Paul glanced back at his mother, waiting for a decision. Stay on the train, now a crippled-pig of a target, and possibly succumb to thirst, hunger, or exposure. Maybe get raided on the train. Or travel on foot through the Wilds with the likes of the old hateful badlander and God-knows-how many other ne’er-do-wells—with outbursts, provocations, and fighting always in tow.
His mother didn’t hesitate. She stood up and signaled them to follow her off the train. No time to wait for their bags to get unloaded—and no way to carry them all anyway—they gathered up the most essential of their essentials. Only what they could carry, which wasn’t much after they’d packed as much water and food as they could. Worse still, the train guards refused to release weapons from the cargo hold, so they would have to move on without their pistol.
Mile by mile, ever upwards along the winding mountain rail line, it wasn’t long before Paul’s legs ached, and his shoulders groaned from the heavy straps of his knapsack. He had taken on some of Victoria’s burden as well, ever worried about her welfare. He wrestled his pangs of hunger until he felt like he couldn’t go any farther.
With the sun setting, they finally stopped in a circle of other exhausted passengers, who had built a fire from the desiccated tree limbs and wood scraps that covered the ground beneath the failing forest. The ravenous bark beetles had at least left them good kindling. The chilly mountain breeze began to bite as soon as they stopped moving. It was the coldest night Paul could remember, and despite the foil blankets the Mormon MAC had provided—and the one his mother had pulled from her new duffle, he shivered on the ground, battling himself to avoid weeping, for his mother and sister’s sakes.
Their march resumed the next morning. The crowd of sojourners had thinned out like a line of ants, as the rail line stretched out interminably through the canyon. By midday, a wet cough had started to spread among the travelers. His mother kept them close enough to the pack to deter opportunistic miscreants, but far enough away to avoid catching whatever illness was taking hold of the herd.
By evening, they came to a bend in the mountainside that allowed them to look out over the twisting valley and the stony bluffs beyond. The group stopped there, bunching up more than his mother liked, and gazed at the cause of their misery. Assault drones and gunships dove from the low, gray clouds into the valley ahead, greeted by bursting flack. They spat streams of glowing bullets into the trees. The clitter-clack of gunfire and the thud of explosions echoed up the canyon. Black and gray smoke wafted up to the crest of the mountain and mingled with the misty clouds.
No one in the herd would move any farther on the track, too frightened at the sight of fighting they had hoped would be over by now. As his family wandered around the clearing at the bend, looking for a sheltered spot under the trees, Paul caught his first whiff of road sickness. Cholera, flu, pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, rubella, dysentery. He couldn’t tell if it was these, or any of the other ailments that swooped down on exposed travelers, often wiping out entire herds in just days. It was a sour smell of phlegm, rot, and shit that whispered infection. They quickly moved past the travelers, who huddled on the side of the rail line tending to family members succumbing to the sickness. When they settled on a small patch beneath the canopy of trees, his mother pulled three quilted surgeon’s masks from her rucksack and passed them to Paul and Vanessa, each of them knowing that was never really enough.
By dusk, the echoes of the battle ahead had hushed, but they didn’t dare walk the rail lines at night. So, they made camp at the overlook, and Paul braced for another sleepless night, snuggled between his mother and sister. The icy breeze whipped up again, and the disconcerting hacking and coughing pestered him. None of it was a match for his exhaustion, though, and he slipped into a troubled black well of sleep.
The next day’s march brought Paul and the herd to the ruins of the battle outside Glenwood Springs. A wrecked train sat crumpled and scorched on the rails. Pieces of aerial drones littered the blackened earth and dangled from the barren tree branches. The hulks of assault buggies, anti-aircraft technicals, and at least two tiger-shark jump-jets smoldered in heaps. Charred bodies and body parts steamed on the rails, the nearby rocks, and in the swaying brown grass. Splattered blood painted the ground and the trees.
