The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  Coop wondered aloud if they were even still walking south. The lake’s curve was so gradual, and its contours so inconsistent, that they could conceivably be on the opposite bank already, heading west instead of south. There was no way to be sure.

  Lamar didn’t respond. In fact, he hadn’t said a word in over an hour. His expression was relentlessly grim, and the only noise he made was the squelching of his sneakers in the mud as they trudged onward.

  Lamar’s left knee buckled as he put his weight on it, sending him careening forward at a dangerous angle as his back foot struggled for purchase in the mud. Coop saw him slip and lunged forward to steady him, but Lamar caught himself in time, grabbing hold of a small poplar tree. The younger man clung to the tree as he righted himself, but even after his feet found purchase, he kept his grip on it, and made no move to continue the journey.

  “You okay?” Coop asked cautiously.

  “My legs are going numb,” Lamar responded through chattering teeth. “I can barely feel them.”

  Coop could see that Lamar’s lips were turning blue. Despite his many layers of insulated clothing and blubber, Lamar was clearly struggling with the cold and damp.

  “Just think of how warm it’ll be inside the base,” Coop consoled him, while trying to gently pry Lamar’s hand from its death grip on the tree. But Lamar refused to budge.

  “C’mon, man, let’s give it another 15 minutes,” Coop said.

  Lamar shook his head, like a stubborn child refusing to listen to reason.

  “You said that 30 minutes ago.”

  “It’s probably right around the next bend,” Coop coaxed him.

  “Just stop!” Lamar said in a raised voice, causing Coop to rear back. “We’ve been searching for almost two hours now, and we haven’t found shit! There’s nothing out here!”

  He loosened his grip on the poplar tree as rain dripped off his trembling lower lip.

  “You don’t want to say it?” he shouted. “Fine, I will: I was wrong! We never should have come this way. I should have listened to you. And now, my fuckup will cost both of us … our … lives!”

  With a shout of anguished frustration, Lamar hurled his spear skyward, sending it careening over the eastern ridge and landing out of view on the other side.

  He collapsed in a wretched heap at the base of the desiccated poplar tree, sinking into the chilly mud as he struggled to blink back his tears.

  “Go on without me,” he insisted, refusing to look Coop in the eye.

  Coop put his hand on Lamar’s shoulder reassuringly.

  “I told you before: I’m not leaving,” he said quietly but firmly.

  Lamar shrugged off his hand.

  “Just go back; tell the others you made a mistake. You can say I tricked you, or you had a change of heart. Tell them I’m the least dependable person alive; they’ll certainly believe that!” he said with a snort.

  “If you don’t stand up and get your circulation going, you won’t have that title for long,” Coop said, half-jokingly.

  But Lamar would not be mollified.

  “You’re just going to give up and die out here?” Coop asked, incredulous.

  Lamar nodded, refusing to budge.

  “And nothing I can say will change your mind?”

  Another nod.

  “Fine.”

  Coop sat down in the mud beside Lamar with a forceful splat that sprayed Lamar’s hands and chest with mud. He crossed his arms defiantly and stared evenly at a rather surprised Lamar.

  “Thanks,” Lamar sulked. “Now I’ll have your death on my conscience.”

  “If you don’t want that, then get up and start moving,” Coop said.

  The two stared at one another for several minutes, each one silently daring the other to give in, like the world’s most boring game of chicken. Coop’s teeth started to chatter, and Lamar crossed his arms over his chest for warmth, but neither moved from their spot.

  “Why are you so fired up to keep going?” Lamar finally asked, the question having been on his mind for some time. “I mean, if things are so shitty back home, shouldn’t it be you giving up?”

  Coop smiled faintly, but his downcast eyes showed it was a smile born of pain.

  “I have a lot to atone for,” he said quietly. “And I can’t do that if I’m dead.”

  Coop paused to clean the mud off his glasses, though his robes were so caked in it that he did little more than streak it. He held them up to the stinging rain, which gradually washed the muck off.

