Keepers of the Flame

by McFadden III, Edward J.

  “The whole thing is at her feet. The entire quest was her idea. Remember?” Hazel said.

  “Has the wine gone to your head? My grandmother started it,” Randy said. “Her dying words and secrets sparked everything.”

  “Yes, your grandmother, the delicate flower who destroyed my family,” she said.

  “We’ve been over this.”

  “We’ll never be over it.”

  “No, I guess we won’t. Is that the end of us?” Randy said.

  She got up to get another bottle of wine. When she returned, she offered him a full cup. “Drink something real, will you?”

  “Answer my question,” Randy said.

  “You want to pair? I don’t know if I can trust you,” she said.

  “Trust me. Are you joking? I’m trying to protect you,” he said, and as soon as he did, he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

  “That why you didn’t tell me about the ear?” Hazel said. She’d turned her hard eyes on him. That accusing stare she’d perfected over the years. The stare that said everything he did was wrong.

  “I didn’t tell you for the same reason you never took ear duty. I was a fire guard, what, four months? I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I hardly believed it myself,” Randy said. He’d kept what he heard on ear duty to himself for a long time, only revealing it to Hazel who then told all of Respite at council. There were still folks who wouldn’t speak to him because of his silence.

  “Respite. Respite. This is Milly Hendricks, and I’m here with Robin Hampton, and…” Hazel said. “What’s there to keep secret? That isn’t much of a message. Why would you make up such nonsense? Wouldn’t you have come up with something better? Everyone believed you heard it.” Hazel got up and bent before him, putting her face a foot from his. “What was the real reason you didn’t tell me? Don’t you lie, Randy.”

  Her breath stank of wine and pork fat. She burped in his face. “You know why,” he said.

  “What? This love crap again? Randy, you want me to accept you didn’t tell me because you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you can keep me in this cage close to you?”

  “Cage? When did Respite become a cage?”

  “As soon as I was old enough to believe there was more out there. More people, and places with more than nineteen books.”

  Randy paused, choosing his words carefully. “Can you see the gone world? I mean, really see it? Like we imagine Hobbiton or Chicago in the year 3024? Can you picture it in your mind?” Randy said.

  “Sometimes. I’ve seen pictures, heard stories, seen artifacts of the gone world and the old ones, but I never experienced the world as it was, so perhaps what I’m picturing in my mind is folly. That’s one reason I want to leave here, Randy. To see for myself what’s out there.”

  “At what cost? The question isn’t do we want to see, but what might it cost to see? Don’t think I don’t want to go on my own quest to the old country. I do, very much, and I’d like nothing more than to do it with you, but the price is too high, and the risks too great. We have a wonderful life here. If we were struggling and miserable, it would make more sense. But we’re not,” Randy said.

  “You need to have faith,” she said.

  “Faith means nothing,” he said.

  She sat next to him, sipping her wine. Her beauty overwhelmed him; her deep blue eyes, dirty-blonde hair, the way the right side of her lips was always curled in a frown. Randy’s side went hot. Their arms touched and the heat between them made sweat roll down his back. She watched him with her cool eyes, knowing full well she was driving him crazy.

  Randy leaned in and kissed Hazel the way he had ten years prior, and this time he didn’t get punched.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Year 2080, Argartha

  Milly lay in the tall grass soaking up the sun, a swarm of huskie puppies covering her like ants on a honeycomb. The air was sweet, the sky blue and clear. Pepper had given birth to a litter of eight mixed-breed pups, but her partner in crime was a mutt with no recognizable characteristics, so Pepper’s genes dominated. Milly didn’t name the pups, nor would she. She loved them so, and as they licked her face and pawed at her hair, tears leaked from her eyes. In a few weeks the young dogs would go off to their homes, and Milly hoped to do the same.

  It had been over two years since she’d arrived in Argartha, and finally the day of her hearing had come. Argartha valued duty above all else, and one did their duty before any rights beyond food and shelter were granted. Milly had trouble dealing with this early on, but she’d gotten used to it. One of the lessons from orientation that stuck with her was how socialism had been vilified in the old days and blamed for the loss of freedom. She’d thought that made sense, until she lived in Argartha for a few months. Living in a socialist society provided more freedom where it mattered. Did she really need to decide what she ate each day? The food was always great, and way better than Respite’s. Did it matter that she couldn’t own a gun, or weapons of any kind? Grasping this idea took a little longer given the way she’d been traumatized by virals, captivity, and savagery as she’d traveled halfway around the gone world, but eventually she came around. Violence solved nothing, and in Argartha, crime of any kind got dealt with strictly and swiftly. All this seemed a small price to pay for safety and support in a world that remained many generations away from any type of societal normality.

  She’d learned going home was more complicated than she’d initially realized. She could go home, and she would be granted passage. That was certain, she’d earned it busting her butt as a sanitation worker for the last two years. The hearing wasn’t about her at all; it was about Respite, and whether an emissary should be sent to the island to determine its viability as a partner. Should the citizens of Respite be invited to Argartha, and would the Argarthians provide passage to those who wished it?

