Afterland

by Masha Leyfer

  “We are not judging it, we are supporting it,” Rebekah shouts. Everybody laughs.

  “That honestly might be worse,” Mike says. “Anyway, goodbye.”

  “Bye, Mike!” we all shout and watch as he rides off. After a minute, everybody begins to drift off, some to the forest, some to one of the other fields. Within five minutes, nobody remains in camp except for Smaller Sally and me.

  “We’ll wait ten minutes,” she says. “And then we’ll go.” She walks over to the shed with the snowmobiles. “We’ll just take one. Mike told me he won’t stop for lunch, so we don’t have to worry about running into him. I have sandwiches for the two of us, so if we get hungry, we’re set.”

  “Sweet,” I say.

  “Let’s see: that’s all set…” She looks up as if adding things in her head. “So I don’t think we’re missing anything. Any gaps that you see?”

  “Shouldn’t you have asked me yesterday?”

  “Yes, I should have, but I didn’t. So: gaps?”

  “Aside from your planning skills? Well… Yes, actually. What happens if somebody notices that we’re missing?”

  “Ah, I thought of that too. I’m not so bad at planning after all, huh? We’re supposed to be on an unsuspicious little quest of our own.”

  “Yeah? And how will people know of this?”

  “I dropped hints yesterday. And in case of emergency, Big Sal’s got us covered.”

  “She knows?”

  “She has a way of knowing everything. I think you’ve noticed.”

  “Yeah, even I wasn’t too daft to pick that up. Also, what if Mike notices us? We’ll be following his tracks, right? Won’t he notice ours?”

  “We kind of lucked out here, actually. See the clouds?” She gestures at the sky. “It’s going to start raining in half an hour, maybe an hour. It’ll wash away all of our tracks, fast enough so that Mike won’t see ours when he goes back but not fast enough that we won’t be able to follow Mike’s.”

  “Ugh. Rain.”

  “You don’t like rain?”

  “No. I hate it.”

  “Well, learn to love it. Also, people tend to see what they expect. He’s not expecting our tracks and, therefore, hopefully he won’t see them.”

  “Fair enough,” I say.

  “Mh-hm. Anyway, maybe five more minutes and then we’ll go.”

  In the five minutes remaining we check our weapons and make any final necessary preparations. I press my knife into its sheaf—a superficial action, since the knife is already as far down in the sheaf as it’ll go, but it’s a habit I’ve taken on—and tie my crossbow across my back. Smaller Sally adjusts the straps on her backpack and pulls out the snowmobile. She sits in the front, I sit behind her, just like it was the first day I came here.

  “Feel familiar?” She says, handing me a helmet.

  “Yes. And I really don’t trust you to drive,” I say emphatically. “Honestly, just the thought of your atrocious driving skills make me sick.”

  “Hold on and keep it in,” she grins.

  “You’re gonna kill us, you and me both.”

  She shrugs.

  “I’ve been driving this thing for a long time and I’m still alive, right?”

  “I like how you phrased that as a question.” I put on my helmet, still slightly larger than it should be.

  “You never know, Molly, we might all be dead and in that case, if we die again,” she fastens the straps of her helmet, “it really won’t matter, now, won’t it?”

  “But we’re not dead.”

  “I guess not.” She brings the snowmobile to life and grins at me. “Hold on.”

  She grips the throttle with her characteristic spontaneity and we fly off. I wrap my arms around her waist, grip the folds of her leather jacket, and close my eyes. I hoped that it would be better now that I’ve ridden on a snowmobile several times, but her driving still unsettles me. I press my legs into the sides of the snowmobile and think, It’s worth it to help Mike. I can endure Smaller Sally’s driving for that, right?

  He owes me for this.

  We follow the distinctive tracks of Mike’s snowmobile. The ground is damp and easily imprintable. In about half an hour, it begins to rain. Smaller Sally doesn’t slow down. The rain flows down our leather jackets and off of our helmets in small rivers. I get soaked to the bone. We ride for several hours through the miserable downpour before Smaller Sally stops.

