by A. S. Hames
But we have to try, don’t we?
I remove the little girl’s shoes. She hasn’t got any socks, so it’s disconcerting to see her grubby little toes. They’re good toes, mind. I’ve seen toes bent over by wrong-fitting shoes. At least this family made sure her feet grew straight.
I suddenly feel dizzy through hunger, so I have to squat and wait for it to pass. It does, but I don’t feel too strong. I stand again. I wish the girl wasn’t dead. I wish I could wake her and reassure her that not everyone moving across this land is evil.
But it’s alright. Me and the girl. We’re okay.
I study the knife. I examine its sharp edge. It looks a good knife. It will cut just fine. The question now is a simple one. Do we eat her flesh or her shoes?
11. Are We The Last People Alive?
JAY
I take a firm hold of the knife and start cutting, hacking and tearing. When I’m done, I go downstairs. Ben and Zu look away as I enter. Ax doesn’t. He watches as I drop the strips into a pot.
“Shoe leather,” I say.
Ben and Zu’s faces don’t seem to know what to show me so I just get on with pouring a little water into the pot and lighting the stove. It’ll need to boil a fair while.
Ten minutes later, the steam is rising. I put my face into it. When I move away, the water cools on my skin. It feels good.
Ben is looking at me. He looks so down. I have an urge to whistle a cheerful tune, but I don’t. I just give the pot a stir and put a lid on it. We can’t have the water boil to nothing before the hide is soft enough to swallow.
When the meal is as ready as it will ever be, I scoop it onto a plate and cut it into the smallest pieces. Then we eat, Von included. It hurts my teeth because they haven’t chewed on much in a while, but we all try to get it down. We choke a little and have to take water with it, but we manage in the end. We consume the leather. Except Von, who refuses. He just sniffs at the stairs and then starts up the first couple of steps. I’m glad I closed the bedroom door.
I feel a little sick in the stomach but I fight it. I have to. The leather will keep us alive a little longer, I think. Although that might just be more time to know how hopeless our situation is.
Next morning, we show some optimism in going through the family’s clothes and shoes. It would help to find some footwear that’s less worn than our own, and a change out of our uniforms might keep us out of trouble.
Only Zu has any luck with footwear, taking a pair of boots that must have belonged to the mother. The improvement is marginal. We all manage to find some clothes, though, so now we all look strange to each other having worn the same things for so long.
“So, we’re no longer Nation soldiers,” Zu says.
“Keep your badges handy,” Ax says. “We’ll be the most loyal Nation soldiers alive… and the most passionate rebels too. You’ll know which to one you are depending on who we meet next.”
It makes sense. Survival is everything.
Once we’re ready, we prepare to leave, knowing that placing one foot in front of the other will be tough.
“What’s up with Von?” Zu says.
He’s gone to the window and now he’s growling.
Zu follows him.
“There’s someone coming,” she says.
Ax takes a look then gets everyone away from the windows.
“Go see what he wants, Jay. If he thinks you’re alone, he’ll talk.”
He goes to stand behind the door with his gun at the ready, while I step outside. There’s a man striding up to the house. He’s about twenty, fit and strong, and from the way he’s holding his gun straight at my head, he’ll shoot if I make a wrong move.
“Was it you who killed my people?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “I haven’t killed anyone.”
“You trespass on our land, you steal our food, you shoot us up – who do you think you are?”
He’s standing right in front of me now, the muzzle of his gun so close to my face, I can smell it.
“I’m a Nation soldier,” I say, showing him my badges. “I’m on my way to the Lake Towns.”
“You’re on your way to nowhere, girl,” he says. “You have to pay for what you did.”
“We didn’t do anything,” Ben tells him from the doorway.
Damn, why didn’t he stay inside?
“I said you have to pay!”
“We don’t have anything,” I tell him. “You could have it if we did.”
He eyes me in a sly way, which worries me.
“How old are you, girl?”
“She’s thirteen,” Ben says, knocking a few years off me for reasons I understand all too well.
“She’s a soldier,” the man declares. “That makes her at least sixteen.”
“Not in the Nation,” Ben says, raising his gun. “We’re invited to enlist much younger.”
The man places his muzzle against my forehead.
“You have five seconds,” he says to Ben, “or your friend dies.”
“Don’t listen to him, Ben.”
“Four.”
“If he shoots me, you shoot him. And you can damn well eat him for all I care.”
“Three… two…”
Oh God, I’m going to die.
“One.”
The gentle clunk of a gun being set down on a wooden porch. Its hopelessness reverberates in my head.
The man grabs Ben’s gun and pulls me aside.
“Guess what’s gonna happen now?” he says.
A woolly mass the shade of a storm cloud leaps out through the open window and locks onto the man’s neck. He falls backward, turning. Blood sprays around in an arc. Some of it hits me. The gun fires upward. Once. Twice. Then the man gently lets go of the weapon while a goddamn killing machine eats his neck.
“I bet you didn’t guess that,” Ben tells the dying man right to his face.
“At least it saves me a bullet,” Ax mutters.
