The Heirs of Tomorrow

by Billy Roper

  That night they pitched tents and made lean-to shelters to last a few days at the new camp site. She scooted as close to the walls of one as she could without getting out of the light cast by the cookfire. Darkness was danger. One of the other girls came and sat beside her, asking her her name and where she was from and how old she was. Then the alpha called the girl into his tent. Britt had made a friend, or passed a test of some kind. She slept better not being all alone. The dreams still came.

  The next day the girl who had talked to her wouldn’t make eye contact. The day after, some of them nodded at her, at least acknowledging that she was there. At each meal the alpha brought her food. That must be why his girl, and the others who shared his tent, didn’t like her. She could tell by how they acted. Every time she went off into the woods to go to the bathroom she had to hurry to catch up so she wouldn’t be left behind. Britt moved out when the tribe did, and tried to start a couple of conversations, slowly getting a few of them to open up to her. Once they saw she could keep pace, the younger ones became more friendly. The lower ranking ones talked to her first. She was starting at the bottom.

  The tribe stayed in the woods, skirting the edges of farmland, but avoided any houses that were still occupied. They rarely stayed in one spot for more than a few days at the time. It seemed like they stayed on the run, like fugitives. In a way, that’s what they were.

  One of the three girls who shared his tent was taller and fairer skinned than Britt, but she had the other two beat in the looks department, and the blonde girl had a bad attitude, always complaining about everything. She criticized everyone and never had anything nice to say. One of the others had bad skin and was shy around everyone but Trace. The other had a big butt and small chest. She had no idea what he saw in any of them. They were older than her, and confident of their positions. Britt knew exactly what to do. The other girls didn’t have a chance.

  They were a tribe, some of them orphans, the rest runaways who blamed their parents for what they had let happen to their world. She became one of them almost overnight, through silent acceptance. Their stories paralleled hers. They lived moment to moment to moment, but whispered rumors of hope. There were legends of places where life still went on much as before, where people had plenty to eat and safety. Places where parents still did their jobs, and kids could be kids. All of them knew, instinctively, that the most important duty a parent had was to protect their children, above all else. That meant their parents had been broken, useless, and let them down when it mattered most. That was unforgivable.

  She caught the leader watching her, and made sure that she gave him something worth seeing. Britt would stretch, fake yawn, and play with her hair while she ate the food he brought her. He stayed and talked with her, sometimes until she had finished. It took her a long time to eat.

  A few of them, older than the lower-ranking ones she walked with, led the talks by the campfire about how the world had died. They had heard their moms and dads complaining about it even last year, before everything stopped. Their parents had griped about the crime and the protests and the growing violence and argued about whether there was going to be a peaceful solution, and still they had done nothing.

  Britt knew that she was prettier than the other girls, but she began to make a special effort to take care of herself and look her best. She washed her face and tried to get rid of her zits and brush her hair with her fingers as well as she could. Trace noticed. He lingered a bit longer now when he brought her food, sometimes asking how she was doing and where she had been going and even, once, what she thought about the coming winter. She didn’t even have to eat slow. The girl of his with the bad skin began to look concerned. Britt almost felt sorry for her.

  The kids were all smart enough to know: if a bear comes to the camp, you kill the bear or break camp and move to somewhere the bear isn’t. You don’t argue about whether the bear wants to eat you or your venison, or if maybe the bear is just misunderstood and hungry. You know there are no nice bears. Cartoon bears are all dead, too.

  Their parents had been too lazy or too stupid or too greedy to break camp and go to one of those places where life went on now, still, because the people hadn’t let in the bears. Britt knew that the bad men were like bears. Why hadn’t they just moved out of the way when the different peoples moved in? They had been stubborn, like her dad, or naïve, like her mom, or both, maybe.

  She remembered that they had made jokes about the people in the safe areas. They were all poor and inbred and uneducated with bad teeth and did meth. But now the proud city people were dead, and their kids had joined together, those who were able, to get out.

  When the tribe had first accepted her, they had been impressed with her skills. She showed them how she built a shelter after a week of barely being included. But they all started making a screeching noise when she told them that her dad had taught her the lashings. You didn’t say anything good about parents in the tribe. She had learned. And, the more time she spent with them, the more she understood that they were right, after all. It was true. Her mom and dad had let her and her brother down. All they had to do was forget about the jobs they hated and the house they couldn’t afford, and move to a safer place. There had been plenty of warning. But still they hadn’t.

  Trace, the leader of the tribe, said that he had even asked his mom and dad, when things started getting bad, if maybe they should go north until stuff calmed down. His father had told him to stop reading conspiracy websites and watching paranoid youtubers and trust the government. Nobody really wanted a civil war. He’d see. Trace had left home after his dad gave half the family’s food to the Privilege Reconciliation Council that came by, with guns over their shoulders. He could do better than that on his own. Trace had lost all respect for his father in that moment. Britt thought that Trace was dreamy, but he already had a girl. Two or three, it seemed like, even. That could change.