  “Look: he turned off here. We’re close.” She continues driving, stopping our snowmobile several hundred meters away from Mike’s tracks. She gestures forward and we begin to jog forward, still following the tracks. The rain comes down in sheets. Smaller Sally keeps her eyes on the ground. She stops at one point and gestures to Mike’s footprints.

  “Look,” she says. I step forward to examine what she’s pointing at. I see that Mike’s footprints stop being linear; they turn around move back slightly instead.

  “What does it mean?” I ask.

  “He hesitated,” she whispers. “See? He almost turned around and left.” She frowns. “This must be really bad, we should hurry.” We begin to run faster. After ten minutes, Smaller Sally stops me.

  “We don’t want to run into him. I got ahead of myself. I’m sorry.” We walk after the tracks. She points to the ground again. “See this? He hesitated again.” She wrings her hands. “That’s not good. He must be really nervous. That’s not good,” she says again and I can tell that she’s extremely nervous as well, almost as if she and Mike are linked together.

  We continue walking, slow enough not to run into Mike, but fast enough that we won’t miss anything if Mike needs us now. After several more minutes, Smaller Sally puts her finger to her lips and gestures for me to continue. We continue walking as the trees thin. Finally, Smaller Sally stops me a last time and pulls me behind a tree. She nods forward. I squint and lean to the right. It takes me a moment, but I make out Mike’s lone figure standing in between two birch trees several hundred meters away. He looks around and taps his foot. He crosses and uncrosses his arms several times then puts his fingers through his belt buckle and clenches his hands into fists.

  “I’m waiting two more minutes,” he shouts into the woods, “And if nobody shows up, I’m leaving.”

  As if on cue, another figure steps out of the trees. He’s shorter and stockier than Mike and maybe ten years older.

  “No need to shout, Mike” he says. “I’m right here.” At the sound of his voice, Mike steps back a little and clenches his fists tighter. The two men stand in silence appraising each other for half a minute.

  “You,” Mike says finally, his voice dripping with contempt.

  “Yes,” the other man says. “I have a name you know.”

  His voice seems friendly and inviting but something about it is so off, it unsettles me to the very bone.

  “Augustus.” Mike says after a moment and I sense a deep and dark history between them.

  “You weren’t followed?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” In that moment, I swear Augustus looks directly at the tree behind which we are hiding.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Mike says irritably and Augustus looks away. “What do you want?”

  Augustus doesn’t answer but says, “You’re quite a bit taller than the last time I saw you,”

  “It’s been eight years,” Mike says tensely.

  “Has it really? How long! And how have you been, Mike, what-”

  “I don’t have all day. What do you want?” Mike cuts him off.

  “Hmm.” Augustus crosses his hands. “Alright. I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “I got that, yes.”

  “Several of us are in trouble, and-”

  “Don’t say us like I’m a part of it.”

  Augustus squints at him.

  “But the fact remains that you are, Mike, whether you like it or not.” He smiles and it unsettles me even more than his voice. “I sense that you don’t, but you really don’t have
a choice, do you?”

  Mike crosses his arms.

  “What do you want?” He grumbles again.

  “Yes. As I was saying, several of us are in trouble.” He begins to list off names. “Veronica, James, Drew.” At the short list, I sense a change in Mike’s demeanor. He tries to hide it but I can tell that Augustus has seen it too.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” he says.

  “I need your help.”

  “Why should I help? It’s been eight years.”

  “If the time really mattered, you wouldn’t have shown up in the first place.” Mike crosses his arms again. “Don’t pretend that this doesn’t affect you either. And don’t forget, Veronica saved your life once.”

  I feel Smaller Sally tense up beside me.

  “He’s never told me about this,” she mouths.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Mike mutters. He pauses for a moment. “All right I’ll help Veronica. But James and Drew are on their own. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that James tried to kill me once.”