I take the dead man’s gun and hand it to Zu. It seems none of us is too troubled by his demise. That wouldn’t have been the case when we first joined the army. I think back to something John Davis Carson said. I guess we’re all veterans now.
BEN
Once Von has eaten most of a leg, we head back to the trail. Our wolf walks beside me and I ruffle the top of his head, trying to ignore the blood around his jaws.
“Goddamn killing machine,” I say in an affectionate way. It’s not Von’s concern that his survival instinct doesn’t have to argue its case with higher feelings.
We walk on, back to the southbound trail, ready to cross the creek that runs off the farm we’ve come from. Except, our wolf is intent on pulling us across to the other side of the trail.
“What is it, Von?” I ask.
He goes off westbound, following the creek and I’m left with a feeling there’s something more.
“We should go with him,” Zu says.
I agree. That wolf’s nose is a miracle of nature and we’d be wrong to ignore it.
“Let’s hope it’s not more trouble he can smell,” Ax says.
A quarter of a mile on, we’re still following Von along by the creek and farther away from the trail – but I’m beginning to wonder if he’s sniffing at something long since gone.
“What’s that?” Jay says.
I look to where she’s indicating. The day is so bright I have to squint, but there’s a little piece of a house poking out from behind some trees farther along the creek.
“Could be that man’s place,” Zu says.
We approach with caution and soon reach three fresh graves.
“Stay here,” I say.
“No, I’ll go,” Ax says.
He goes into the house for a look around. I wait outside with my gun raised and ready. What will he find? I used to enjoy going into people’s homes. They would make you a cup of hot tea and ask how things were. Recently, going into people’s homes has become the worst thing I can think of. Any degree of horror could be lur
king.
Ax comes back with a shake of the head.
“Cleaned out,” he says.
I’m all for heading back to the trail when I see Von heading beyond the house.
“Now what?” I complain. I really don’t want to try that way, but it’s Von, and you can’t ignore the best eyes, ears, and nose you have. So we clench our teeth, take a breath, and follow him over several hundred yards.
“Another house,” Ax says.
Clever Von trots up to the door and waits for us.
“Hello?” Jay calls out.
There’s no reply.
Reaching the door first, I try the handle. It’s not locked, so I step inside. Unlike the other place, this one hasn’t been stripped. It would seem whoever was causing all the trouble never found it.
I know it’s my turn to face danger, so I quickly check the downstairs rooms – all empty – and then I climb the stairs and check the bedrooms. Thank God, it’s good news all the way.
“It’s an empty house,” I say coming back down.
“In here,” Ax calls from the kitchen.
I join them and find Von sniffing in all directions. There’s a pantry with cookies and strips of dried meat. And there’s a bowl of fresh black-eye beans we can cook up. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be much, but right now it looks like a holiday feast back in the valleys.
Von keeps sniffing at the dried meat, so Zu shares some around. I get busy chewing while I pour the beans into a pot and add some water. I find a box of phosphorus-tipped firelighters – one left. Thank God. I’m too tired for messing around.
“Those beans might need soaking,” Zu says.
“Not fresh black-eyes,” Ax tells her.
“Well, some beans do,” she says.
“Yeah, Zu,” he says, “and some need boiling or they’ll kill you. Black eyes are fine.”
While the beans boil away, we eat everything else we can find. An hour later, having eaten the beans too, we’re fuller than we’ve been in weeks, and we’re wholly unready to move on. In fact, I only want to sleep.
JAY
I’m awake at dawn and I feel better than in a long time. I even think about the letter. I get up and check the other rooms. Ben’s still asleep. There’s no sign of Ax or Zu though, so I go downstairs. Von is dozing by the door, on guard.
I take him out with me to look for them. It doesn’t take long, because Zu’s coming out of a storage building.
“Zu? Are you okay?”
“Of course I am,” she says with a smile. “Ax won’t be long.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m more than okay.”
I sigh as she passes me on her way back to the house. I don’t follow her – I go after my brother.
He’s flat on his back on a cushion of empty sacks.
“Why can’t you be honest with her?”
Ax ponders that for a moment.
“I’ve seen a lot since I left home,” he says. “The one thing that keeps coming at me hard is how many people I’ve seen die. Do you have any idea how slim our chances of getting to the Lake Towns are?”
“You think you can take advantage of people just because we might end up dead?”
“It was just a bit of fun, that’s all.”
“She thinks it’s more than fun.”
“You’ll make a good schoolteacher, Jay. You suck all the joy out of any situation.”
That stings. I’m not even sure whether he’s right or wrong. I don’t mean to spoil people’s fun.
“The world’s a dark enough place,” Ax says. “Don’t cast more shadows, Jay.”
“The thought of that girl carrying a baby…”
“Whoa, slow down. We never went that far. What is it with you always jumping to conclusions? You know nothing about me. Nothing at all.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I just…”
“…Don’t trust me? …Don’t believe me?”
“As long as she’s okay. That’s all that matters.”
“At last. We agree on something.”