Paul could sense his mother’s temptation to join the other travelers, who had started scouring the wreckage for anything of value. Weapons. Parachute fabric. Medicine or bandages. Even unspent ammunition could fetch a price in the black markets. His mother only paused a moment, for they couldn’t carry any more, and they all knew better than to linger.
Just as they left the vicinity, Paul saw two men starting to tussle over some tidbit on the ground. They began with shouting, drawing others toward the commotion. Then a shove, and fists began to fly. Paul’s mother hurried them along, sensing that branches, knives, and pipes would soon follow. She grabbed Paul and Victoria by the wrists and pulled them along, skirting the train wreckage towards the open stretch of tracks beyond.
A quarter mile on, Paul’s legs burning again, gun shots rang out from the battle sight. They couldn’t go any faster, but they didn’t stop to look back.
Within a few miles, the thinned herd had gone quiet as it marched along the tracks. Only the bitter wind upstaged the trodding sound of footsteps. A few miles more, and his family overtook a small group that looked less menacing and appeared to have escaped the road sickness. Two were single mothers, who had made the nighttime excursion from the Salt Lake MAC. His mother slowed their pace to stay near the new group—greater numbers always being better than fewer numbers.
Their energy had dwindled along with their water supplies, and Paul was starting to feel light headed when the group came upon an airship straddling the rail line at a clearing. It was branded with a strange purple cross on a bright yellow sun. A single aerial drone hummed overhead, and two men stood atop the truck bearing assault rifles. Inside the hull stood a woman in a deep purple robe, handing small satchels from the door-window to the single-file line of migrants.
Desperate for supplies, Paul’s mother got into the small queue, which soon began to swell and lose its shape as other walkers arrived. The drone maneuvered over the crowd, but the guards’ faces had begun to show worry.
Finally at the front of the line, Paul and his family submitted to another iris scan. The woman in the heavy patchwork robe passed them each a rations-pack.
“Bless you all,” she said sweetly. “May these help you on your path.” They each answered with a humiliated smile of thanks before moving away from the jostling crowd to take stock of the charity.
Two small bottles of vitamin-fortified water
One tube of chicken-flavored biotein paste
Two packages of fortified drought-oat crackers
One small tube of antibiotic ointment taped to a small box of bandages
One thermo-foil blanket.
Paul was desperate to sit down, slake his thirst, and appease the twisting hunger in his belly. He saw the same anguished look on his sister’s face, but his mother was determined to put distance between them and the crowd now surging in front of the relief ship.
Perhaps from guilt or maternal instinct, his mother finally relented, allowing them to pause for a cracker with biotein paste and a sip of lukewarm water. Paul was almost giddy at the feeling of water running down his throat to his grumbling empty stomach. The biotein paste made his jaws ache as he salivated, and he savored another sip to wash it down.
Then the aid ship’s engine started—the first sign that the relief supplies were running low and there wasn’t enough for everyone. Paul’s mother instinctively reached out to stop Paul and Victoria from taking another bite. She stood up, signaled them to drop their unfinished snacks into her satchel and get to their feet. Paul heard shouting from the hungry crowd, which started rocking the airship. The guards shouted for the crowd to get back, but instead it surged forward, tipping the ship onto its side. The guards toppled from the roof into t
he mob. Paul heard the portly woman in the purple robe scream, and he turned around in time to see the drone release a pale-yellow mist—the same mist authorities used back home to sedate riotous crowds. The effects of the gas usually took only a few seconds, but in that short time, automatic gunfire clattered through the trees and the small drone listed and fell helplessly into the canyon.
Paul’s heart jumped, as terrified travelers scattered in all directions. His mother pulled him by the arm, and they fled down the tracks, around a bend, and up another slope before the burn of the exertion filled their asthmatic lungs and forced them to stop. Panting heavily, straining for air, Paul took some comfort in seeing how much ground they had covered. The fighting was out of sight, and they kept marching, finding their co-traveling families one by one, until even the horrible sounds of the riot were just a faint rumble.