  Smaller Sally clenches her fists and I can see her planning a response murder.

  “They were all your friends,” Augustus tells him.

  “Were,” Mike emphasizes. “And maybe friends is a bit strong of a word. Tell me what needs to be done.”

  “All right then. Here’s the situation: we’ve made a few enemies over the course of the last eight years.”

  “Figures,” Mike says. “Knowing you.”

  “You really like to interrupt, don’t you?”

  “I just don’t like you.”

  “You should have made better choices, then, shouldn’t have you?”

  Mike cracks his fingers and I can see anger flaring on the surface of his skin.

  “Continue,” he spits out tersely.

  “We’ve made enemies,” Augustus repeats. “Some more powerful than others. They’ve taken Veronica, James, and Drew hostage. They’re requesting that we do them a favor in return for our comrades’ freedom.”

  “Our comrades,” Mike scoffs. “You were always so pretentious.”

  “As were you. As you are. You really haven’t changed much. Anyway, I want you to do the favor. What do you say?”

  “I say that I need much more detail than that. First of all, who’s they?”

  “You won’t like this,” Augustus grins.

  “I’ve never liked this.”

  “It’s the Carviates.”

  “The Carviates?” Mike says, throwing up his hands. “You pissed off the Carviates? How goddamn stupid do you have to be to piss off the Carviates?”

  I look at Smaller Sally and raise my eyebrows to ask if she knows who they’re talking about, but she shakes her head slightly. She doesn’t recognize the name either.

  “They want a murder.”

  “What?”

  “They want us to kill someone.”

  Mike steps back again.

  “What the hell are you asking me?”

  “I think you know,” Augustus says softly.

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Three people will die if you don’t.”

  “Let them,” Mike says and turns away. Augustus grips him by the arm.

  “Veronica,” he says firmly. “James and Drew.” Mike frees his arm.

  “They don’t mean anything to me.”

  “Maybe they don’t. But the oath you took still does.” Mike grinds his teeth at that. “Loyalty was always your fault,” Augustus says with a soft smile.

  “I’m not loyal to you.”

  “As we’ve already established, Mike, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Get one of your own to do it. I’m not killing anybody.”

  “Oh, I think you are.”

  “No. Why would I ever listen to anything you say again?”

  “You came here.”

  “And you called...why? Just to spite me.”

  “Because you’re the best one for the job. The only one, as you and I both know.”

  Mike just shakes his head emphatically. I frown. I’ve always suspected that Mike had a past full of darkness, but Augustus makes it sound like Mike used to kill every Saturday night just for the hell of it. Mike has never killed anybody. He couldn’t do it. Right?

  “No,” Mike is answering, “You have an entire cult at your disposal. Use it.”

  “It doesn’t do well to deny your past, Mike.”

  “It doesn’t do well to let your past control you.”

  “Don’t deny who you are.”

  “I’m not killing anyone. That’s the end of the discussion. And I’m leaving.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so Mike. Let me say one more thing.”

  “Nothing you can say will convince me.”

  “Give me thirty seconds.”

  “You have ten.”

  Augustus leans over and whispers something in Mike’s ear. Mike frowns. Both of us lean forward and try to discern what he’s saying, but we can’t even see his mouth moving from this angle. After what I count to be eleven seconds, Augustus pulls away.

  “Well, what do you say?” he asks. Mike pulls at his hair and frowns. His face is itching with the urge to scream. He paces several times back and forth, but finally gives his heavy response.

  “Who’s the victim?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Smaller Sally nearly jumps out from behind the tree. I pull her back hastily.

  “Don’t blow our cover,” I whisper.

  “That bastard,” she whispers in response. “That goddamn bastard. He thinks he can make Mike do whatever he wants? That’s not true,” she snarls. “That’s not true.”

  Meanwhile, Augustus is pulling out a pencil and a small scrap of paper.

  “I’ll write it down for you.”

  “Just say it out loud. Nobody can hear it. We’re alone.”

  “Mike,” Augustus smiles enigmatically, scribbling several letters on the paper, “You should know. You’re never alone.” Then he adds, “I need this done by Friday.” He fold the small piece of paper several times before handing Mike the paper and walking away. Mike crumples it in his hand and looks at the sky for a moment before opening it. He reads it over several times then explodes in a burst of fury.

  “I can’t do that, Augustus, you know I can’t do that!” He shouts into the woods throwing the paper down. Nobody responds. Mike screams again, picks the paper up, and throws it into the woods. “Goddamn it, Augustus!”

  He paces around the clearing for several more minutes and screams again.

  “Goddamn it!”

  He makes several more circles around the clearing and screams again.

  “God! Damn! It!”

  He pulls at his hair and bites his lip. He sits down and stands back up several times. He looks like he might implode. I watch with horrified fascination as Mike, the most calm and composed person I know, begins to fall to pieces. Finally, he closes his eyes and evens out his breathing, picking up the parts of himself that he let slip.

  “Friday,” he says. “That’s three days.” He paces around the clearing several more times and then says, “If I don’t...” He looks up, putting things together in his head and then screams again.

  “God damn it, Augustus!” He shouts again. I’ve never seen him in a state of such agitated agony. I didn’t even think he was capable of it.

  “Always move forward,” he says hollowly. “Even if…”

  He doesn’t finish his sentence.

  He picks up the piece of paper he threw away and begins to walk out of the clearing. Smaller Sally and I press back against the tree. Smaller Sally waits until he walks out of sight and then turns to me. She looks like she has a lot to say but she can’t even open her mouth to say it, because that would make whatever plight Mike is in more real.

  “He’ll be going to the nearest town,” she says emptily. “If we leave now, we’ll get back before him. Let’s go.”

  __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

  We ride in silence for se
veral hours. Smaller Sally’s driving is much more subdued and I find that I prefer her raucous, dangerous driving much more than this lifeless cruising. She stops in several hours and gets off the snowmobile. I follow. She walks around and pulls at her hair in the same way Mike does. I let her pace for several minutes and then ask,

  “Um...are you alright?”

  “No.”

  “Um…”

  “He’s gonna kill someone.”

  “No. He can’t do that.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because, there’s no way Mike can take someone else’s life.” Smaller Sally looks at me and doesn’t respond. “You seriously think Mike will kill someone?” I say in disbelief.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No. That’s ridiculous.”

  “He can do it. Don’t doubt him, he can do it.”

  “I don’t think he will.”

  She looks me straight in the eyes and says, “Yes he will.”

  I don’t know how to respond to the level of confidence in her voice so I join her in pacing.

  “So what do we do?” I say finally.

  “I don’t know,” she responds. “Ugh. I just...Mike will do it, you know. And then he’ll feel guilty about it forever. It’ll break him.” She sighs. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

  “No, no, don’t be sorry.” I smile. “I’m always ready for an adventure.” Smaller Sally smiles in response and I suddenly notice how pale she is.

  “Even if it involves murder?”

  “That makes it even more of an adventure, doesn’t it?”

  She smiles shakily and says, “I guess. You know, sometimes,” she sighs, “I feel like I’ve had enough adventures. Sometimes I just want to settle down and live my life without the constant danger and all of...this.”

  “But?”

  “But what else is there to do but this?”

  “You always have a choice,” I say, just as I said to Mike several days ago. Smaller Sally shakes her head.

  “I used to think that too, but it’s not true.”

  “What do you mean? You have to choose well, but you always have the choice.”

  “No,” she says. “If you make a choice to do something outrageous and stupid, what kind of a choice is that? It’s just a sacrifice.” She sighs again. “You know, the older I get, the more I think that our lives are predetermined for us and we have no choice but to go along with the flow. Bad things happen if we don’t and at that point, we don’t have any choices to make except for how to end.”