Land of the Dead (Rise of the Empaths Book 2)

by A. S. Hames

  While we talk, my intuition does come to life in an unexpected way. When you’ve spent your life burying your gift, it’s easy to get lost in the noise of everyday life and rely on people’s smiles and frowns. But here in the absolute quiet and calm of this deserted land, Ben has a glow. At first, I have to satisfy myself it’s not the campfire, but it’s a definite emanation, as if an almost invisible cloud surrounds him but is also drifting toward me, to envelop me, to wrap me. I doubt he knows it’s happening, so I don’t think it’s anything more than his liking for me.

  Later, when Zu, Ax, and Von are asleep – Ben and I seem to have found a little extra energy, so I tell him of those we’ve lost. I start with Taff’s story – how he was going to be a schoolteacher like me, although teaching six to ten-year-olds, whereas I’m going to teach eleven to fourteen. At least, that was the plan before we became soldiers, and before Taff died, and before the Nation tipped sideways into hell.

  But Ben nods and smiles as I talk, which I like, so I talk about my own plans – although I begin to wonder if it’s right for me to talk about teaching when he wasn’t chosen for school. I’ve been wondering about education recently. It strikes me that Ben is easily as smart as most of those I was at school with.

  “You seem to like hearing me talk about learning, Ben.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you could talk about anything and I’d like hearing about it.”

  He blushes, but not as much as me.

  Dawn brings the certain promise of another hot day, but we have to push on regardless. We haven’t covered enough miles and we need to do better. It makes for a tough day, especially for Zu, who falls to her knees a number of times.

  Late into the afternoon, we have hills to the east and the sun dropping across an open west. At last, it looks like we might be south-east of the bloodstains on the map. That means Town 899 (Hillside) is just up ahead, although the rough painted sign suggests a change of name.

  NEW HOME

  FREEDOM COUNTRY

  I read it to Ben but his attention is on Von, who’s facing up the trail and growling. We all take a moment, because you don’t want to ignore Von when he’s on to something.

  “You hear that?” Ben says.

  “Gunfire,” Ax says. “And it’s getting nearer.”

  I check the map again.

  “There’s a reservoir lake just south-east of here. If we head for its far side, we’d get onto an eastbound trail and maybe avoid trouble.” I have their attention, so I go on. “We could go east over the hills, then turn south again. We’d re-join Roadway Five farther on.”

  “What if there’s trouble there too?” Zu says.

  “Well, if you’ve got any better ideas?”

  I immediately regret saying it so rudely, so I check the map again.

  “We could stay on the eastern trail until here. Town 775, Purity.”

  “How far?” Ax asks.

  I do a quick estimate.

  “Eighty miles.”

  “Eighty miles?” Zu says, making it sound like eight hundred.

  “Okay,” Ax says. “I’m guessing the rebels have taken Hillside or New Home or whatever the hell it’s called. We can’t risk going that way.”

  The shooting seems to be getting nearer.

  “I think we should move,” Ben says.

  We do – toward the eastern hills.

  Ax, Ben, Zu, and Von cut right, into a ditch for cover. I cut left to climb a mound that will give me a better view.

  And it does – only it’s a one-horse wagon coming up from the south and cutting across rough ground to hit the eastern trail. The rider is shooting back at two men on horseback. One of them goes down. Dead, I’d say.

  The wagon is closing on me.

  “Hey trooper!” the rider calls.

  He slows and I’m stuck. I can’t run. He might shoot me in the back.

  “What are you waiting for?” he says.

  I climb aboard his wagon. He eyes the sub-lieutenant’s badge pinned to my army shirt.

  “Where are you from?” he says, getting his horse moving fast again.

  I see blood on his torn pale green shirt. It looks like he’s been shot in the gut.

  “Town 117, Forbearance,” I say.

  He turns and lets off two shots. The second rider goes down. We don’t slow though.

  “Forbearance? Never heard of it.”

  “The Nation’s a big place.”

