inside. Tell her Sam sent you and that everything’s going well. She’ll take over from there.”

  They trooped off with the kids, and Sam turned to the adult caravaners, a few more of them women than men. “We’re going set mines to bring down this end of the city. Then we’re spilling gas everywhere we see or hear survivors in the rubble. We burn them to death,” she said emphatically, waiting for any objections.

  “Six of our people are in there,” said another redheaded woman, who identified herself as Maureen Gibbs.

  “If we see them, we’ll help them. But we have to press this extermination forward until it’s done. We’re doing this one section at a time, and then we move to the next one. We’ll meet everybody blowing up the other end somewhere in the middle.”

  Nobody had tried to flee the city since daybreak, but a squad from the wrecking yard still covered the perimeter.

  “Why not just shoot the survivors?” asked Maureen’s husband, Keffer.

  “Because thanks to you guys, we have a lot more gas than bullets. And it’s more effective. If one person’s alive in the rubble, there’s a good chance he’s got a buddy or two down there with him.”

  “Four of our kids are missing,” Maureen said.

  “We’re not shooting kids.”

  “No, they’re too valuable,” Maureen snapped.

  Sam smacked Maureen’s chest so hard she drove the woman backward two feet. “Get one thing straight: we’re not them. We don’t take kids to the Alliance for any price. And we’re saving your lives and the lives of all your children.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maureen offered. “It’s been horrible. You don’t know—”

  “We do know. I know. That’s why we’re not taking prisoners, and the biggest mistake any of you can make is trying to stop us. They all die.”

  “Okay,” Maureen said. “I’m really sorry.”

  Sam saw nods of affirmation from everyone but the gracious African, whose head never moved. But nei
ther did he object. She spotted a small cross burned into his chest, and figured he was religious. Maybe he’d just have to find his faith again later in the day, because now was the time to put hell to rest.

  Cassie waited, and waited, to see if Jester could swim. She didn’t think so. He hadn’t jumped till she lured him into the water by standing on the rise in the middle that Miranda had pointed out. But if she was wrong, she knew she was dead.

  “Drown,” she whispered.

  But he surfaced in front of her with a gasp so shocking that she almost fell into the deeper water. He thrashed with a look of terror on his burned face. But she could see his face, which meant he could breathe.

  Cassie pushed off the rise, swimming underwater, aided again by the current. But she ran out of air quickly—panic burned it up like a furnace—and had to struggle to take another quick breath.

  In this uncertain manner, rising just enough to breathe when she had to, she moved away from the rise where Jester now stood. Had she looked back, she would have realized that the moment he jumped, she should have taken off, rather than marking so clearly where he could find footing. But she’d kept her head above water for as long as possible because she feared drowning—or getting sucked underground where the river disappeared for miles.

  She felt the current strengthening, pushing her toward the gap that could kill her, and struggled mightily to a smooth round boulder just to the left of the dark opening. Hanging onto it, she glanced back and saw Jester hurling himself toward her, floundering right away.

  “Drown, drown,” she whispered again.

  Cassie pulled herself onto the rock, feeling safer just as his hand rose from the water and gripped her foot. She jerked hard. He let go, but only because he needed both hands to keep from getting swept away himself.

  She climbed halfway up the narrow chiseled steps, breath tightening as he pulled himself from the water with frightening speed and scrambled after her. She was so petrified at finding him gaining ground that for several seconds she didn’t hear Miranda or see her outstretched hand.

  When she did, she reached up, and saw Steph trying to help, too. She was so grateful she could have cried. They hauled her up as Jester tried to grab her again. Then the older girls rolled a lethal-looking boulder at him, but it bounced to the side and landed in the water, harmlessly splashing him.

  While Cassie tried to catch her breath, the other girls hurled rocks at Jester, hitting him several times, hard. But to the terror of all three of them, he not only weathered the barrage, but scuttled up the vast steps even faster.

  Miranda dragged Cassie to her feet and they all ran toward the garden cavern. Cassie felt like a sluggard compared to the older girls. Miranda stayed by her side, but urged Steph to run ahead. When Steph hesitated, Miranda shouted, “If you can do it, then do it.”

  Run fast? Cassie knew she couldn’t have at that moment, but she saw Steph take off.

  When they reached the cavern moments later, Miranda yelled at her: “Now you go! Run for your life.”

  The older girl turned toward the onrushing Jester, reached into a wide bed of tall tomato plants and grabbed two rocks.

  “Come with me!” Cassie shouted at her. “Go!”

  Miranda screamed without turning back.

  She couldn’t leave Miranda here, she thought. Not by herself, with nothing but a couple of stones. Dizzy with fear, Cassie ran to the bed, planning to grub for rocks, but found a small pile right away. They’d been left there in the meticulously tended garden. After retrieving as many as she could in two hands, she returned and stood, pale and trembling, next to Miranda.

  When the older girl threw her rocks, Jester slowed and ducked. She missed, but Cassie threw, too, and hit him in the leg. It didn’t appear to have any more effect than stoning him back at the plunge pool had, but then he took another step toward them and Steph jumped from behind the tomato plants and drove a punji stick into his neck. She did it with such force that the sharpened bone went through Jester’s body and stuck out on the other side.

  He staggered, spun around and clawed at the wound. Spotting Steph, his eyes widened. “You! You!” he gasped at the mute girl.