  “I told you before that I came with you out of friendship,” he said as he reseated his glasses. “But that’s not the only reason. Whether you believe it or not, you are a natural-born leader.”

  Lamar snorted in derision.

  “Think of the fence to keep Wade out. That was your idea,” Coop reminded him. “The rest of us were prepared to build an earth wall around the wigwam. You convinced us to take up arms against Wade, and you fixed the C.B. How about the iku? If you hadn’t figured out that they were afraid of the light, none of us would be here now.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lamar said, unmoved. “And how was my leadership yesterday?”

  “You were running on fumes,” Coop said as he shivered. “Leaders are allowed to get tired. Look, the point is, I trust your judgment.”

  Coop looked out on the lake as he paused to reflect. Little by little, the storm was starting to let up. The needles of rain started to sting less and were slowly petering out.

  “I practiced all kinds of different religions because I hoped my faith in them would cure me, make me like everyone else. None of them worked, but I kept my faith,” he said. “When John abandoned us, I kept my faith, at least for a time. When those things out there came for us, I lost faith in anything and everything … except for you. I have faith in you.”

  Lamar looked at him, surprised and genuinely touched.

  “And it’s about time you start to have more faith in yourself,” Coop said.

  The storm had passed, leaving cloudy skies and only a few more droplets. A strong wind blew in behind the storm, chilling the waterlogged duo.

  Coop stood up and brushed off his robes.

  “Okay, I am legitimately starting to freeze,” he said through his chattering teeth.

  He leaned over and extended his hand to Lamar.

  “Are you ready to go now? Or are you still set on quitting?”

  Lamar stared at him, awestruck at his conviction. After a few moments, he nodded and took Coop’s hand. He struggled to stand; the mud seemed determined to claim him, and his legs had grown numb from the cold. It took a minute or two of stomping in the mud to return proper circulation to them.

  Another strong breeze blew past them, whipping up Coop’s mud-spattered robes. He ducked behind Lamar’s generous frame to avoid the brunt of its bone-chilling effects.

  Lamar cracked his knuckles, signaling that he was ready to get back to work.

  “Where’d I throw my spear?” he asked.

  “Thataway,” Coop said, pointing toward the ridge.

  Lamar trekked up the ridge and looked out on the land beyond. Straight ahead was a large, open field that stretched out of sight, flanked on either side by the barren remains of forest. Dividing the field from the ridge was a curtain of shriveled and tangled vines, caught up in a row of withered hedges.

  He found his spear near the base of the opposite slope, partially buried in the mud. As he pulled it out with a grunt of exertion, Lamar found his eyes wandering back to those hedges some 50 feet in the distance. There was something off about them. Six of them in a row, meticulously aligned, and too perfectly spaced to be nature’s doing. Upon closer inspection, Lamar realized the vines weren’t caught in the hedges; they actually hung behind them, their tendrils resting on top of the bushes. They were wrapped around something behind the hedges, something about the size of a person, but wider. It was hard to make out what it was due to the vine curtain covering it. Lamar approached, mostly out of curiosity. Even close
up, it was still hard to make out what was beneath the vines. It had a deep brownish tone that made it difficult to distinguish from the withered vines, but he saw splotches of white peeking out from behind its vine prison. He raised his spear and swept away the vines before him.

  It was a wooden signpost, painted brown with white lettering, with a row of rocks arranged around its base, like some kind of memorial or shrine.

  “Lamar, how’s it coming?” Coop called out from the other side of the ridge.

  Instead of answering, Lamar leaned in, reading and rereading the white lettering on the sign, trying to convince himself that it wasn’t a mirage. But no matter how many times he read it, the sign spelled out the same message:

  Former Site of Curtiss-Wright

  Nuclear Testing Facility

  Lamar turned and shouted joyfully over his shoulder.

  “Coop! It’s here!”

  * * * Six Hours Until Sundown * * *

  Gaby huddled under a blanket, shivering miserably as she and Ken checked the logs they’d brought in from the rain. After spending nearly two hours sifting through the woodpile for salvageable logs, they’d found 30 prospective candidates near the bottom.

