Beyond All War

by Eric Keller

  More head shaking with some muttering through sobs about seven rules and someone named Louisa. Harrison grabbed Jacob’s hand and slapped it onto the counter. Jacob struggled slightly but did not free himself. Drawing his belt knife, he pressed the blade against the boy’s finger and stated, “I cannot tolerate people lying to me, cannot allow it under my command. One last chance.”

  Tears leaked from the boy’s eyes but he shook his head. These morons were not going to make it easy on themselves. Harrison pushed down on the knife, slicing along the finger as a scream pierced his ears.

  . . .

  Marge the trapper reminded Morreign of an adjective her mother used to use: spunky. With the arrival of a talkative stranger carrying a mind full of fresh stories, the entire community came out to listen and, as long as they kept bringing her food, Marge seemed more than content to keep telling tales.

  With Marge half-way through a funny story about how her son tried to tame a fox using peanut butter, Morreign suddenly could hear no more of this woman’s life, she needed to leave. She stepped outside, hoping the cool, fresh air of the night would help relieve her discomfort. It did not.

  Limping off the porch, she heard the question from behind her, “She going to leave?

  Turning she saw Boris Walker stepping out of a shadow.

  Morreign nodded.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll need to know.”

  “Probably tomorrow. She might stay longer if I ask her to.”

  “Her staying longer will not make it easier.”

  She sighed. “I know.”

  He nodded and walked away.

  Suddenly, feeling too tired to even make the short limp to her bed, Morreign leaned back, feeling the footstep-smoothed wood of the porch under her calloused hands. She stared at the crystal clear stars, pure white points in a perfectly black sky. Taking a deep breath, she wondered if she needed to do this. Did it matter any longer? Her children were gone, did she need to take such a drastic, horrible step out of a vague need to possibly protect what remained here.

  More laughter poured from the Lodge. She thought she could make out Paul’s chuckles and definitely heard Leo’s loud bellows above the others. Somehow they could still laugh. After all, they’ve been through and were going through, they somehow laughed. Maybe that was worth protecting but tonight she was not certain it was worth protecting at whatever cost.

  Another round of laughing. She pushed herself up from the porch with a sigh, knowing all along what she would decide. Regardless of how she felt about her life, she could not stop protecting them. With a nod, she muttered to herself, “Tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  JUNE 26, 2046

  DAY THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX

  “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. I don’t care about the Seven Rules. Stop. Just stop. Please.”

  At first, Jacob thought he had spoken the words. Screams filled the room. Griff’s screams, or his own, Jacob could no longer tell. Harrison grabbed Griff by the hair, pulling back his head so he could glare down in his eyes. He snarled at Griff who was bloodied and bleeding, “Yes? Enough?”

  Griff nodded. They released him, and he collapsed onto the floor. It had been Griff speaking. Jacob did not think he cared. He was lying on the floor, in a gruesome puddle and, for the moment, no one was hurting him and that was all that mattered.

  Rough hands grabbed him, lifted him and dragged him easily across the slick floor before setting him onto a hard chair. Harrison handed him a cup of water. For a moment Jacob merely stared at, it looked foreign in his blood-covered hands, and he was unsure what he was supposed to do. A drop of his blood fell from his chin into the water, and Jacob watch as it floated about, making a pretty pattern before Harrison gently moved the cup up towards his mouth and Jacob remembered how to drink. His lips were split and bruised, and the cool water caused a cracked tooth to let out a jolt of pain but the simple, normal act of drinking felt wonderful regardless.

  Setting down the empty cup, he watched as the massive men lifted Griff and set him in the chair next to him. His eyes remained closed, and Jacob figured he had died. He knew, intellectually, that he should care but he hurt too much to care.

  Harrison spread a colorful paper across the table and slapped Griff in the face. His friend started and mumbled something. Not dead. Jacob was unsure if that was good or bad. Harrison put a pencil in Griff’s hand. “Ok, you two put up an impressive fight. Lasted longer than I figured you would. Now show me.”

  Jacob stared at the paper. There was an atlas at Malden, a huge book full of maps. When they were ten he and Griff became, in the way of young boys, obsessed with the maps. They had poured over the pages, talking about all the towns, rivers, mountains and lakes with strange names they would go and see one day. He recognized this paper as being a map like those, and he guessed it represented the area they were in.

  Jacob could not tell this evil man. He wanted to tell him everything and anything to make this end but he couldn’t, Louisa was there. Looking at the map, Jacob thought he could lie, but the man seemed to see their lies better than they saw them themselves. Lying would only illicit more punishment.

  Harrison slapped Griff across the face again, and he came to slightly. “You, tell me where this place is, do it right now, or I’ll take out your eyes and cut off your useless tongue.”

  Griff, his mouth gaping open, merely stared at the map. Apparently sensing confusion, Harrison snatched up another pencil and pointed, saying, “This is Thule. This, up here, is the settlement with the Preppers.”

  A map with places he had actually been to. In any other circumstance such a marvel would intrigue Jacob to no end, now it terrified him. Harrison continued, using the pencil to point at thicker blue lines as he said, “This is a river, the Pembina River. Here’s another one. And another, further north, here.”

