A Girl Called Badger (Valley of the Sleeping Birds)

by Colegrove, Stephen

“Yishai!”

  “Wilson. No time to talk!”

  “The Circle?”

  “Yes, but with more cannons and men,” said Yishai.

  A thunder rolled in the east. Wilson heard a high-pitched whistle from the night sky then was blown into a doorway like a rag doll.

  Silence.

  Wilson shook the blackness out of his head. He stared at a child’s shoe on the ground. Brown dust and broken wood from the building covered everything in sight. Men lay under fragments of roof beams.

  Yishai sat in the street like a brown, dust-covered ghost. Wilson sneezed and gave him a hand up. Another vibration showered more splinters.

  Wilson felt a stabbing pain in his right arm. A long splinter stuck from his bicep. He clenched his jaw and pulled it out.

  They brought the survivors to a nearby house. Wilson began to hear again, but a strange, high pitch remained. Yishai found a stylus and inkwell. He wrote messages on scraps of paper and handed them to a line of boys. Wilson thought about returning to check on Badger, but Yishai led him to a tall building nearby. The roof gave a panoramic view.

  A thick fog of gray smoke covered the cornfields. Circle warriors scrambled through the murky leaves like locusts. The cannon fire didn’t seem to faze them.

  The eastern hills flashed and a building exploded in a shower of splinters and roof tiles. Yishai handed him a spyglass and Wilson stared at a squat, boxy cannon. It was covered completely with charcoal-colored metal. Unlike the four-wheeled transports, the black monster had a dozen smaller wheels circled by two muddy tracks. Smoke popped from the cannon and blocked his view.

  “Are we shooting back at this thing?”

  “Of course,” said Yishai.

  Wilson counted the firing rate. The armored cannon boomed and cycled every thirty seconds. Compared to the day before, this cannon fired more rapidly and the damage was ten times more serious. A quarter of the village was already in flames.

  Yishai pointed to another ridge in the east, the one crossed by old 24. Wilson moved the spyglass. He saw a cloud of dust and three Circle transports barrelling toward David’s southern gate. Yishai took the stairs down to the street and Wilson followed.

  “Maybe it will run out of shells,” he said.

  An explosion and noise like a stone avalanche came from the south. Wilson and Yishai ran toward the sound. The south tower had collapsed into a pile of stone and wood.

  Yishai spat on the ground. He grabbed two dazed boys and sent them off with orders.

  “We’re abandoning the village,” he said to Wilson. “Take Airman Chen and whatever you can carry to the northern gate. There’s a ravine that heads west.”

  “Leave the village? That’s crazy!”

  “We prepared for this too. No time to explain!”

  “What about you?”

  Yishai ran towards the southern gate. “Go!”

  Wilson legged it back to the square. He narrowly missed a collision with a small boy who ran through the streets yelling at the top of his lungs.

  “Red Bear! Red Bear!” screamed the boy.

  A bell near the square began to peal a regular pattern––two short and three long.

  Sweat had soaked through his shirt by the time he reached the meeting hall. The building rattled from a nearby explosion and he took the stairs two at a time. In the bedroom, Kaya and another girl held a sheet over Badger to protect her from falling dust.

  “We’re leaving,” he said. “Take blankets, food, and water. Find your families and anyone you see. Tell them to go to the northern gate. Does ‘Red Bear’ mean anything?”

  “Just what you said––abandon the village,” said Kaya. “What about her?”

  “I’ll carry her.”

  “But how? Look at you!”

  “We don’t have time to argue.”

  Wilson grabbed his empty pistol and the implant manual and stuck both in his jacket. He wrapped Badger in a blanket and looked around at what was left of his father’s life. The air was full of the smell of medicine and freshly-cut fruit.

  “Goodbye, Father,” he said.

  He closed his eyes and whispered the verses of the strength-trick, then lifted Badger over his shoulder and walked heavily downstairs.