The rest of the hike to Denver—“the home stretch,” his mother called it—was mostly a blur. They slept in the Wilds before marching again all day and finally making camp with a handful of families in an abandoned strip mall outside the city. The cavernous rooms—once home to fancy High-Times stores, restaurants, and shops—were barely standing, and they smelled like piss and ash. Nessa decided to stay put for a while to recover before braving the dangers of city streets to the MAC.
The moms, as he now termed their co-travelers, were gracious enough to pretend he was the man of the camp, though he sensed they lacked confidence in his ability to protect them. The moms took inventory of supplies and applied an order to everything. The young ones would eat first. Then the older children. Then the mothers. Then Paul. They would divvy up the pot of Kroners and miscellaneous valuables whenever someone needed to split off so everyone was guaranteed their share, regardless of how meager that share might be. Paul and Victoria would join the moms whenever one of the women needed to go out, a role Paul didn’t especially care for and didn’t fully understand.
Then business began, and the business was swift.
With the first customer, Paul found himself restraining Lauren Fecklinberg’s two-year-old boy, who cried hysterically while giving chase to his mother as she went off to one of the adjacent rooms to earn. More men came, offering currency or supplies for a bit of time with one of the moms.
Paul and Victoria distracted and reassured the children each time, but when his turn arrived, there was no one to do likewise. He choked on his anger and guilt as he watched his mother haggle with a dirty, withered man before she accompanied him out of sight. Unsure and afraid of what would unfold—and how he would react if a problem erupted—he nonetheless sleuthed over to his mother’s work area. He loitered as close as he could bear, desperate to hear any sign of violence against his mother, while desperate to avoid any sounds of her occupation. His palms sweated as he clutched the rusted pipe he had picked up when the stranger disappeared in Las Vegas.
Five miserable minutes later it was over. The man emerged looking just as haggard and downtrodden as when he came along. His mother’s look shifted between reassurance, relief, and shame when she came upon Paul standing outside.
“I don’t know when they are coming to get us, Paul,” she said flatly. Just that, and she walked past him back to the restaurant where they had made camp.
Paul needed no explanation, and there was no room in this for his feelings of impotence and self-pity. There was also no time to explore any of it. The word had spread, and customers were finding their way to the mall with the migrant comforters.
In minutes, his mother was negotiating with another man, who started to leer and gesture toward Victoria. Paul thought his mother was going to rip out the man’s jugular, and he instinctively stepped in front of his sister, with a white-knuckled grip on his pipe. Paul knew Victoria needed no protection, and she was probably willing to do her part with the other women. She had long-since been deflowered, and rumor back home was that she was among the more promiscuous of the boys and girls in their barrio. But neither Paul nor Nessa could stomach the idea of Victoria whoring herself in the Wilds.
The common pot soon swelled with water, drought-rolls, crackers, biotein tubes. Even cans of methylhol, which Victoria started flipping for currency when the kids gave her a break. The sharing agreement only went so far for his mother, though, who returned from a trick and discreetly passed him a grimy handkerchief with a small pistol and two clips of ammunition inside. Paul quickly deposited it into the small satchel that hung at his hip, but the diversion of proceeds wasn’t lost on Lauren, who glared at them as she wiped her son’s face nearby.
What if she tells the others? He wondered. She must know this is what’s best for the group. I’m the closest thing we’ve got to a guard. …But everything hinges on trust. They could kick us out.
He tried to catch her eye and offer a reassurance look, but she wouldn’t connect.
…Maybe fear’ll keep her silent, he thought, immediately feeling guilty for thought.
Whatever, he finally insisted to himself, at least now we can protect ourselves. He looked down at his pipe and was filled with enormous comfort at the very thought of carrying a gun—even a gun he wasn’t sure would work. He cast a sideways glance at Lauren and left the restaurant to start his patrol of the strip mall brothel, his rusted pipe on his shoulder and his pistol at the ready in his satchel.
