by Martha Woods
Helga nodded. “Our clan is already planning an attack of their own, Frank and I left after we tried to convince them to find some other way, but they were determined to not listen to us. I guess they just want to have an old-fashioned war again.”
“Nnnngh…” Orson groaned, moving his arm weakly and dropping it off the edge of the desk, “What the… fuck?”
Jennifer and Helga stood quickly, moving over to him and watching him open his eyes, grinning when he looked between the two of them. “I… didn’t expect you see you here Helga, is Frank here too?”
“He’s upstairs, preparing food for all of us, you two brought some nice looking meat with you so we figured that we may as well. And you need all the energy that you can get in the state that you’re in, you look half dead.”
“I feel all the way dead,” He groaned, weakly trying to sit up before letting himself fall back, “God I feel like shit.”
Helga looked between the two of them, recognizing the concern in Jennifer’s gaze before she stepped away. “I’ll let the two of you talk, I think Frank needs help upstairs.”
Jennifer nodded at her, watching her walk through the door before she took her place in the seat next to the desk. “She saved your ass you know, found us out in the forest and led us back here, pushed a needle in your chest to get all the crap out of your lungs. We should probably get her a present or something.”
“A needle?” He looked down, seeing the bandage covering up the very obvious puncture wound. “That makes sense, no wonder my chest is killing me.”
“Do you mind if I..?” He shook his head, moving his hands so that she could inspect his chest. A casual feel didn’t show evidence of anything out of place anymore, the thing that had been piercing into his lung now moved back into its regular spot and allowing the muscle around it to heal again. The same could be said for the rest of his ribs, though some further down were still out of place to some degree, likely because of the swelling that still hadn’t subsided. All things considered, compared to the state that he’d been in when he’d been dragged into the house, he was looking pretty good.
“So you rescued me huh?” He asked, cocky grin on his face, “I had no idea that you felt that way, it makes me feel really special you know? I might start tearing up.”
“Oh god,” Jennifer groaned, “Don’t make me regret leaving your ass out in the frost.”
“You couldn’t do that, you’re too good.” Reaching up, he made to push at her arm before letting it rest on the skin, his thumb sweeping across her forearm while silence passed between them. All teasing dropped out of his expression, leaving behind only a faint sense of… longing? Jennifer shook her head, that had to be her mind playing tricks on her, or he was loopy from the pain that he was still feeling, either way it was something that didn’t bear thinking about right at that moment. Reaching up and taking his hand with her own, she allowed herself the briefest squeeze of his fingers before she removed it from her arm, placing it at his side and smiling.
“You’ve got a pretty good friend up there, she’s definitely smarter than all the other bears that I’ve met in my life.”
“Oh? What about me?”
“I know what I said.’ She grinned, leaning forward and resting her head on the edge of the desk and breathing in contentment. “God, what a mess this all turned out to be right? All we wanted to do was try and help.”
“What do you expect I guess? We were still in a war like, seven years ago, it was stupid to think that they’d be able to get over that so quickly.”
“Yeah, well, this was supposed to be about more than just us, weren’t we supposed to be looking out for the land? Instead we’re just sitting out here planting bad crops and doing even more damage to it with the endless fighting, there’s still places near my camp that haven’t fully recovered in the last seven years, what do you think this next war will do?”
“I think… I think we need to come up with a plan to get everyone out, not just get them fed, get them out of this land for good, otherwise we’re just going to kill everything that we’ve been trying to save for the last couple decades. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a part of the group that does that.”
“I don’t really like the idea of being a part of that either, but for now we both need to take it easy. You’re in no condition to do anything except lay here and recover, and I… may as well take advantage of the time to get myself sorted out as well.”
“What you could use is a warm meal in your stomach, same as him.” Frank stepped into the basement, holding a tray with two bowls of steaming stew. “That’s a really good deer that you got by the way, one hell of an animal.”
“Yeah, it definitely saved our ass,” Orson said, sitting up with a lot of grunting and Jennifer’s assistance, “You can keep the skin, I think it’d appreciate it being used by someone who actually knows what they’re doing.”
“Too kind, too kind.” He passed them each a bowl, watching Jennifer for just a second more than necessary before smiling, almost too excited for his own good. “I’m sorry, but… I’m just very excited to meet one of you up close again without having to kill you, I’ve been wanting to do it for years now but… well, I probably would have had to kill you if we met before now. It’s just really nice to take the chance now.”
“Uhh…” Jennifer glanced at Orson, who only shook his head and smiled. “Thanks?”
“Sorry, he’s kind of weird,” Orson said, swallowing a spoonful of the stew and leaning his head back with a groan, “But he’s one hell of a cook, some things never change.”
She took a spoonful of her own, warmth coursing through her body and igniting her stomach, shoveling another few spoonfuls down like a child that had just been given an ice cream.
“Glad to see that the reviews are good,” Frank said, grinning to himself, “Once you finish eating, I think we’ve definitely got a lot of things that we need to talk about, because things back at camp… they were definitely not good, not when we last saw. You’re going to want to be filled in.”