  The streets outside were packed with running villagers. Mothers carried infants and the older children ran behind with packs or rolls of blankets. A pair of boys ran by with an old man on a litter. Half a dozen men waved their arms and shouted directions. The crowds swirled like a turbulent school of fish around the men, but mostly followed the command to go north.

  The ground shook from a massive explosion and brightened the streets for a moment with orange light. Wilson stumbled in the gravel but kept going. Over the rooftops to the south a cloud rolled into the sky, coal-black and slashed with flame. Wilson turned away from the prickly heat and carried Badger at a fast walk through the streets.

  The northern gate was open. Families with overstuffed bags and precious belongings streamed through the corn field toward a forest. A dozen soldiers sheltered behind overturned carts outside the gate and fired their rifles east.

  Wilson followed the line of villagers over the muddy, trampled corn. The trick began to wear off and his muscles burned from carrying Badger on his shoulder. Bullets whistled above his head and smacked through the green blades of corn like angry wasps.

  At last he made it to the trees. Wilson lay Badger on the soft ground behind an oak tree and sat down for a rest. The line of villagers continued along a trail that sloped down into a dark ravine. Wilson looked back at David. A dozen gray pillars of smoke boiled into the sky. Rifles cracked and popped inside the walls like a green wood on a fire. The dreams of these people were turned to black, useless dust and floated away on the wind. Wilson held his head in his hands and felt it was all his fault.

  The charcoal Circle machine had slid from the hills like a disgusting snail and now crawled toward the village. It spat a cloud of gray smoke and the north tower answered with a boom. Half a minute later, the squat Circle cannon fired again and the top of the tower burst apart in a spray of stone and wood.The black machine continued south with a mechanical blat-blat sound. Soon the eastern edge of the palisade wall blocked it from view.

  The line of villagers running out of the gate thinned to a few frantic boys. Wilson checked Badger’s vital signs. He knelt to pick her up when a high-pitched yell pierced the battle noise. Wilson looked back at the village and saw Kaya struggling through the mud and trampled corn. She held the black dog in her arms.

  The northern gate crumpled in a massive explosion and knocked her to the ground. Wilson stumbled across the field as another black and orange mushroom rolled from the village. He helped Kaya stand and took the dog from her arms. They ran towards the forest as two more shook the ground and boiled into the sky. A few soldiers that had survived the destruction at the gate followed them and took positions inside the trees.

  Wilson laid the dog next to Badger. “Where was he?”

  “In the street!”

  They heard a mechanical drone and a tiny four-wheeled vehicle sliced through the corn fields like a bat out of hell. The soldiers aimed their rifles but Wilson stepped in front of them and spread his arms.

  Yishai stopped the vehicle a short distance away. The front was covered with long corn leaves, bits of green stalk, and mud. Yishai and a man sitting behind him were in the same messy state as the vehicle. Their faces and clothes were black with soot. A small wisp of smoke trailed from Yishai’s jacket and he bled from multiple scratches.

  “Where did you get that?” asked Wilson.

  Yishai grinned. “Captured yesterday. It was going to be a surprise.”

  “It still is.”

  Yishai pointed at Badger. “Is she hurt?”

  “No, but she’s very, very sick,” said Wilson.

  Yishai waved to a flat section on the back of the vehicle. “She can ride here.”

  “No, I’ll carry her. Kaya and the dog can ride.”


  Yishai spoke a few words to the man and the soldiers then sped away with Kaya and the dog on the back. He drove through a field to the northeast instead of following the path through the forest.

  Wilson folded a blanket length-ways. He moved Badger onto the cloth and picked up the front while the man who had ridden behind Yishai carried the other end. The two followed the sloping path into the ravine with their burden.

  They were alone in the deep forest. The other villagers had out-paced them along the trail and the soldiers didn’t follow. The well-worn path sloped down to a creek bed then up the opposite bank. After the chaos and shocking noise of the battle the silence made Wilson anxious. He pushed himself to move faster. They stopped only twice to rest, and for less than a minute each time.

  After an hour of walking, the first light of dawn appeared in the sky. Wilson and his helper crossed a deep stream to a clearing packed with people. Yishai was taking stock near the center of who and what had survived.