  Trace had picked up a kid here and there, talking some into running away after meeting them, and pulling others out of relocation camps. By the time Britt joined them, there were nearly fifty of them. Way more boys than girls, which was fine by her. They ranged in age from eleven to seventeen. When you turned eighteen, you had to leave, that was the rule. A couple had already aged out and left.

  One of them had tried to come back and take over, and the other boys had all beaten him up. He threatened to bring more adults, parents of the runaways, to take them back. Trace had talked the tribe out of killing him that day, and they had moved on, instead. Again, proving they were smarter than their parents had been.

  As she watched Trace lead by example, an idea began to form in Britt’s mind. What if they didn’t keep moving forever? What if they really did what their parents should have done, and found a safe zone and went to it?

  There were other tribes, some of them kept their girls as slaves, and some didn’t like girls at all, and others were black and brown, always fighting each other and the White tribes of kids. Just like the parents. The tribe that found her was all White, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to join them or wanted to, but they tried to avoid the others.

  The area was at a crossroads of regions. The black tribes were gangs who wouldn’t or couldn’t live under the Islamic rules of the New African government, and they were all ages, filtering up from the south. The brown gangs were the leftover chicken plant workers, and were trying to head south, mainly. Trace said there were some White tribes that hunted both, but they were parents, even if they weren’t scared of the others. They’d probably want to send those home who still had some place to go and parents who pretended to want them so they would feel better about themselves and look better. That made the tribe stay to itself, except for a couple of them who went off by themselves to secretly trade with other tribes and villages without getting caught by the raiders, from time to time. They brought back matches and canned food and needles and thread and all kinds of cool things.

  Britt moved up in the ranks, mainly because
of the favoritism Trace showed to her by bringing her food every day. One of the mid-ranking girls who became her confidant told her that he had chosen her, and claimed her by giving her food. The rest of the tribe was amazed that she hadn’t accepted his claim yet, and moved into his tent. Except for Trace’s three girls, the rest of the tribe treated her as something special, because he did. She taught them what she knew about living outdoors, without telling them it had all come from her dad.

  One day the two traders left at dawn and didn’t come back for three nights. They had hiked ten miles to a town where they bribed local teenagers to trade for them at the market. For a packful of hides and furs they got a six pack of cans of fruit cocktail, and a block of local made cheese. They also had a collection of working watches the tribe had scavenged from houses at the edge of the forest. Working watches were a sought-after item in town. The tribe had no need to know the hour or the minutes of the day. For those eight watches they brought back a bag of fresh baked bread, ten reloaded pistol cartridges for Trace’s revolver, the only gun in camp by tribal law, and a sealed can of coffee. These were all luxuries that the tribe couldn’t come by on their own.

  Their parents had lived and breathed elections, and had not been willing to admit when they no longer worked, so the tribe didn’t vote on anything. Trace decided, and it usually worked out for the best. They stayed away from towns, and from farms except to raid them for eggs and chickens. Once they tried to catch a cow and lead it off, but it wouldn’t come, and another cow started making a terrible noise, enough to wake the farmer. Probably it was a parent cow. The boys had finally stabbed it and chased it and stabbed it until it died, then they cut out as much meat as they could all carry and ran off. The baby cow was probably better off without its parent, anyway, and they ate well for days off of that meat.

  Trace gave Britt one of the cans of fruit cocktail, just as he did for his three girls who lived with him. All the kids noticed, and respected her more for it. They all shared the cheese and coffee for as long as it lasted. Towards the end the coffee water was barely light brown, but everyone got a cup every morning for more than a week. The slice of cheese that was her share made Britt remember pizza. Would she ever have another pizza?

  Britt didn’t really want to share him with three other girls, but she didn’t want to have to fight them all, either. Her status was in limbo until she either moved up or left, though. Any of the other boys would be glad to have her. They all competed for her attention, bringing her food every day which she was careful to give to the younger and weaker kids, not eating any herself except what Trace gave her. She became the favorite of the tribe, and caused more than one fight without even trying.

  Boys raised by single moms who bounced them from one boyfriend and stepdad to another didn’t trust authority. Neither did the girls left prey to sexual abuse by similar men, or brothers, or stepbrothers, or uncles, or whomever. They had grown up watching their dads cheat on their moms and their moms lie to their dads until dysfunctionality and scheming was all they could relate to. It made them perfect survivors. It also made a tribe that could only survive based on hierarchy.

  Something instinctive deep within Britt made her want to belong to Trace, and hate the girls who had his attention. That was because she understood them better than he did. They were just like her, only older. The tribe could be based on any lingering middle school myths of equality and peace and love. There had to be a pecking order. She had to rise to the top of it, one way or another.

  Someone had driven an RV way back on a fire road to escape the death of civilization, bringing a lot of it with them. The tribe came across it on the way to a pond they used for bathing and washing clothes. The occupants were nowhere to be found. Maybe they had wandered off in the woods and suicide, or decided to walk back to the world and never made it. Or maybe they had. Wondering was like chasing your tail.

  The fuel tank was empty, but there were plenty of treasures inside. Vienna sausages, crackers, potted meat, and best of all, blackberry and strawberry jelly along with an unopened jar of peanut butter. Everything else, junk food and perishables, had gone bad in the cabinets and fridge.