  That got Griff’s attention, and he mumbled, “Right, right. River. A river with a crooked tree.”

  Jacob, perceiving through the fog of agony what was about to happen, said, “No, Griff, don’t –.”

  Grabbed from behind, Jacob and his chair suddenly crashed down onto the wet, sticky floor before one of the massive blonde men put a heavy boot on his neck. Jacob heard Griff muttering up above, “Yeah. The story about the boat, that was true, well, mostly true. We got swept downriver.”

  Smelling the blood and feeling sharp pain everywhere, Jacob decided he did not truly care. Griff could tell them. Then, as he gasped for breath beneath the weight of the thug’s boot, an image of Louisa, standing under the silver willows in the moonlight as he stupidly marched away, leaving her, flashed into his mind.

  If they told him where to go, this evil could find its way to Malden, to Louisa. He needed to get home, needed to tell them all of the horrible nature of the outside world and, most importantly, he needed to get back to Louisa. Apologize for everything. Make her smile one more time. Make sure she is safe.

  He roughly twisted out from under the boot on his neck and sputtered out, “Don’t Griff. You can’t.”

  A soft pleading voice that did not sound much like his friend came back, “Sorry, I can’t take this, I got to, Jake, I have to end this.”

  Realizing Griff did not have a Louisa to think about, Jacob said, “Your mother, your father, your sister. Picture them.”

  Rough hands pulled Jacob back to his feet, surely preparing him for more abuse. He watched as Griff looked over at him, their pain filled eyes meeting, and Jacob said, “We’re dead either way.”

  Griff looked awa
y to stare back down at the map and then lifted his blood covered hand. He slammed his palm down on the paper, smearing dark red across the carefully drawn details, ruining much of the map. A shockingly loud, crisp and pure cackling laugh escaped from Griff, startling Jacob.

  Harrison stood stalk still amongst the strange laughter, and Jacob cringed, worried the psychopath, having not gotten what he wanted truly would kill them both now. But Harrison merely turned away as he said to one of the huge men, “Go get that girl.”

  . . .

  The hoe felt wonderfully substantial in Louisa’s hands even though her recent break from manual labor meant blisters were already forming where the callouses earned from a life of work had softened. Last night, hearing the noise of revelry down below, she had left her room and sat on the stairs to listen as the stranger told stories to the rapt audience. Before long, the scene evolved into an ad hoc party with children scurrying about the laughing adults. Seeing her sitting alone on the steps, Paulina had hurried up to her and climbed on to her lap.

  Before Jacob’s disappearance, the eight-year-old spent a great deal of time playing and cuddling with Louisa. However, after Tina, Griff, and Jacob disappeared, the child clearly sensed Louisa’s mood and avoided her. Sitting on the stairs, the doe-eyed girl twisted on her lap and looked up at her, “Were you sick?”

  This made Louisa smile. “Sort of, I guess.”

  “You better?”

  “Sort of, I guess.”

  A few of the other children scurried past. Paulina wrapped her arms around Louisa’s neck. “That’s good. Wanna play dolls again tomorrow?”

  Knowing she could not say anything else, Louisa answered, “Sure.”

  With that, the girl happily squirmed off her lap and joined the small mob of kids. For a while, Louisa watched the scene from the staircase, but Emma spied her spying and waved for her to come over. Louisa’s instinct was to politely shake her head, but the idea of slinking back up to her room all alone seemed daunting. She slipped off the stairs and moved down to the main table.

  Silently sitting down next to Emma, a few people noticed her and gave tiny smiles or nods of welcome but quickly returned their attention to the visiting storyteller. Emma, not taking her eyes off the visitor, who continually chatted away, casually leaned her cheek against Louisa’s shoulder.

  Long into the night, they listened to Marge talk about life out in the woods. She fended for herself, trading from time to time with others on the rare occasion she encountered someone, but otherwise taking care of everything on her own. Her stories were meant to be humorous, but Louisa found them heavily tinged with profound loneliness. Looking around the table crowded with familiar faces and at the content children now sleeping in a massed heap on the cushions in the corner, Louisa realized, even without Jacob, she still lived amongst people that knew her and cared for her.

  After the stories, when she laid on her cot back in her room, Louisa had decided she had wallowed in her sorrow long enough. Thinking about it, she realized, while she did not feel good, she had felt best after hunting with Sam in the woods. Being valuable, being productive, truly helped. She would continue to think about Jacob, to miss him and worry about him, but she would no longer let those thoughts and that pain engulf her entirely. It was past time to that she return to pulling her weight, pay her due.

  In the pre-dawn morning, after a short night’s sleep following the storytelling marathon, she ate a breakfast of carrot biscuits in the common room while the others silently welcomed her back to the world of the living. When they left to start in on chores, she walked out with them, happily taking up a hoe.