  Wilson lay exhausted beside Badger’s wrapped body. He heard the crunch of footsteps and saw Kaya’s small moccasins.

  “Thank you for finding my dog,” said Wilson, not wanting to raise his head.

  Kaya pointed. “He’s next to that tree if you want to see him. Do you have a water skin?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  Kaya left and Wilson watched the sun rise lazily through the leaves. After a quarter hour more footsteps shuffled nearby.

  “I’m glad you made it,” said Yishai. “Can we do anything to help her?”

  “What can be done, has been done,” said Wilson. “The only cure is at my village.”

  “I see.”

  “I guess this is ‘Red Bear,’” said Wilson.

  “Yes. We had a plan before, but your father made it more organized. This is our refuge when all has been lost.”

  “But how can you abandon the entire village? What about food and water? Medicines and gunpowder?”

  “Not as valuable as what we saved,” said Yishai. He pointed at a wooden box the size of a coffin. “Seed storage.”

  “What were all those explosions?”

  “The last of our powder. Actually, the first was a powder house, the second was my trap for the ugly moving cannon.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I don’t know. I do know that too many people lost their lives fighting that thing. But now we must gather a supplies and decide what to do next.”

  “Take the village back? Rebuild?”

  Yishai shook his head. “Not unless we want to fight more of those bastard machines.”

  He gave Wilson a hand up from the ground.

  “You’ve helped me more than I deserve,” said Wilson. “Now it’s my chance to return the favor.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll take you to the west. To Station.”

  NINETEEN

  Two hundred women and children and fifty men had escaped the attack. Many were wounded. Wilson scrounged medical supplies and helped to bandage and treat them.

  A hidden cache of supplies was unearthed from the clearing. Against Wilson’s advice, Yishai left a coded message with the direction of travel and had the boxes reburied.

  The refugees split apart. The majority headed west and two dozen men stayed behind. They planned to lay traps and pull any pursuing Circle into the opposite direction. Yishai left the four-wheeled vehicle with them and gave a gloomy farewell.

  The refugees traveled in single file, like a somber line of black ants. A pair of hunters worked at the rear to wipe out any trail signs. Three strong girls helped Wilson carry Badger in a litter made from the blanket and two long saplings. Four boys copied Wilson and carried the ugly dog in a small stretcher. With many of their animals left behind, the children had adopted the dog despite its foul appearance and constant attempts to limp away.

  Wilson checked Badger’s breathing and heart rate during each break in the march. Both were continually very low. To record the numbers he scratched lines into the flat leather of his belt. He told her stories, tried the re-set code, and waved herbal infusions under her nose. Nothing at all made her respond.

  They traveled northwest to avoid any Westcreeks then southwest over old trails. Once during the first day and once at night they heard clusters of distant gunfire.

  The long line of survivors arrived at the high plains and camped until nightfall. Most used the time to sleep or cook. They formed circles of conversation and support around each other. Wilson sat with the ugly dog away from everyone else and watched a lake in the distance. The moon reflected on the water like a white, rolled-back eye.

  Kaya sat on the ground beside him. “Tell me what you see.”

  “The dead past and the dead future.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Wilson pointed to the lake. “I walked along that shore only weeks ago. People were alive that are dead now. Over there’s the road we’ll take to Station. That’s the future.”

  “Why call it dead?”

  “Because whatever I do, the only future I have left won’t wake up. She might as well be dead.”

  “Don’t say that, Wilson. She’s still breathing.”

  Wilson shook his head. “The space between breathing and not, living and not––sometimes that space is wider than a mountain. At other times it’s as thin as a butterfly wing.” Wilson paused. “There’s been so much death. So much destruction. I thought I made the right choices for the right reasons. Maybe I should have accepted Badger’s sickness. We could have stayed in the valley and made the most of what time we had left.”

  Kaya didn’t reply, and watched the gray plains for a long moment.

  “Time waits for no man,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I was late for a lesson once and your father said that.”