Jennifer could see that he wanted to get up and walk upstairs right away, placing her hand on his arm and shaking her head at him when he looked at her. “You can eat first, then we’ll get caught up ok?”
“Yes ma’am,” He chuckled, nodding at Frank to go on upstairs and let them be for now. Frank smiled, taking one last look at her before he collected the tray and walked through the door, leaving the two of them alone once more and in comfortable silence, the only sound their spoons clicking against their bowls. “This isn’t so bad, aside from the knowledge that everything could go horribly wrong at any moment, that kind of sucks. No the biggest fan of that if I’m being honest.”
“Yeah, well, look on the bright side. You’re sitting here in what’s almost a bed, with a bowl of stew and a cute woman by your side, things could always be worse huh?” She giggled, draining the last of the stew and leaning against the desk, finally content. “What do you think you’ll do after all this, once you’ve sorted out what you need to with the clan?”
“After this?” He asked, trailing off into thought, “I… don’t know. I was thinking about going and exploring the world for a while, I was too… eager to shut it out for so long, I always felt like it was the place that had claimed my siblings. But now? Now I think that I should learn my way around it, I could always use it to make this place better after all.”
Siblings. For some reason that made Jennifer’s head throb, an unpleasant pulse in the back of her skull whenever she thought of the word. “What about your brothers? Your sister?”
“Them? Well, I’ve thought over what you said and… I should probably go and look for them, you were right I’ve been a coward about this whole thing. I mean, what if something happened to me? Or to them? I don’t want to go to my grave knowing that I never ended up apologizing to them for everything, that would just be… that would be too much.”
The pain in her head was almost splitting, hands coming u
p to cup at the sides of her head as she kept thinking back to a conversation that she’d had with the Elder, something about this talk so familiar that it hurt.
“Jennifer? Jen?” Orson grimaced, leaning over and placing his hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
And then suddenly, it was all clear. Jennifer’s eyes widened in alarm, and when she looked up at him he knew that whatever she was going to say was not going to be good.
“Orson… I think I remembered something about what the Elder spoke to me about… It was about…” She gulped, shaking her head before she watched the hope die in his eyes. “It’s about your siblings…”
Chapter 7
“Hold him down!” Helga shouted, pressing her hands into Orson’s legs to stop him from tearing himself open again. Frank and Jennifer stood at his sides with their weight pressed down on his shoulders, his flailing almost tossing them aside from his surprising strength given his injuries, but they were managing barely to keep him down for the moment. With more time for him to flail however there was no telling how long they would manage to do so, or how much damage he would do to himself in the process.
“Let me up!” He shouted, almost tossing them off before they got their footing right again, “I need to find them! They’re in danger!”
“You’re not going to find anyone if you keep trying to kill yourself!” Frank said, nodding at Helga when their eyes met. Making sure that they had a good level of control over him, she let go of his legs and ran across to the other side of the basement, pulling open the medicine cabinet and grabbing a needle and a bottle of sedative, filling up with enough to kill a regular size human being.
Fortunately, it would only be enough to calm someone like them down substantially, he’d already slept enough and he still needed to be aware of everything. He was still being hunted after all.
“Hold still,” She said, grabbing his wrist and pulling it down, keeping it clamped in place as she inserted the needle and pushed down on the plunger, sedative slowly disappearing into his bloodstream and making its mark almost instantly. His struggles began to cease, his teeth going from vicious to simply pointed, head falling back against the surface of the desk with a mighty sigh.
“Please…” He whispered, “I need… I need to help them…”
“We’ll help them,” Frank said, looking up at Jennifer with suspicion on his face, “But we need to make sure that we all know the same thing, ok?”
Flicking his head at her, he called Jennifer along to the other side of the room, leaving Helga to see that Orson was taken care of. “You mind filling me in on what that was? We leave you two for fifteen minutes and he starts freaking out like that, just what did you say to him?”
She was aware of how suspicious it might have seemed, but there was no way that she was going to lie about it, not now that she knew what was at stake and not now that she’d seen that he was willing to damn near kill himself if it meant that he would be able to protect his family. “When I was imprisoned, I’d been talking with the Elder of my clan, and she laid out a plan to take your clan down with no way for you to fight back. There were a lot of things that she said, but the one that stuck out to me most and that I only just was able to remember was that she set hunters to go and find his brothers and sister.”
“Hunters?” He asked, screwing his brow up, “But why? What would be the point, they haven’t spoken to him in years.”
“She figured that nothing would make them show their faces again more than him being put in danger I guess. If their reactions would be the same as his… I think she might have a point.” She shrugged, feeling guilty at being able to think of it so simply. “Right before she threw me in that little cell she said that they’d managed to find all of them and she had given the order to kill, that was two days ago now. For all I know…”
“No, I guarantee you that they are anything other than dead,” Frank said, a smile on his face not unlike what she could remember from the battlefield, “Most of them hated fighting, but you’d be wrong to think that meant they were bad at it. The things that they can do, the things that they might have learned since from being out there, whatever warriors she sent out are going to have one hell of a fight on their hands.”