  Loneliness tugged at her, even as the pups drenched her in affection. Tye had joined the Order of Historical Preservation and Milly hadn’t seen him in months. He was out on assignment in Washington, and before he left, he’d told her he didn’t intend to go back to Respite. That hit her harder than Peter’s death. Tye had become her surrogate father, and without him she didn’t know how she’d get along. He’d been with her from day one, when they pushed out to sea with all of Respite watching. She understood why he’d decided not to come with her, though. Tye would turn seventy-two soon, and Haven was twelve years older than him and most likely dead. The journey back to Respite would be long and perilous, so she understood his reasoning, even if she felt betrayed by it.

  The twelve o’clock whistle blew, and a crow cawed, and Milly thought of Larry, as she did every time a bird squawked. It wasn’t Larry, and there’d been no signs of the bird since they’d passed the guard post into the outer lands. She figured the white one-eyed crow believed his mission completed, obligation fulfilled, and had gone on to live the rest of his life.

  Robin worked as a cleaner at the hospital, and she’d been offered a nurse apprenticeship. She’d turned it down and planned to come back to Respite, and it warmed Milly’s heart. She didn’t want to be the only member of the fellowship to make it home. Milly and Robin remained close as they navigated the unusual world of Argartha, but even they drifted apart as the currents of life took them in different directions, and Milly had been surprised when Robin announced her intention to return.

  Ingo enrolled in the academy, and Milly hadn’t seen him in over a year. He was training to rebuild the world, and she’d been forgotten. Tester never appeared, and Ingo explained that he’d been rejected. Tester always joked he was one in a million, this time it had been one in eight.

  Though she planned to plead with the council, Pepper and Turnip wouldn’t be permitted to accompany her home, no doubts about that. Traveling halfway around the world was a challenging endeavor for a community that barely had enough resources to support the city. It was akin to space travel back in the old days. Her passage by sea would
be part of an exploratory mission that would take her down the coast and through the old canal that connected the two massive oceans to where she hoped to find her boat. It had been thirteen years since she’d hidden the boat in the underbrush, and if it wasn’t there, she’d have to stay with the expedition and return to Argartha, and that would mean she’d most likely never see Respite or Randy or Curso again. Milly wondered if she’d see Hansa. Probably. The girl found her before, what was different now? Milly would have a knight with her, that’s what.

  Milly got up off the turf and wiped her face. Puppies jumped and barked, and she put them in their cage one by one. The dogs smelt of shit and dirt, a smell unique to pups and cherished by any dog lover.

  The midday reminder whistle sounded. She had to get going, it was time to go to the arena.

  She brushed off her pants and wiped hair from her face. Her glasses rested on the cut log she used as a bench, and she retrieved them. The glasses were custom-made using lenses scavenged from the gone world. The Argarthians and the squires conducted regular salvage missions, and that’s how each building in Argartha had modern conveniences beyond current technology, like toilets, TVs and refrigerators.

  Milly went inside and splashed water on her face and brushed her hair. She still wasn’t used to flicking a switch to turn on lights, and she’d developed a new appreciation for the broken light fixtures on the ceilings in Citi back home. Argartha used geothermal generators and solar panels. Respite might have electricity one day, and the artificial lights of Citi would shine again.

  Pepper and Turnip watched her every move as she got ready, and tears welled in her eyes at the thought of losing her two closest companions. She didn’t lock the front door, or close any of the windows when she left her house. She didn’t worry about theft, nor did she have any fears as she walked down her street. The homes in her neighborhood were small, and most of the people who lived there considered their situation temporary and planned to move someplace nicer when they’d earned the resources. Folks waved as they sat on porches, or cleaned up their yards.

  She’d seen the gone world, the rubble of what had once been, but Argartha was like going back in time to when those ruins stood tall. A maintenance truck rumbled by, powered by a combustion engine that burned alcohol fuel. There were electric cars and rickshaws, and the Provincial Explorers used planes, gliders, and weaponry powered by solar energy generated from the garbage of the gone world.

  The suburbs gave way to city central, and the bustle of people and the hum of machinery caused a static in her mind that never ceased and that she’d never gotten used to. Out in the gone world and back home on Respite, silence was golden. In Argartha, the sounds of humanity constantly reminded her she wasn’t alone. She hadn’t decided if she liked it and figured she didn’t since she’d had over two years to get used to it.

  Brick buildings that had been part of Fort Hill rose on either side of the road. They were painted with murals in bright colors depicting the gone world, sunny days under cotton candy skies, a giant turtle in its center. Argartha had artists, and writers, and even paid people for these services. A two channel TV station broadcast a faint signal within the confines of Argartha and the outer lands. The world was restarting here and rarely did the tenets of Argartha come into play. Ingo explained that most of those ideas were for when civilization got larger and were in place to avoid the mistakes of the past. Milly still didn’t understand how they would enforce some of the ideals, like population control, but she figured the reborn would have something to do with it, as would the highborn.