  Meanwhile, the rain outside was actually starting to let up now that they’d finally carted all the salvageable wood inside. This bitter irony wasn’t lost on Gaby, but she was too cold and despondent to care. Hardly any of the logs they’d inspected thus far were usable, and each time they discarded one, Gaby felt a pinprick of fear crawl up her spine. At this rate, they might not have enough dry wood to last the night.

  Her fumbling fingers, numbed by the cold, struggled to obey her commands as they operated the penknife, peeling away layers of soaked bark to inspect the wood underneath. Ten feet away, Ken was on his hands and knees, ripping off the bark with his bare hands. His whole body trembled as it fought to stave off the chill. If neither one of them developed pneumonia, it would be a minor miracle.

  “Shit!” Ken exclaimed as he tossed the log to the side. “This one’s soaked clear through.”

  Gaby peeled back the inner layer of bark on her log to reach the wood underneath. It looked slightly discolored. She ran her finger along the interior. Damp.

  “Same here,” she said in bitter disappointment as she pushed the unusable log aside and started on the next one.

  “You really screwed the pooch here!” Ken exclaimed in frustration.

  “Let’s worry about how to make it through the night, first,” Gaby insisted through chattering teeth as she peeled back bark on another log. “Worry about blame later.”

  “I’ll worry about it whenever I damn well feel like,” Ken snapped.

  “This one’s dry,” Gaby said, grateful both to find a dry log and an excuse to redirect the conversation.

  “Show me,” Ken insisted, his tone suggesting that he didn’t trust her judgment. Gaby peeled back the bark and held up the exposed wood for Ken to inspect.

  “That’s green wood,” he said dismissively. “It won’t burn.”

  Gaby tossed the log to the side and grabbed a fresh one.

  “If only Beverly had helped us, we’d have more wood to work with,” she said glumly.

  “Exactly,” Ken said, surprising Gaby by agreeing with her. “Baba Gaga isn’t pulling her weight. Her ‘senior moments’ are getting weirder and more frequent. If she comes back, we should do something about it.”

  The casual way Ken said “do something” chilled Gaby far deeper than the rainstorm had. She didn’t like the direction this conversation was going.

  “We’re not murderers,” she said softly.

  Ken snorted.

  “I’m not talking about offing her, I’m talking about exiling her. She’s been a lead balloon since Day 1. Between her running off, trying to kill herself, slowing down our escape and going schizo, it’s a wonder we haven’t talked about it before.”

  “Haven’t we thrown out enough people for one day?” Gaby countered.

  “Just think of it like tribal council on Survivor. You weed out the dead weight,” he said.

  “Except when people get exiled here, they get eaten,” Gaby pointed out.

  Ken shrugged to express his depth of concern. He finished examining another log and threw it on the all-too-small pile with the other dry logs. “This one’s good,” he said.

  “I still don’t know,” Gaby said, vacillating as she weighed the pros and cons. “Banning her seems drastic. Wade and Lamar did terrible things to merit expulsion.”

  “She nearly burned down the forest and us along with it,” Ken reminded her.

  Gaby shook her eyes in astonishment. Things had been so crazy lately that she had nearly forgotten about that incident.

  “Well?” Ken asked impatiently.

  Gaby was torn. While she bore no love for Beverly, she didn’t want to be as callous as Ken. She also wasn’t comfortable about being alone with Ken, who was growing more volatile by the hour. But in the end, she concluded that having two unstable companions was worse than one.

  “Fine,” Gaby said reluctantly as she threw another log on the discard pile. “Just promise not to go as hard on her as you did on Lamar.”

  “I’m not promising anything of the sort,” Ken said.

  He peeled away the inner layer of bark on the last uninspected log and found it to be dry enough on the inside. He added it to the pile, which had only five other logs.

  He stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans.

  “This’ll buy us maybe seven hours,” he said glumly. “We need more.”

  “Only if those things come back.”