  “It’s kinda shrinking right now, lady. That’s why I’m heading over Empty Valley way.” He’s looking over his shoulder. “I’m John Davis Carson, by the way. I used to be in the same army as you.”

  “Good to meet you, John Davis Carson. I’m Jay-Ruth Two-Five.”

  He looks to the front to keep us straight, then back again.

  “You might wanna start shooting,” he says.

  His name is a strange one, like Steven Rose and Julia Longwood, but I can’t think about that now because, two hundred yards back, another three men on horseback are coming after us. I ready my gun, but the days of hot sun are causing my brain to imagine things. Like cooked chicken.

  “They say it’s about politics,” John Davis Carson says. “I say it’s about starvation.”

  I can’t speak and aim, so I just aim.

  “Without food, people ask questions,” he says. “Like who the hell’s in charge and how can we kill ‘em.”

  I can definitely smell cooked chicken.

  “That’s where we get caught. You and me. We end up fighting against people who have every right to be angry.”

  He cocks his head back.

  “They had the only chicken in five miles, so I watched them cook it and then I stole it.” He laughs then he winces. He doesn’t look too good. I’m guessing he has the chicken stuffed up his shirt. I hope his blood isn’t all over it.

  He turns and lets off a couple more shots. He misses. The horsemen are around a hundred and fifty yards away.

  “Shoot, girl, shoot!”

  I let off a shot and miss, and we rumble on at speed, into the hills.

  “You know what makes a veteran?” he says.

  “A long time in the war,” I say.

  “No, it’s when you stop reacting to seeing bad things. That’s when you’re a veteran. It don’t need to be a long time.”

  I wonder if it’s too late to stop myself becoming a veteran.

  “It’s about emotion,” he says. “You start out with all these hot emotions slopping around. Then you see too much and they turn cold like ice. You seen much action?”

  We have a seventy-five yard lead and my emotions are hot and slopping around. I take a shot and miss. I try to take another but there’s only a click.

  “A little,” I say.

  “It’s not just the chicken,” he says. “I’ve killed them in numbers. I’ve burned their wagons and created hatred in them.”

  I think of myself at Endeavor. He lets off a shot.

  “They might have a right to be angry, but I reckon I have a right to eat cooked chicken. I mean who’s to say I’m wrong?”

  “I’m out of ammunition,” I tell him.

  He indicates a sturdy bag at my feet. Inside is a gun, so I take it and tuck my empty gun into my waistband.

  “Anytime soon would be good for that next shot,” he says.

  I shoot.

  I hit a man.

  I hit him. He slows. He looks at me. It’s his arm. He carries on looking at me. His gaze carries a promise, just for me. A promise that is good for a lifetime.

  John Davis Carson fires two more shots behind.

  “I’ve lasted longer than most,” he says. He looks down at his wound. “Maybe it’s over today. It sure feels like it. Five days they’ve been here, killing anyone they can find. Half of them went north—”

  He falls off the wagon with a bullet through his head.

  “Whoa!” I leap off the wagon and roll. There’s the zing of another bullet. In a moment of madness, I scramble back to the dead veteran an
d take his gun and his cooked chicken. If they’re going to kill me, it may as well be for something worthwhile.

  I run for some bushes and I take a bite. Oh my God, it tastes so good. Shots are coming in. I laugh. I’m eating their dinner. Ha ha. I take another bite and they keep shooting. Isn’t it the funniest thing ever?

  Then, with my mouth full of chicken, I shoot back.

  7. The Empty Valley

  JAY

  My rapid firing holds them off, so I’m able to scramble through bushes and drop into a crag, guns in hand, fingers on triggers. I will shoot the face off anyone who comes over that brow. I will not die on some stupid hill in Freedom Country.

  And I think they know that because it goes quiet.

  Then I hear them leaving – noisy at first and then just hooves fading into the distance. Okay, so they lost a cooked chicken, but they kept their lives. It was a good decision.