  The changed among them were mostly a humble lot, and they stayed in their section of the city most of the time. It was hard for reborns to live among regular people, and more difficult for those without a special talent to be subjected to the constant mental prods, intentional or not. She’d heard the leadership of Argartha pushed reborns to marry each other, yet another reason they were somewhat segregated, though they could go anywhere they wanted. Milly worried about some of the gossip concerning Kago Re, the current leader of Argartha, who rumor said could wipe a person’s memory with a thought. Since nobody in Argartha knew who the prior leader had been, Milly figured the rumblings were true.

  This begged the question, what would the product of two highborns create? She didn’t think she wanted to be around to find out. She’d have to settle some of these things in her mind and decide what to tell the people of Respite. What advice would she provide about coming here? She didn’t think she’d ever be back. Peter had been right. Argartha was a wondrous place, but she preferred home.

  The arena was a small baseball stadium that had a stage and roof added. Scrap metal of all types and colors made a mosaic above, and seats had been added at ground level. As the central gathering spot of the community, any event, whether it be sports, business, or community administration, was held there to accommodate any citizen who wished to be present.

  When she arrived, she found Robin and Tye waiting for her outside the entrance. “Tye!” She threw her arms around him and pressed him tight against her.

  “How are you, Milly?” he said.

  She blew by his question. “What brings you here? You’re not due to come in for months. I thought you decided not to come home?”

  “I’m not coming, but I wanted to be here for you if you needed me, and it turns out you don’t,” he said.

  “Why?” Milly said.

  “Your hearing has been canceled because a directive has been issued,” Tye said. He handed her a piece of paper the people of Argartha made from tree pulp.

  Milly accepted the sheet with a trembling hand, her eyes scanning the page as her heart leapt in her throat. Her application to join the Wasted Lands expedition got approved, and she’d be permitted to leave the group before they reached the area where the nuclear bomb detonated almost forty-five years prior. Argartha knight Rene Lacue and Second Chief diplomat Mona Severo would accompany her. They would carry the message that anyone who wished to come to Argartha would be welcome, and the issue of whether Argartha would assist in those efforts had been tabled for future consideration. Her petition to bring Pepper and Turnip had been denied; she’d been approved to bring one of them, but not both.

  Milly looked up at Tye. “I have to choose?”

  He nodded. “Seems an easy decision, given the situation.”

  Milly smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Year 2080 – Maryland

  The road back to Washington was pleasant, but Tye couldn’t stop thinking about Milly and Robin. They’d said their goodbyes two weeks prior, when their company turned southeast toward the sea where they’d met the ship that would take them most of the way home. Guilt crawled through him every time he thought about not going with his friends. What if Haven still lived? What would she think of him? He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d abandoned her, but he’d found a purpose, and that pull consumed all others.

  Pain shot up his right leg and arm. Being old sucked, and he’d gotten used to living in a modern society that had drugs, doctors, and an array of support services that made aging palatable, if not enjoyable. Sometimes it was like living a dream, and he’d wake up lying under the blaze of the desert sun, the sound of mortars and gunshots thundering over the hills of sand in Iraq, the last fifty years nothing but a dream. He thought often about his days as a soldier. Everything had been so clear, his enemy and purpose defined.

  He’d given a note to Milly explaining things, should his wife still be alive, and the knight accompanying Milly brought a radio with a solar panel. The hope was Respite and Argartha could establish a schedule of regular communication. If he discovered Haven still lived, he might change his mind and go home, but for now he’d decided, and his friends were gone.

  The path he followed led through the kudzu and weeds to what Milly had dubbed the Soldier’s Woods, Arlington National Cemetery, the same place he and his friends had trekked through the first time he’d come to Washington. The Order
for Historical Preservation maintained the path, and the turtle, but nobody had arrived looking for Argartha while he’d been on duty. In the last twenty-seven months he, Milly, Robin and Ingo had been the only people admitted into Argartha.

  He thought of Tester often, and more than once he’d come around a bend in the road, or over a rise, expecting his friend to be leaning against a tree, or lying at ease in the weeds. When he’d asked why Tester had been rejected, he’d been told there was too much darkness in him, and he couldn’t be trusted. What did he really know about Tester, anyway? Not much, but he knew his heart wasn’t dark.

  Tye stumbled, and pain shot down his leg again and his chest hurt. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and took a pull of water from his canteen. The midday heat had soaked him through, and his head pounded in rhythm with his heart.

  He looked forward to getting back to the library. Besides helping secure the old Library of Congress, and maintaining the turtle, he had a research assignment that entailed looking through the tattered volumes stacked in the library basement. Argartha wanted to reach out around the world, send emissaries to the pockets of civilization like Respite, and develop plans to seek communities still hidden and alone. To bring the world back from the edge would require teamwork, and expertise of all types. Sharing food, drugs, resources and solutions would bring people together, and the way to do that was study the past.

  Few old timers were left. As his generation died, only the older reborn would remember the days when a President ruled in the White House, and wars got waged over arbitrary borders, and for black gold. He’d fought for oil, though he hadn’t felt that way back then. He was serving his country. Now he understood he’d been a cog in the economic war machine, and that’s why he was part of the group charged with making sure that never happened again.