“Do you know where they are?” Jennifer asked, staring at Orson as he all but begged Helga to let him up, “If he can try to find them, maybe they’ll be able to help with all this…”
“All this what? What exactly can be helped in this whole situation?” He let his hands flop to his sides, stepping back and gesturing to follow him. “The only thing that any of us can do now is get out, not much option other than that.”
Before she could say anything else Frank clapped his hand down on Orson’s shoulder, snapping his fingers to get his attention. “Alright, listen here. I’m not going to let you out that door right now, you need at least a day or two before you can even walk let alone fight, there’s not much chance of you doing anything right now except keeling over dead. What I will do is tell you to the best of my knowledge where they all are, that way when all of this is settled and you’re healed up, and only then, you can go and find them, deal?”
“Y-yeah,” Orson said, nodding and propping himself up on his elbow, “Please, just tell me where they are.”
Sighing, Frank took Helga’s hand and sat down in his seat, waiting until she was seated next to him before he started. “Jamie made out east, trying to get to some of the bigger cities, I think he wanted to just jump right into the deep end like the youngest always do. Last I heard he was near New York, but he could have moved on since then.”
“Shane?”
“Shane went up north, looking for the snow. He would have been well prepared for what we’re about to go through by now I think, but there’s no telling how bad it’s gotten up there. You know him though, always trying to keep himself out of trouble, I doubt that he’s done anything except keep his nose clean.”
“And… Megan?”
“Megan?” Frank sighed, squeezing Helga’s hand and letting her take over.
“We don’t know where Megan is, the others kept in contact but she… she dropped us not long after she left, all she did was leave us a phone number to call in case of extreme emergency, and she was adamant that we would only get one call.”
“Where did you last hear she was?” Orson asked, not at all surprised that she would be the hardest to find, “There’s got to be somewhere…”
“Nevada, that was the last place. She said that she wanted to go somewhere messed up, where people were at least honest about that sort of thing. I think she was starting to get in with some bad people, but we didn’t hear much from her the longer it went on. If she was dead though, we definitely would have heard something about that, someone like Megan wouldn’t just go down without a fight, she would make it count.”
“Probably enough to make the history books,” He laughed, wincing at the tugging in his ribs, “Nevada huh? I’ve heard that can be… pretty rough.”
“Some parts of it are ok,” Frank said, “Though… I don’t think those were the parts she was interested in. But for now I want you to rest up, alright? Don’t go tearing anything out of your body and dragging yourself across the floor, let yourself have some time to actually heal properly so that you can be of actual use to yourself.”
“Alright dad…” Orson sighed, closing his eyes and letting his body relax, “Have you and Helga had kids yet? You’d be good at it.”
Helga shook her head, smiling as she stood up and got to clearing away the things that had been knocked across the floor in his struggle. Frank however just groaned and let his head fall back, flicking Orson in the forehead and moving towards the doorway. “I’m going to go and get all of us some more food, we could all use it after the last couple of weeks. When I get back you better be still lying right there in that bed, understand? Don’t even breathe.”
Jennifer giggled watching him leave, shaking her head at a sympathetic Helga before she took
her seat next to Orson. “You made him maaaaaad.”
“Nah,” Orson said, waving his hand, “Just worried, he’s always been like that. Right Helga? Always been like that.”
“Always been like that,” She agreed, “Always worrying about Orson that is, you can just never take him anywhere without having to watch over him like a tiny little infant. So I suppose in a way we do have a child.”
“Wasn’t looking for that kind of answer, but thank you anyway.” He relaxed his entire body with a sigh, smiling tiredly up at Jennifer. “So… what are you going to do now?”
“Now? I think that I’m going to wait for you to get all better, then we’re going to find some way to prevent this war and save your family. I am partly to blame for them being in danger after all.”
“I wouldn’t say that, but I’m not gonna turn down the help,” He said, “But are you sure? I don’t mind if you just want to cut and run, this is a pretty dangerous situation as it is, and we could be heading into something even more so.”
“I’m sure,” Jennifer said, placing her hand over his and squeezing tightly, “But for now you just rest ok? We can talk more about it when you wake up.”
It took her a minute to realize that he had drifted off to sleep, hand still clasped in hers as tightly as ever. She readjusted herself in her seat, but their hands stayed linked, no sense in taking away any sort of comfort from the two of them.
It had been far too long in any case.
Back at the camp, standing outside the partial ruins of Orson’s house like nothing was out of the ordinary, Jeremy and his soldiers were talking over the plans for what to do if they were invaded. So far, much to their distress, they were woefully short on actual plans.
“We don’t have enough men to cover the entire perimeter, even if we just rely on smell,” The senior said, who’d been through more fights than any of them, “We were prepared for this sort of thing back in the war, but that was because we had over five times the number that we do now. All of those that died, and all that left us since, there’s just not enough to keep everyone safe, not like this.”