  Except…

  I hear something. Someone’s coming. Oh yes, someone’s definitely coming. They’re almost on me. I point my guns at the bush. I feel the triggers on my fingers. They thought they’d fool me, did they?

  I hear sniffing.

  A big gray head appears.

  “Von!”

  He’s pleased to see me. Or maybe it’s the chicken, because there’s a line of drool hanging from his jaw. I’m pleased I haven’t shot him.

  I tear off a piece of chicken breast and throw it to him. He snaps it out of the air. It’s gone in a gulp. He looks so keen and hungry, and I’m glad to have him with me.

  “Come on, you big dope.”

  Back on the trail, there’s no sign of the others. While I wonder about them, I take the opportunity to drag the dead veteran to a dip on the side and say a few words.

  “He served his Leader until it no longer made sense. Please look after the spirit of this chicken thief. Blame the war, not him.”

  “Hey!”

  Ben. Thank God.

  With Von almost glued to my leg, I walk to meet them, smiling with relief that we’re all okay, and stuffing chicken into my mouth. And, of course, throwing some to Von in case he decides to take a chunk out of my leg instead.

  Ben, Ax, and Zu are baffled as I show them my prize. “I reckon Von could smell a cooked chicken a hundred miles away.”

  I pull more pieces off and hand them around.

  And so we eat and we walk, farther into the hills, with me still wondering if this is the right move for us.

  An hour later, it’s almost dark, so we find ourselves a nook above the trail to spend the night.

  Settling down, I check my boots for wear. They’re not too bad. I’m not really thinking about boots though. I’m thinking about the man I shot in the arm. It reminds me of a bully I once knew. It was okay for him to push me around, but as soon as I threw his cap in a puddle the whole war between us became my fault.

  For the man I shot, his face bore that same certainty. He’ll forget everything that happened before my bullet hit him. And what’s worse is I feel bad. Bad for throwing a cap in a puddle. Bad for shooting a man in the arm. Even though one tore up my essay book and the other fired at least six shots at me. Do bullies ever feel guilty? I don’t think they do.

  BEN

  It’s just after dawn and I’m the first to stir. Von is snoring and twitching. Ax is sleeping on his side. So is Zu. Jay is on her back, so, in the early dawn light, I watch her chest gently rise and fall.

  I wonder about us. Does she know how much I like her? When she raced off on that wagon yesterday, I felt more concern for her wellbeing than I did for my own, which never happened to me before I met her. Watching her sleeping just a few feet away… it’s like she’s a magnet and I’m a piece of iron.

  It’s not long before we’re all awake, which means we’re soon up and hitting the trail. If only it could stay this cool. But it doesn’t. The heat rises with the sun and our pace eventually slows. I’d give some thought to walking at night, but the moon’s cycle is waning to a crescent that won’t light our way. It’s vital to see the ground in front of us. The trail is pitted with holes and a twisted ankle would be as bad as a bullet through the foot.

  We push on, snaking through the hills in silence, step after step, with Von doing his usual thing of trotting ahead, stopping, waiting, and letting us catch up. Sometimes, he lets us get fifty yards ahead of him. That’s when he looks down the trail to where we’ve come from to make sure we’re not being followed. Once, he’s happy, he catches up with us and trots past to repeat the whole process.

  Hour follows hour. Very little grows here, just some wispy bushes and the occasional gnarled tree on the shady side. I see a lizard. He looks healthy. How do they survive? I wonder about eating him, but he vanishes down a crack and I don’t have the energy to turn this into a hunting trip. Nature rules this kind of landscape. There’s no place for humans. We could all die and no one would ever come this way to find us, which makes me feel small.

  We continue, our legs growing heavy. At one point, Ax whispers something to Zu and she lets out a little laugh. I’m glad he makes her happy. I don’t think Jay trusts him though. I don’t suppose I do either, but it’s really none of my business.

  “Water,” Jay says. “At least I think so.”

  I look to where she’s pointing. Two hundred yards away to our left, there are wispy bushes and rocks, but yes, through a gap, a glint. This looks good.