As day passed to evening and then to another bitter cold night, Paul huddled in a corner of the main room with his sister and his increasingly dazed and disassociated mother. Some women were still working, but most were snuggled with their kids. He prayed for a peaceful night, mindful that it would take a proper uproar to wake him.
Now, as Paul finally relented to the morning sun and gently moved his sister’s still-sleeping head from his arm to free himself, he was struck by panic in finding his mother gone. He quietly, but quickly, got to his feet and bounded through the maze of sleeping children and women on the floor.
Hurrying outside, he shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare and squinted towards a large rusty garbage truck turning the corner. With its tinted windows obscuring the occupants, Paul slinked behind an abandoned car hulk on the sidewalk, took the pistol from his satchel, and prayed it worked. The truck slowed, and Paul’s heart thumped in his chest. The garbage truck stopped, and he pulled back the hammer on his pistol. The passenger door opened slowly, and he took aim, his stomach promising to throw up.
Then, to Paul’s astonishment, his mother’s voice called out from the open door, and her two small hands emerged from the open door and waived. Paul uncocked and lowered the pistol, fighting back the nausea.
Why the fuck would you get into someone’s car? He thought incredulously. The deal is to work in the strip mall, where I can protect you.
His mother hopped down from the garbage truck’s cabin, her face beaming with the happiest expression he had seen from her in weeks. Next a tall, thin man with a trimmed white mustache and a full head of wavy white hair emerged from the driver’s side of the truck. The lanky man slung a short rifle over his shoulder and scanned his surroundings as they crossed the street.
“Paul,” his mother called out. “Come say hullo. They’ve come! They’re here!”
Paul, trying to reconcile his mother’s commands with the sight of the rifle, returned the pistol to its satchel and shuffled forward. As he moved, he came to sense Victoria now walking beside him. Then, a second, nearly identical man, but for his darker hair, climbed down from the garbage truck. His bulky priest robes were incongruously cinched by a military belt holding bullets, a canteen, and holster.
“This is your Uncle Christian.” Nessa could barely contain her joy and started to tear up. “And this is your Uncle Joshua.”
Of course. Paul knew them both from conversations over the V-plat. Having never met in person, though, he felt like it was a new introduction.
“Aaaand this is your cousin Emily,” Nessa added when the young dishwater blond hopped down from the truck, slung a shotgun over her shoulder, and scurried to catch
up.
Of course, he thought again. Though he was told they were coming, and he had been desperate for them to arrive, he had convinced himself it wouldn’t actually happen. He was frozen at the surprise of seeing them and feeling that now—maybe—the worst was over.
His Uncle Christian clasped a curved vaping pipe in his teeth and reached out to shake Paul’s hand. Uncle Joshua followed suit, and Emily nearly toppled him over with a lunging hug. As Emily clung to him, he heard Victoria weeping in the embrace of Nessa and their uncles.
All of his father’s recriminations against his relatives—still lodged deep in his mind—lurched forward, only to melt away in Emily’s embrace. His mother’s grinning cheeks were now glistening with tears as she admired the dream of her family reunited finally realized. It was as if salvation itself had arrived.
Paul soon found himself navigating their restaurant headquarters. They bid their farewells to the other families, his mother falling to tears again as she hugged the moms, with whom she shared a dark and desperate bond. Paul and Victoria traded hugs and kisses with the children, Paul’s heart aching at the thought of the terrifying journeys still stretched out before them. He took only small comfort from their decision to leave their share of the common pot with the moms.
Finally, Uncle Christian cleared his throat, signaling the need to move things along, so Paul withdrew from the circle of kids and returned to his waiting family. He found himself holding hands with Emily, who had also grasped Victoria, while his Nessa nestled herself between his uncles, her arms wrapped tightly around their waists.
As they turned to leave, Paul glimpsed Lauren at the edge of the moms, consoling her young son. Paul looked back at his mother for assurance, and once receiving it, broke from his family and paced over to Lauren. He offered her a meek smile, and without a word lifted his satchel over his head and handed it to her with a knowing wink.
Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga) Page 16