  She wasn’t silent anymore: “Fucker!” she shrieked, pulling another sharpened bone from the bed and ramming it like a spear into his gut.

  Miranda dragged Steph away from Jester when he started to fall forward. The girl kept screaming at him as he jerked on the ground, spasms that ended seconds later.

  “He hurt me!” Steph screamed, sobbing so hard her whole body shook. “He . . . hurt . . . me . . . like . . . nobodyshouldev erbehurt,” she finished in a furious torrent of words.

  She dropped to the ground and curled up, wailing with such anguish that tears sprang to Cassie’s eyes.

  Miranda wrapped herself around Steph and rocked her, whispering, “It’s okay now.”

  “No, no it’s not,” Cassie said, gripping Miranda’s shoulder.

  The girl sat up, staring at Jester.

  “No, over here,” Cassie screamed, pointing behind her to a Komodo dragon. The beast had a grotesque neck wound and mangled leg, but was dragging himself toward them.

  “Oh my God! Get up, Steph.” Miranda pulled the grieving girl to her feet, and the three ran.

  But Tonga never even looked at them. The reptile trudged up to the meat that didn’t move, stripping off most of Jester’s back and a buttock with his powerful jaws.

  A tortured cry rose in the cavern. The girls paused and looked back, watching Jester make a feeble attempt to push the Komodo away. The giant lizard ripped off Jester’s arm with his teeth.

  Morning sun burned by the time Teresa and Bessie led the children to the top of a dune that bordered the wrecking yard. Most of them remembered seeing the stacks of smashed-up cars on their march to the City of Shade. When they looked back now, only a middle section of the city still stood. Dark smoke billowed from all parts of a huge rubble pile that had been a massive structure just hours ago.

  Several of the children said they could still hear screams, but Teresa gaily insisted they were listening to the souls of birds singing. Bessie agreed, whistling beautifully until none of the children heard any other sounds at all.

  Hot and weary, they descended the dune to the fourth row. When Teresa spotted the trailer door hanging open, she asked Bessie to stay back with the kids.

  “Only if you’ll take the gun,” Bessie said, trying to hand her the .32.

  “You keep it. You have them,” Teresa replied, casting a glance at the line of children.

  Bessie shook her head. “We haven’t see anything for two hours. Take it. It’s ready to go. Or let me handle this instead.”

  “I’ll go.” Teresa took the pistol, feeling ultimately responsible, as she always had, for the safety of any children in her care.

  She approached the trailer warily, slowly opening the door all the way. Bright morning light swept across the sand that had gathered over years on the wooden floor, exposing the body of a woman who had been savagely knifed to death.

  Teresa backed away, then thought to latch the door to keep scavengers out. She didn’t know the form they took in the desert, but there were always scavengers.

  “We can’t wait in there,” she said softly to Bessie, handing the gun back. “Someone’s been killed. It’s really bad. We’ve got to find a safe place for these kids, as far from here as we can get and still be in the yard.”

  In an adventurous voice, Teresa said to the children, “Let’s go all the way out to the end of these cars so we can see just how big this place really is.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?” asked one of the three Gibbs kids, as flame-haired as her mother.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Teresa said.

  “Then why did you jump away from that door like you got bit?” the girl asked, sounding as peckish as her mom.

  “I just thought it would be nice to be outside after being cooped-up in that pit all the time.”

  “You’re lying.�
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  “Would you please just be nice?” Teresa said to the girl. She could have wept, after what she’d just seen, and now this?

  They had started back up the row when they heard a loud engine. Teresa looked for a place to hide the kids, but it was too late: a motorcycle with a sidecar slowed at the end of the row. The driver looked at them and turned.

  “You can put the gun down,” Teresa said to Bessie. “That’s Bliss’s friend on the back.”

  The driver braked. His leg had bled through his pants, and Teresa glimpsed an S burned into his brow. She wondered what that meant.

  “Who is he?” Bessie asked, the gun by her side.

  Before Teresa could confess her ignorance, Jaya climbed gingerly off the bike. His leg was bloody, too, but he ignored her inquiring gaze and pointed in the direction of the city, asking what was going on.

  “Who’s he?” Teresa asked, glancing at the driver.

  “Esau,” Jaya replied. “He was a slave at the Alliance.” Then he introduced him to her and Bessie and told them about the Russians.

  “If they didn’t get you, what happened?” Teresa stared openly at their wounds.

  “The guy who owned this bike is what happened to us,” Jaya said. “But we killed him. Now will you tell me what’s going on over there? Is Bliss okay? The others?”

  “Everyone in the pit got out, and they’re fighting. But I don’t know about Bliss. No one’s seen her. The people from here,” Teresa glanced at the stacks of wrecked cars, “are blowing the place up.”

  “I’ve got to go there,” Jaya said to Esau.

  “Tell them we’re in the last row, not the fourth one,” Teresa said. Then she whispered, “We’ll be hiding. A woman was murdered in the trailer. That’ll mean something to them.”

  The Mayor, blind and bound and still moaning, tried to bolt when he heard Chunga. But without his eyes, he wasn’t as agile or as fast as he’d been in the tunnel, and he never broke free of the furious slaves pushing him toward his office. The starving Chunga was still thrashing around behind the door, as if the beast sensed the meat just beyond the barrier.