I leave him and go back to the house. In truth, I’m embarrassed. Why do I have to keep poking my nose in to other people’s business without establishing the facts?
We leave the house – although it’s a shame to do so. But we have a mission to complete.
We travel five or six miles in silence and it’s so hot I feel I’ll bake. But I also feel more optimistic. If we can make it to the next town – Tine, according to our maps – then we might just make it all the way to the Lake Towns.
It’s just Zu who bothers me. I still feel Ax will let her down.
“Greenery,” Ben says.
Up ahead, a line of vegetation crosses the trail. It can only mean one thing, so we increase our pace.
It’s a slow-moving, quarter-full creek. We scramble down the short bank and drop to our knees into soft mud. Oh, it feels good to scoop water into our mouths and over our heads. I drink so deep that I actually feel heavier. I gasp with the effort and I watch Ben. He’s getting a flask from the pack but his mind seems to be elsewhere.
“Thanks,” he says.
“What for?” I ask.
“For making me eat shoe leather.”
I nod. There’s nothing more to say about it, really.
Once we’re done, we sit on the bank for a while and I find myself wanting to get a sense of him. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help myself. Anyway, it’s not like I’m any good at it. Even so… I try to concentrate… to reach out… to feel… and… yes, I get a sense of something… a warm glow… coming back to me. Ben is reaching out to me with warm feelings. A while ago I would have wondered why, but I’m sure now he likes me as much as I like him. It’s just so awkward with Ax and Zu around.
Do I have a double set of standards? I’m sure I don’t. I can look after myself and Ben isn’t pushy like Ax. Still, I don’t want to spy further into Ben’s thoughts and feelings, at least for now, so I take the Representative’s letter out.
It still looks impenetrable.
“I wish I could write a letter,” Zu says. “To let my parents know I’m safe. Well, not safe, exactly, but… well, you know, that I’m alive.”
“If I could write, I don’t know what I’d put down,” Ben says. “Dear Ma and Gran, I’m just about to stop the war, then I’ll be back to marry someone I probably won’t know or like. Oh yeah, I lost that first wife you arranged for me. Sorry about that.”
I stare down at the unreadable writing.
Oh…
“Dear Ma and Gran!”
“What?” Zu says.
“What Ben said – Dear Ma and Gran. Or Ma and Pa. Or Dear Son. If it’s a letter to his son, then maybe that’s how it starts.”
3 098/9&+ ~9809/
I stare at the code for a while, then I fold it all up and put it in my shirt pocket along with the pencil.
“It doesn’t say Dear Ma and Pa or anything like it.”
With our period of rest at an end, we leave the water behind, and we walk on, yard after yard, for another ten miles.
The time passes in the kind of slow, dull way that has me thinking maybe we’ve finally left the war behind. But as usual, when I think like that, something happens to remind me we’re in just as deep as ever. On this occasion, it’s a body hanging by its neck from a tree.
As we approach, I can see the dead man’s face showing the pain of his final hopeless struggle.
“Doesn’t look like he’s been here long,” Ax says.
I read the scrawled sign pinned to his chest.
NATION FILTH
WILL DIE
It’s painted in blood.
“What does it say?” Ben asks.
As I tell him, Von sniffs the dead man’s trousers.
“We’d better cut him down,” Zu says.
“No,” Ax says.
Zu looks surprised. “Why not?”
“Whoever did it might come back.”
“They’d know we’
d been here,” I explain.
“Oh,” Zu says. “I didn’t think of that.”
We move on, leaving the dead man hanging.
12. Burning
BEN
There’s no doubting what the sign means, but we carry on, across a wooden bridge over an almost dry creek, to a railroad track.
“Do you think a train might come?” Zu asks.
“I doubt it,” Jay says.
“What if it does though? And what if it’s going to the Lake Towns?”
“It’s likely the rebels control the line,” Ax points out, “but you’re right. We’ll see if we can find out.” He tugs his gray shirt. “After all, it’s not like we’re with the Nation.”
I should be a little excited at the slim prospect of a ride, but what awaits the traveler in either direction? Nothing good, I reckon.
Facing us across the track is Tine. There’s smoke rising from somewhere on the far side, and I can only see it as another bad sign. Without anyone saying, we spread out and approach with our guns at the ready.
As we reach the first buildings, the place has a deserted feel to it. I feel scared. It could be this part of Freedom Country has been abandoned and we’re the only people alive. Or it could be the coming moments will explode with gunfire.
“Von’s on to something,” Zu whispers.
Our wolf’s nose is in the air, picking up some scent or other. Then I get it too.
“Burning meat.”
Now Von is drooling.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Jay says.
She’s not the only one.
We move farther into the town, where the smoke hangs over the buildings and the smell of burning meat grows ever stronger. I just hope this isn’t as bad as I’m thinking.
We finally turn a corner into an open square. We’ve found the fire, but I wish we hadn’t. There’s a pile of cooked and chewed bones nearby. But it’s the roasted bits that have been left uneaten – heads, feet, hands – that stun us. The rebels moving through here have abandoned their humanity on a grand scale.