  Ax checks it through the spyglass and then hands it to me. There are three white-faced, black-headed ducks floating on a lake.

  We approach quietly. There’s no sense in announcing our arrival. Once we’re near enough to get a better view, it looks more like eight or nine birds.

  Oh yes.

  “Okay, this is what we’ll do,” Ax says. “I’ll go with Zu that way. You two take Von the other side. When we’re all in position, you make a noise and send the birds our way.”

  I’m not too sure why Ax wants Zu with him. Maybe he wasn’t too impressed with our shooting last time and thinks she can do better. Honestly, I’ve never even seen her fire a weapon.

  She’ll be glad to be with him, of course. He’s the magnet and she’s the piece of iron.

  JAY

  We spend some time approaching the ducks from two sides, but seeing Ax and Zu across the water takes me back to Forbearance and the time I saw Dub and a farm girl across the river, their bodies entwined…

  “You ready?” Ben whispers.

  “Yes.”

  So we yell and clap our hands.

  “Yay! Hey! Hey!”

  The ducks take off.

  Krak. Krak.

  A duck turns and comes my way, inches past my face – a flash of blue in the wings. I could have reached up and caught it. Across the lake, Ax and Zu are punching the air. Ben and Von are hurrying off to retrieve a bird. Looks like we have ourselves some dinner.

  We get a little fire going and cook the bird over it. I have to say I do like eating duck. I’ve had enough of this place though. Life in the north-west is so much easier. Heading south-east, it seems every little creek is drying out, like there’s been no rain in months. Coming from the north-west, I’m used to rain. Sometimes, we even complain about it.

  Once we’ve eaten, we’re ready to move on. There’s enough daylight to make another five or six miles, and so – once we’ve shot ourselves another duck – we do. And by then we’re coming out of the long, winding hills into a flat valley that stretches so far ahead I can’t see its end. It’s guarded to the north and the south by more hills which makes me feel like I’m being drawn to the far eastern horizon whether I like it or not. With no more miles left in our legs, and a full day behind us, this is where we’ll spend the night. My only remaining task is to make sure I sleep between Zu and my brother.

  Next morning we’re up early, cooking and eating duck. Then we walk in silence for an hour, stopping only to take water and a short rest. Life feels strange, and certainly nothing like I thought it would be when I joined the army ten,
eleven, twelve days back. I can’t recall the exact number anymore, but I think how smart my uniform looked back then. Right now it’s a stinking mess.

  We discuss the issue of uniforms once more. Ax decides we’ll ditch them should we encounter one more settlement that’s turned against the Nation. We’re heading east now, so we could be leaving trouble behind, or walking into more of it. Of course, the argument against ditching them isn’t going to gain more support unless we can find somewhere to pick up fresh clothes. We haven’t had any luck with that so far, and this new landscape seems utterly desolate.

  Having checked the map again, we decide to continue eastbound, mainly because it’s flat. Cutting south now would mean crossing a line of high hills and we’re not up to it. The thing with the eastern trail is those same hills run parallel to us all the way along the valley until they flatten out near the town of Purity. A southbound turn there would be hill-free.

  “Here,” Zu says, offering her straw hat to Ax.

  “I’m fine.”

  She puts the hat back on, meaning her brain won’t be half as cooked as mine under an army cap. I smile at her but she knows I’m not happy about her and Ax getting too friendly.

  We walk on, slow.

  “Mile after mile of dry grass,” Zu says. “No wonder it’s called the Empty Valley.”

  “It must get wet sometimes,” I say, more in hope than expectation.

  “Maybe in the spring,” Ax says. “Snow and rain off the mountains to the north.”

  “That could cause flooding,” Ben says.

  “Not much chance of that today,” I say.

  As the sun climbs at the far end of the valley, we see something ahead on the trail. It looks like a wagon. I use the spyglass. It’s the one I was aboard with the veteran.

  We don’t have to get too much nearer to see what’s what.

  “You think it ran till it died?” Ben says.