  Wilson sniffed. “Whether it waits for me or not won’t matter soon.”

  Kaya rubbed the ugly dog on the neck and it didn’t run away.

  BEFORE DAWN A HAND shook him awake.

  “Sorry,” whispered a thin boy. “Come with me.”

  Wilson wrapped a fur around his shoulders and followed the boy through the dark forest. After a few minutes of heavy-eyed walking he stopped.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Yishai needs you. It’s important.”

  They followed an old game trail to a rushing stream. The air smelled of charcoal and blood. Wilson saw chipped bark on a nearby tree. Next to the stream sprawled a line of dead tribals.

  “Wait! These are Lagos,” said Wilson. “What happened?”

  He splashed across the stream and climbed the muddy bank to a circle of David men, Yishai among them.

  “Sorry to bring you out here in the dark,” said Yishai. “But she asked for you.”

  “Who asked for me?”

  Wilson rubbed his eyes and pushed through the circle of village men. Three tribals knelt inside, two teenage boys and one woman, all with hands tied.

  “Flora!”

  A corner of Flora’s mouth turned up but she said nothing. Dirt and blood from the fight smeared her blonde buckskin dress. Twigs and brown fragments of leaf stuck from her tight gray braids.

  Yishai waved his hand at all three. “We caught them planning an ambush.”

  “It’s not true,” Flora said quietly.

  Wilson thought about the way Flora had used him to attack Westcreek. But he also remembered how she’d kept her word.

  “Whether she was planning to ambush us or not, we can trade her to Lagos for supplies,” he said. “They won’t refuse a parlay for someone like her.”

  Yishai said nothing and looked off into the forest.

  “What’s wrong?” Wilson noticed all the men from David had grim looks. “Wait! You just can’t kill her!”

  “He wants your blessing,” said Flora. “He’ll gladly shoot beautiful children if they have a rifle, but not an old woman with empty hands.”

  “We can’t risk a parlay,” said Yishai.
“We’ve lost too many of our brothers and sisters to trust anyone at this point, especially Flora. She’ll put those Circle bastards back on our trail and we can’t survive another fight!”

  “If you want approval for murder, I won’t give it,” said Wilson.

  “They’re just animals,” said one of the soldiers.

  Wilson remembered the way Darius had screamed when Badger had cut him. He shook the image from his head and stared at the young soldier.

  “I used to think that too, and for the same reasons.” He paused. “But it’s not true. We’re all the same underneath and you know it. If you think they’re animals then all of us are animals, including me. Arrange a parlay or let Flora go free.”

  Yishai frowned grimly for a moment. At last he nodded.

  Flora cleared her throat with a rattle and spat on the trampled leaves. “You strike hard with words, Wilson of the west, but let these fools kill me. It will be dignified and painless compared to what waits for us at Lagos.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Two days ago, one of the Circle came on a machine. He asked me to attack David. I refused. Later that night, followers of Marcus and the Circle murdered my family and friends. A dozen of us escaped, but your soldiers found us tonight and now only my two youngest are left.” She lost expression in her face and stared at the sprawled bodies near the stream. “For once in my life I tried to do the right thing, Wilson, and look at me. I’m a stupid old woman covered in blood and filth, surrounded by dead children. Do me a favor and let these men kill me.”

  Yishai spread his arms. “I didn’t realize what happened––she refused to talk to us.”

  Wilson took a knife from one of the soldiers and cut Flora and her sons free.

  “Both of us have done horrible things in the past,” he said, and helped her to stand. “What matters most is what you do next.”

  “What choice do I have? To starve to death or be eaten by wolves?”

  Yishai shook his head. “If you swear the blood oath, you may join our tribe.”

  Flora nodded, then looked at Wilson. “Thank you for listening.”

  ON THE EVENING of the third day the column came to the kneeling hills below the gray peak of Old Man. Wilson walked in the lead with Yishai, Kaya, and four helpers carrying Badger’s stretcher. A group of hunters and Father Reed waited for them at a stream crossing.