  “When they come back,” he corrected her. “No reason to pretend at this point. Whatever it is they want, it’s here, and odds are, it’s us.”

  The pair stripped the remaining wet bark from the dry logs. They worked in silence, both privately fearing that this was their last day on Earth. The disquiet was punctuated by the occasional rumble of protest from Gaby’s empty stomach.

  As they were finishing up, the wigwam’s door opened and Beverly stepped through.

  She was drenched, with droplets still falling from her matted hair, which covered her eyes. The rest of her face was a mess; her mascara and eyeliner had smeared and run down her cheeks, giving the impression that her face was melting. Her slip — the only thing she was wearing — clung to her torso like Saran Wrap, doing absolutely nothing to protect her modesty. Ken looked away, not out of any sense of nobility, but from disgust. Gaby could see through the slip that the black mark had spread again and was midway down her waist on the left side.

  In her shaking arms Beverly held a large bundle wrapped in colored plastic. Gaby recognized it as the remains of a target from the archery range down by in the floodplain.

  The hatchet was nowhere to be seen.

  No one spoke for several seconds. Beverly took an unsteady step toward Gaby. While her whole body was shaking, likely from the chilly weather, her knees undulated in an uncharacteristic way, like they were about to buckle. Beverly extended the bundle toward Gaby, who cautiously accepted it after a few moments of consideration.

  “A peace offering,” Beverly whispered, her voice barely audible.

  Gaby realized what was in the bundle the moment she hefted it. The unevenness of its contents and the weight were a dead giveaway. She unwrapped the package and found two dozen freshly cut pieces of dry wood. Most were on the smaller side, but a few of the larger and more ragged pieces were nearly as thick as Gaby’s calves. Ken leaned over her shoulder to examine the pile and did some quick calculations. There was enough wood here to last them another two hours, maybe three if they stretched it. Still not enough, but it left them in a much better position than they’d been just a few minutes earlier.

  “I’m sorry we doubted you …” Gaby started to say, but stopped when Beverly began swaying unevenly. Her hair parted mid-lurch, and Gaby could see Beverly’ eyes rolling back in her head. The older woman lost her balance and fell onto Gaby, who r
eflexively dropped the bundle and caught her.

  Gaby shrieked and immediately pulled away, as though Beverly were a hot stove. The older woman fell to her knees and then landed face-first in the dirt.

  “What the fuck?” Ken exclaimed. “Are you that afraid she’ll infect you?”

  “No, I mean, yes, but that’s not it,” Gaby struggled to explain. “Her skin was like ice!”

  “She’s been out in the freezing rain for the last two hours,” Ken reminded her. “It’s a wonder she hasn’t turned blue.”

  He knelt down beside Beverly and pulled his hands into the sleeves of his leather jacket to avoid touching her. He put his coat-covered hand on her shoulder and rolled her over onto her back.

  “Jesus! I can feel it through the jacket,” he said with a low whistle of surprise. “I don’t know what’s worse than hypothermia, but whatever it is, she’s got it.”

  Beverly wasn’t moving. Gaby and Ken exchanged worried glances and leaned in for a closer look.

  Beverly started coughing and spat up some dirt, causing them both to rear back. Her head lolled slowly from side to side, making a dirt angel under her. Her breathing was shallow and erratic.

  “Help me move her to her sleeping bag,” Ken said, putting on gloves to avoid skin-to-skin contact. Gaby quickly followed suit.

  As they prepared, Beverly started waving her right hand in the air.

  “Floodplain,” she said deliriously. “Down there … incredible.”

  Ken grabbed Beverly by the shoulder while Gaby took her legs.

  “Ready?” Ken said. “One, two, three!”

  With a grunt of exertion they lifted the older woman and carried her five feet to her sleeping bag, struggling to keep a grip on her as she shivered violently. Gaby stuffed a blanket down the front to warm her up and tried to zip the sleeping bag, but Beverly was making it difficult, continually moving her arms.

  “Down there! See!” she said, motioning generally toward the floodplain. Gaby had to jerk her head away to keep from being touched.