  There were several pair of good jeans that were too big for Britt, or any of the other girls, but they could use the material, and all of the shirts were shared out. A pair of tennis shoes that fit one of the hunters with big feet, and towels and underwear for material. Britt and Trace ended up with matching red flannel long-sleeved shirts out of the bedroom closet.

  They had no real need for the books, and certainly none for the DVDs and CDs. The soap and shampoo and toilet paper and cleaning supplies were taken, though. There was enough juice left in the batteries to turn the lights on and play a movie on the t.v., with everyone crowded in and piled on top of one another to see. Some of the younger kids had to stand outside and watch through the windows. Trace chose a comedy, the sequel to Despicable Me. All his minions laughed, remembering. While it played he let the hot water heater warm up the half full tanks, then took a quick shower and shaved his sparse beard. His three girls each had fast showers, then, with him timing them by counting down from a hundred three times. They washed their hair and hopped out, taking turns. Then he nodded to Britt. The water was already cooling off, but it felt wonderful. A couple of the hunters had quick rinses after her before the water ran out. By then the movie was over and the lights were dimming.

  They decided to camp there for the night, with Trace and his three girls sharing the bed in the back of the RV and the rest staying outside. Britt felt resentful and jealous and vindictive. She would have stayed on the fold out couch, at least, but then she would have had to listen to them all night, probably, so she made do with a tarp, instead. At least it didn’t rain.

  At first, the stories she told around the campfire were completely made up. They played off of the tribe’s own stories. She had also heard, she told them, that there were areas up north where they still had lights and running water. You could get in if you were willing to work, or had a skill. Nobody cared who your parents had been or if they were maybe still looking for you, up there. The more she embellished the tales, night by night, the more they took on a life of their own. She felt his eyes on her, weighing the truth of it, letting her babble on, while they ate their evening meals.

  Britt knew that she took it too far, that her stories quickly leap-frogged from rumor into fantasy, and so did the rest of the kids, but it took root. Trace found one excuse after another to send the hunters and scouts north whenever they came to a fork in the trail. Sometime northeast, sometimes northwest, but the general direction was obvious.

  The third week of this buildup ended and he made a decision. Trace shooed the three girls who shared his tent out into the drizzling rain, and called Britt in, alone. She shivered, and not from the damp cold. The looks they gave her as they walked out could have killed.

  Stop telling the stories, you’re getting the others riled up, he told her. You’ve made your point, I was going that way anyway, Trace said. But it had to be his decision, not one he was driven to, or one someone else made for him, she understood. He knew she didn’t really know what was up there, but they would find out. At least it would be some place different, some place further from their parents or their ghosts, and the other tribes. It couldn’t be any worse. She didn’t argue, or respond. When he stopped talking she sat down on the deerhide covering the center of the tarp and looked up at him. He let her stay. The next morning she would throw the other girl’s packs out into the mud. Would one girl be enough for him? She was determined to be enough.

  Once he had finished and fell asleep beside her, she lay listening to the patter of the rain. Just beneath it she heard one of the girls crying outside. The other two had immediately found other tents. They weren’t getting rained on. Trace had been much nicer than the bad men. She hadn’t known it could be like that. Maybe she could grow to like him.

  Britt expected them to become her enemies, and either challenge
her or leave the tribe, but that didn’t happen. Instead they all quickly attached themselves to one of the older boys and acted like nothing had happened. She knew it was all an act, and they would replace her at the first chance, but she would be ready.

  The first thing she did was influence him to start sharing out the food more evenly, giving more meat to the younger kids. She made sure to pout when she wanted him to do something or not do something, and make him happy when he did as she wanted. Britt also not only gave the three girls their packs, she was friendly to them, as well, treating them better than they had treated her. The boys they were with made sure that they acted nice back, too.

  The ten best hunters began actively taking more hides, and the girls began making them into sleeveless fur capes and caps and mittens. The traders of the tribe who did business with other tribes when they had to exchanged meat for warmer clothes and boots. They left for days at a time, then rejoined the camp in its next spot, after making their deals. It would be colder, the further north they went, especially once they left the flat lands and began going up into the mountains, where the safest places were. Winter had found them, or they found it.

  The tribe looked like cave men, draped in too-big jackets and coats and furs, carrying litters of camp supplies and tents and food, wearing backpacks with their personal possessions inside. When it rained it often turned to ice, then the ice turned to snow. The days were fine but at night the wind blew cold, and then she was glad to have the biggest guy in the best tent of the camp to keep her warm. Still they kept going north, and higher, following the scenic highway into the mountains.

  Snow lay in drifts alongside the road, but there were ruts down the center of the ice-coated asphalt. Someone up here still had cars that ran, and a place worth getting to in the freezing rain and sleet. These tracks weren’t hard for the hunters to follow. They were young and fit and strong from walking for months and months and living a hard life, but constantly climbing uphill through the winding mountain passes for the last day and a half had brought new strain to their calves and thighs. There was woodsmoke on the air, they smelled it, along with burning grease and diesel.