  Now, standing in the middle of the huge garden, she spit in her palms and rubbed them together hoping to keep the blisters from growing worse. As she was about to turn her attention back to the freshly turned earth, she saw two people on the path heading to the creek. Far away but the limp made it obvious that one of them was Morreign and she guessed the other was Marge, heading back to her solitary life in the forest.

  Strange the visitor chose to return to loneliness rather than stay amongst everyone at Malden, but Louisa figured there were all types of people. Hoping the interesting woman would return soon with more stories, Louisa looked back to the weeds and hacked away.

  . . .

  “Leave me alone, let me go.”

  Jacob, sitting on the floor, unable to contemplate the various pains emanating from his various wounds but glad for the brief respite, spun at the sound of Tina’s pleading voice. One of the massive men was dragging her in by her arm as she struggled mightily to stay outside. He and Griff had walked into this horror willingly, Tina, far smarter than them, at least tried to stay out.

  When she was thrust further inside, she saw him and Griff. She stopped pleading as her mouth fell open in shock at their bloodied and beaten appearance. The genuine concern in her eyes made Jacob want to stand up and apologize, to tell her everything would be fine even though he knew it would not be. Regardless, when he tried to move one of the thugs easily pushed him back and Jacob could only mumble through swollen lips, “Don’t tell them, Tina, don’t tell -”

  Harrison, slowly walking into the room, casually backhanded him before he could finish. Tina’s eyes started darting around the well-lit room, a cornered rabbit looking for a direction to bolt. The psychopath, having washed and changed into a clean shirt, calmly approached her, his palms facing forward. “Don’t worry, these boys were foolish and lied. I don’t tolerate liars, but I hate the idea of hurting them further, so why don’t you do us all a great favor and simply tell me about the place you three came from.”

  She looked down at Jacob and asked, “Jake, what... Jake? What do I do?”

  He wanted to save her the horror, to save her the agony, and tell her to let them know everything. But he couldn’t. They would destroy Malden and everyone there would suffer, better the three of them here than everyone back home. He shook his head and looked down as he said, “Don’t say anything.”

  . . .

  It had been a long night. Harrison did not actually enjoy inflicting pain, although it did not bother him like it appeared to bother some others, it was merely a chore. However, the persistence of these country bumpkins to remain silent despite his best efforts was wearing Harrison’s patience very thin.

  Looking at the terrified girl, thirteen or so he supposed, with deep burn scars shiny in the candlelight, he decided to get right to the point. He pulled the cover off the largest kerosene lantern, its oily flame swaying lazily and a glance told him his instinct had been right, she did not like fire, not at all.

  “All I need to know is where you three came from. Simple as that. You give me that, and you can all go on your merry way.”

  Her eyes focussed on the flame as it moved towards her, the girl slowly shook her head.

  A few feet from her, Harrison paused, “Ahh, but you see, if you don’t tell me, I scorch - “

  “Stop it. Goddamnit, stop it.”

  One of the boys yelling. Harrison didn’t take his eyes off the girl who remained transfixed. “I’ll burn the flesh off your fingers, I’ll cook the soles of your feet. I suggest you speak up before -”

  Without preamble, the thin girl turned and immediately darted at the window. She crashed her bony shoulder into the glass with a powerful crack, but it withstood breaking. Without hesitation, she stepped back and charged again. A boy screamed. Another crack, spider web lines now visible in the glass as she stepped back.

  Harrison barked, “Idiots, grab her.”

  The nearest Viking lunged forward, grabbing at her shirt but the girl was stronger than she appeared and she tore free, crashing into the glass again. The window shattered into a million pieces.

  For a
n instant, she stayed there, only her toes on the window ledge, suspended in open air for a heartbeat. The Viking lunged further, trying to catch her but swinging desperately, he missed.

  The girl, despite being on the cusp of her death, seemed utterly calm as she looked at the massive man before her, now leaning completely off-balance. As she started to fall, she threw out her one hand and grabbed the Viking’s meaty paw as if she were eagerly meeting a business acquaintance. Then she yanked at the same moment her tiny feet left the ledge, hurling her out into the grey dawn light. The Viking cursed as he took one big booted step, slipped on the glass covered floor and tumbled out after her.

  Harrison stepped to the opening. Three stories below, on the cement walkway, lay a mangled mess of human parts with the tell-tale pool of redness spreading out from beneath them. He heard the remaining Viking yell in a foreign language before he ran out of the apartment to check on his brother, but Harrison was certain neither of them survived the fall.

  Fury overwhelming his usual calm, Harrison spun and grabbed Jacob from where he sat looking battered and stunned. Holding a handful of the young man’s blood-soaked hair, he leaned him out of the smashed window, his feet scrabbling on the precipice.

  “Tell me. Tell me, or you meet the fate of your friend.”

  Struggling to get a footing on the glass covered floor, the boy looked down for a second and then, his struggles stopped. He turned and looked Harrison in the eye. “We’ll never tell you. Kill us or let us go home, those are your only options.”

  Harrison was about to let gravity bring an end to the fool but, after the boy spoke, a better idea suddenly struck him. He pulled the child back inside and stoically said, “Fine, you win, I give up.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR