by A. S. Hames
Von starts on a cooked hand. My instinct is to stop him, but why? I have the worst feeling ever. My mouth is salivating while my stomach is churning. There must be twenty heads here. Some have been thrown on the fire and are still burning away. Others are by a wall. A woman. Another woman. A man. They look like swimmers in an earthen river.
This hatred some have for the Nation is too much. It’s too big, too broad. It takes no account of circumstances. This is an enemy that will not be swayed from their beliefs. Their viewpoint is cold and hard.
“We have to stop this war,” I say.
Jay nods. We move on.
“Von!” Zu calls.
He ignores her. He’s still eating.
“Von!” I call.
He ignores me too.
“Von!” Jay calls.
That oversized mutt looks up, has a think, and then comes bounding over. I just hope he isn’t getting a taste for it.
“Down!” Ax barks.
We do so – fast.
“There’s someone in that house,” he says.
This is what we feared. We’re pretty much stuck where we are, giving our enemy the advantage to get into the best position to pick us off one by one. Except there’s no movement. That gives me a little hope.
“Cover me,” Ax says.
We point our weapons at the house as mad, crazy Ax snakes toward it.
“Don’t shoot,” a voice cries from inside. “Please…”
Ax moves in and all goes quiet.
Now what?
A moment later, he comes out and waves us to him.
“It’s okay,” he says.
We follow him inside where an old man sits in a chair by the window. There’s a fearful look on his face.
“Charcoals,” he says.
“What do you mean?” Jay asks.
“South State,” he says. “Charcoals.”
“They did this?” Ax asks.
“They came up a few days ago. A few hundred of them.” The old man speaks quite philosophically. “They made no secret of it. They’re clearing a zone between the Nation and the South State. It’s as simple as that. A fifty mile strip, they reckon.”
“Fifty miles of nothing?” I ask. “A whole dead zone?”
“Yes, but they got through their provisions a while back, so…” He shrugs. “Those who could get away headed west.”
“We have to go,” Ax says.
We wish the old man well and head off.
“I don’t think he’ll last too long,” I say.
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Ax says.
“That seems a regular part of this journey,” Zu says. “Being able to do nothing wherever we show up. What makes us think it’s likely to change if we make it to the Lake Towns? What makes us even think the Lake Towns are still with the Nation?”
“We have to assume they’re not,” Ax says. “What do you want to do?”
Zu shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“The northern rebels seem a small problem to the buffs and charcoals,” I say. “We’ve got one lot taking chunks of the Nation from the east, and one doing likewise from the south and creating a fifty mile strip of nothing to protect themselves. It doesn’t give us too many options.”
“We can’t go back,” Ax says. “We either give up right here and head west… or we carry on in the hope there’s still something we can achieve.”
“What if Zu’s right and the South State has taken the Lake Towns?” Jay says. “Why would we try to get there?”
“To make a new life,” Ax says.
“Settle there?” Zu asks.
“For now, yes.”
“What’s in the west?” I ask.
“That’s a whole other place,” Ax says. “A law unto itself.”
“We should head south then,” I suggest. “And who knows, maybe the Lake Towns are still with the Nation and we can get the Leader to make peace.”
“I don’t believe that,” Zu says. “I say we head west.”
Zu and I look to Jay and Ax.
“Either way won’t be easy,” Ax says. “If the Lake Towns are still with the Nation, then they’ve been cut off by now. If we go south and the Leader’s still alive, we have to persuade him to surrender. Maybe what’s in that letter will help make up his mind, but I reckon he’ll be executed whatever he agrees to.”
We all look to Jay.
“I don’t want to go to the Lake Towns, but if there’s still a one in a hundred chance we can save lives back home and at places like Endeavor… then I’m going south.”
“Me too,” I say, even though I don’t like the idea at all.
“I still say west,” Zu says.
“That’s decided then,” Ax says. “Democracy rules.”
We leave Tine behind. It’s another hour before we stop to make camp. There’s no sign of the charcoals who attacked Tine, but they can’t be far ahead. It’s going to make sleeping without nightmares a challenge – a challenge I won’t handle too well.
Next day, we continue our southbound journey with headaches, sore feet, and grumbling empty stomachs. We know there’s a real chance the Lake Towns have fallen to the South State, but we travel in hope.
Around midday, we cross a river, and fill our flasks with water. I have to call Von away from a body of a man face down on the bank. Our wolf might be a killer and a devourer of flesh, but he still takes orders without too much fuss.
We walk another five or so miles into the middle of the afternoon and the sun just gets hotter and hotter. When I see a house just off the trail, I wonder about taking shelter inside it. Then I notice there’s a boy at an upper window. Maybe six or seven years old.
“Can you spare any food?” I call.
He disappears inside.
“Whoever we’re following, they’ll have passed by,” Ax reminds me. Not that he needs to.
I trudge over there anyway.
“Can you spare any food, please?” I call.
The door is damaged. Looks like someone kicked it in. I’m too tired for messing around so I give it a shove and I’m inside. The place is broken up. I feel sorry for the boy. But what can I do? We can’t take him with us.
I peer into the kitchen. There’s nothing here. I leave. I don’t look back either. There really is nothing I can do.
“Is he alone?” Zu calls.
“Yes, he’s alone,” I call back. And if her next question is do we take him with us…
I sigh… and think we should. I’ve lost my optimism and I need to get it back. Who knows, we might be able to deposit the boy somewhere safe farther on, even though this is now a dead zone.
But the boy is suddenly out the back and running across a field. I try to chase after him, but I have no energy and come to a halt.
“You stupid…” I can’t even finish my insult. I just stare at a small frame hurtling toward the horizon. I’m going to walk away and leave a boy to die. It’s the ultimate calamity of war. Helplessness. It’s seeing things that are wrong and having no power whatsoever to do anything about it.
Back on the trail, I try to forget it, but know I won’t. Not ever.
“How far to Roadway Five?” Zu asks Jay, doing well to hold down her sorrow.
“Five miles, give or take.”
We pass another house, and another. We don’t bother to stop. We trudge past a few more homesteads over the next couple of hours. Then we reach a trail coming across us, running north-west to south-east.
Roadway Five.
I watch Jay and Ax check the maps to be sure, but it’s okay. We’ve got to where we want to be and it’s like seeing someone you know after a long while apart.
Setting off south-east along it, it’s like we’ve achieved something worthwhile. We’ve survived whatever the journey has thrown at us and we’re now less than 150 miles from the Lake Towns. For the first time in a long, long while, I feel we can make it all the way. It’s just the point of trying that troubles me. I still can’t see we’re do
ing the right thing. The only possible benefit would come from Ax’s idea that we might settle there for a while. If I could settle there with Jay, that would throw a whole different light on the situation. I’d just prefer it if we didn’t run into any of these demon charcoals along the way.
JAY
An hour on, we reach a dry creek. I imagine a flow of water. I imagine jumping in and splashing like we did that time before we reached Crystal. Back in the here and now, we decide to split up to do a food search.
Ax takes a good look around before he says how we’ll go about it.
“Okay, so I’ll follow the creek. Jay, you go that way, see if any of that farming land has anything. There might be buildings, so take Von. Ben, you go that way, and Zu, you try the other way.”
Zu has the pack, so she offers one of the flasks around before we set off.
“Whoever finds water, yell and I’ll come and fill up.”
Our thirst quenched, we hand her the empty flask and head off in four directions.
Being with Von takes me back to our walks at training camp. It seems a lifetime ago.
“You know this is pointless,” I tell him. “We’ll never find anything.”
He pays me no attention.
“What’s on your mind, Von?”
The only feeling I get from him is a sense of pushing outward. I think he’s happy to explore.
After a while of searching, I feel like giving up. Ben is a few hundred yards one way, Ax is a few hundred yards the other. Zu is another couple of hundred yards beyond him.
It’s strange how things happen, because as I’m thinking how Zu is becoming a useful member of the team, there’s a car coming up the trail toward her with guns firing warning shots.
My head is in a spin, and I’m hurtling after Von who’s already racing across the open ground. I have my gun ready but they’re too far away. Ax is running toward Zu too. He fires a shot.
Zu is captured. They’re hauling her away. She’s kicking and fighting but there’s no way she can get free. Ax fires again and one of them goes down. Another of them fires back and Ax goes down. I almost pass out.
“Ax… no!”
I’m desperate to help, but what can I do? They retrieve their fallen comrade’s gun, bundle Zu into the car, turn around, and roar off into the south-east. Von chases them but he can’t make up the distance. With a warm engine, they’re soon out of sight.
I’m so weak it takes me an age to get to the spot. Ben is already checking the wound.
“Oh Ax…”
Strangely, he’s laughing a little. “So, you thought I didn’t care about her…?”
“Ax, try not to talk,” Ben says. “There’s too much blood. I don’t know what to do.”
I look beyond him to the man he shot dead. I can only direct hatred toward the corpse.
“Tell Ma I died an honorable death in battle.”
“Ax, you’re not going to die.”
“Just don’t tell her you left me to die on the roadside while I was still breathing. Make something up.”
My shame is that I can’t tell him the truth about the peril I placed Ma in, and that she might be dead.
“It’s okay to lie sometimes,” he says.
“I know.
“I need water…”
“Yes.” But I realize. “Zu has the pack.”
Ax laughs some more.
“I’ll see if they dropped anything,” Ben says. I watch him go off. He knows they didn’t drop anything. He’s giving Ax and me space.
“So, who do you believe about what kind of man I am? Dub or me?”
“Don’t speak, Ax. Save your energy.”
“I did get intimate with Zu, by the way. But not how you’re thinking. She’s an empath.”
“No…”
“She let me in, Jay. And I was able to shore up her weaknesses. You need to learn how to do that, little sister. You have a gift beyond anything I could achieve.”
Von comes and nudges my hand. Maybe he wants me to do something to save the situation. I didn’t think my spirits could sink any lower, but we haven’t only lost Ax and Zu, we’ve lost the maps, the spyglass, and our only means of carrying water.
Ax removes the captain’s badge from his pocket.
“You’re our leader now, Jay,” he says, handing it to me.
“I don’t want to be a leader.”
“You already are. Just a different kind of leader. One who thinks too much, which will undoubtedly get you and Ben killed.” He laughs a little more.
“Ax…”
“Go save us all,” he says.
I put my newly-won captain’s badge in my pocket and take a look around. I have no idea what I’m searching for.
“Good luck, Ax.”
“Don’t need it, sis.”
“I wish we could take you with us,” Ben calls.
“It’s war, Ben. You get used to leaving people behind.”
Ben nods. Then he holds out a hand.
“Come on, Jay,” he says.
“Go,” Ax says. “If I don’t die, I’ll crawl west. Who knows, maybe I’ll reach the coast.”
I kiss the top of his head then I take Von and leave my brother’s side for Ben’s hand. We walk five hundred yards in silence. Then he puts an arm around me and I turn and sob into his shoulder. Not for long though. Our survival has no room for sorrow.
I part from him, lick my dry lips, and scoop back my hair.
“So…” I say, as we stand alongside the heat-blasted trail – a girl, a boy, and a wolf, lost and aimless in the heart of war, as good as dead.
“So…” Ben says, like an echo.
“I’m an empath, Ben,” I say.
I’m not sure why I say it, but there it is.
13. Charcoals
BEN
My heart drops into my boots. I just stare at her. She’s made a big mistake in telling me. I lost my Pa to the lies of an empath.
I feel so bad because I really like Jay. She means so much to me.
But this?
“I’m not surprised,” I manage to say.
“People usually fear empaths.”
“I trust you, Jay.” At least I think I do. “It’s a dangerous business. We had an empath living not far from us when I was a kid. She got into my father’s head.”
“Oh.”
“Bad things happened.”
“Oh.”
“Pa was a spiritual guide… but he was also a man. He was solid in his love for Ma, but… he liked a woman who lived nearby. He never planned to do anything about it, or even ever mention it. But it got out. An empath sensed his hidden thoughts and he was exposed. His life was ruined, he lost his dignity, he lost… he lost everything and he killed himself over it.”
“That’s awful, Ben. That should never have happened.”
“I don’t know exactly what happened next, but my father was avenged. A mob cut out the empaths eyes while she was alive. Then… they cut out other parts and buried them apart to disperse the evil. I didn’t want that but I was too young to have a say.”
“You won’t tell anyone what I’ve told you, Ben?”
“Oh, you can trust me. I would never let you down.”
JAY
Heading south-east in dry, dusty heat, I avoid trying to get a sense of him, but in my own mind is a picture of me pouring a bucket of water into an already full second bucket. Ben has seen too much and felt too much. I should have kept my big mouth shut.
“I’ll never try to read your mind, Ben. That’s a promise.”
“You mean you haven’t taken a look already?”
This will be my last ever lie.
“No.”
We attempt the twenty miles to the next town, which if I remember rightly from the maps, is Town 508 (Dignity). We make progress thanks to a number of creeks along the way, one of which has tiny fish, although some of them are so low that we have to do like Von and get down on all fours and lick the water up. I get a sense our wolf is ti
ring of the journey, but we’re like a pack to him, and that takes priority.
At one point, I try to project my thoughts to him.
Von!
He doesn’t react.
During the middle of the next day we reach Dignity, except it’s now called Trailside, Freedom Country, and – unsurprisingly – it has abandoned the Nation.
For what it’s worth, Trailside is a town in confusion, full of worried families and boisterous young men and women in charcoal gray uniforms. It feels like things could turn bad at any and every moment.
We look around in the hope of seeing the car that took Zu, but there’s no luck coming our way. In truth, we don’t really know what we’re doing here. We only know we can’t go home and that we retain the slimmest possibility of doing some good if we can get to the Leader. Confidence is low, of course. The likelihood is the Lake Towns are no longer with the Nation, which means the Leader is already… I don’t like to think about it.
These charcoals are a different army to the buffs. It’s hard to question anyone in detail because I’m not keen to draw attention to the fact we’re from the north-west. As it is, keeping ourselves to ourselves, we look like a couple of lost refugees with a starving pet. In fact, it would be pretty hard to argue that’s not the actual situation.
I don’t believe these are the charcoals who were in Tine though. From what we can learn, they’ve been here a while, and if we’re gauging it right, this town will become one of a number of midpoints in the dead zone. With permanent bases allowing them regular patrols, they’ll be able to radio back to the South State if any Nation activity starts up anywhere in the dead zone.
Despite the hardships, there are still good people here, and we manage to get some scraps of food and a couple of water flasks. We’re grateful more than they could ever know. That aside, I don’t like the way we’re eyed up by some of the charcoals, so we move on during the day and walk until dusk. Then we sleep in a dry ditch.
Next day, I’m awake before Ben. I don’t disturb him. I just take in the eastern sky and the land around us. And Von. He’s alert and ready. But I don’t get up. I need to understand what it is I’m trying to achieve because I’m finding this hard.