Out of the Ashes
R. W. Day
Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords
Copyright ©2010 R.W. Day.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief citation or review, without the written permission of Lethe Press. For information write: Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052.
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This
Lethe Press edition published 2010 by Lethe Press,
118 Heritage
Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052.
Book Design by Toby Johnson
Cover art by Ben Baldwin
ISBN 1-59021-064-6 978-1-59021-064-2
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available on request.
Table of Contents
Out of the Ashes
Callan Landers’ Journal – August 23, Ninety Second Year since the Coming of the Ice…
Zack Tyree suggested that I start this journal as a way to improve my handwriting, and it’s a good suggestion for more reasons than that. I like the idea of a place where I can set down my thoughts and keep a record of some of the things that are happening to us here. I argue with David over the value of the written word. He’s not illiterate by any means, but he was raised in a culture where literacy isn’t valued. No, that’s wrong. It’s valued, just not truly understood. He’s coming around, though, since it was written words that saved us… no, I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s been too long since I wrote much of anything, paper being so rare here, that I think I’ve lost the ability to construct a decent narrative.
This journal was a gift from Jeannie Findlay, and I shouldn’t have accepted it. She’s given me so much already. When I came to Moline, destitute and desperate, she took me on as her assistant even though she knew nothing about me except that I claimed some skill as a healer. When trouble found me—no. I have to be honest with myself here. When I sought out trouble and brought it down on myself, she was beside me every step of the way—my own mother couldn’t have done more. I rarely see her now, and I miss her horribly. I miss healing too, more than I miss my arm in a way, but that’s not something I can write about yet.
I certainly ramble. Not that it matters—this isn’t a journal that anyone will likely read. I sometimes wonder if all those famous people who kept detailed records of their lives somehow knew they were going to be famous, or else went back and doctored their diaries. Probably the latter. I don’t care how famous you are, nobody’s interested in reading things like ‘Tuesday, March 12—had mutton for lunch, played tennis with Chucky and wrote some bad poetry,’ which is what I expect the sort of thing most of those old time people put in their journals.
In any case, anyone wanting to read this mess is going to have to be very patient. My writing with my left hand has improved dramatically, but I expect if posterity comes upon it, they’ll think it some sort of code, like da Vinci’s mirror writing. It’s nothing so exceptional; just the feeble attempts of a right handed man to learn to manage with his left.
It’s been almost three months now. I keep waiting for the pain to stop, for me to stop trying to reach out for things with a hand that isn’t there or trying to put my nonexistent arm around David, but it never stops. I’m unbalanced and nothing works right, nothing feels right anymore. Zack Tyree, who also lost a limb, says it gets better in time, but he was much younger than I when he had to adjust, and he has a stump, at least. I have nothing.
No. Not true. I have David, and without him, I would probably long ago have taken one of Zack’s pistols into my clumsy left hand and fired it into my brain. I wouldn’t ever say that to him, but he’s promised me he won’t read this journal unless I give him leave, so in these pages I can say things like that without fear. Even with David, most days, it’s almost more than I have within me to get up and face my life.
But David makes it possible. I don’t believe in God, haven’t seen anything much in my twenty-three years to make me believe that there’s anyone up there watching out for us or anything beyond this life, but if I did, I’d thank Him every day for David. And for Zack, letting us be together here at his house even though it’s against the law, and also for the town for turning a blind eye to it. Well, I say ‘the town’ but in truth, it’s a sadly diminished town. Most of the people left in June, after the dragons.
I should explain the dragons, I suppose, but I can’t really. What I know for a fact is that the government, specifically the Department of Reintroduction and Agriculture, bred or developed these dragon-like creatures and put them on a mountaintop. The dragons began to prey on the livestock and eventually turned on the people, killing two girls, including David’s sister Almond. They did something similar in the neighboring town of Crawford, driving those people from their homes to an unknown fate. David and I uncovered some of the truth of it and the people divided, some choosing to go along with the government and leave, and others choosing to stay and fight for their land.
There’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist. Oh, and David killed the dragons. Well, one of them, anyway. And I killed also in the course of it all, a two-legged monster, the man whose bullet took my arm. Not for revenge, but to save David’s life. I had no choice, but the guilt of taking a life weighs on me.
And so there it is, for posterity.
David. Describing him is not easy, for on the surface there’s nothing remarkable about him, so anything I say is going to sound boring and ordinary. He’s anything but. He’s tall, though not quite as tall as I am, and big—not threatening, but in a way that spells comfort and safety. His hair is charcoal black and his eyes are a wonderful shade of light blue that turns dark when he gets intense. David isn’t handsome in any sort of classic way, but he’s beautiful to me, not so much for his body, though I certainly appreciate that, as for the spirit inside it. I’ve never known anyone as genuine, as real, as David Anderson.
I can’t heal anymore, not having two hands, so I’m teaching school. The old teacher left with the others, and amazingly, they chose me to succeed him. Apparently my being reasonably well-educated balances out my unfortunate tendency towards sodomy. That sounds bitter, and I’m not, not about that. I’ve enjoyed teaching. Going to the school every day gives a structure to my life that I find I need. In afternoons, or on weekends or holidays, I’m out of sorts and at loose ends, rattling around Zack Tyree’s big house, reading books I’ve read a dozen times, looking for anything that will distract from the phantom pain of my arm. Some of the distractions I’ve been finding are probably worse than the pain, and I know it. It’s hard to do the right thing. I don’t know how David manages to be so strong all the time.
I’m whining again. That must stop. I will not allow this journal to become a place of complaint. Things will get better—they have to.
Anyway, the next two days, school is dismissed so the militia can drill. It’s not a militia as they had Before, with military rank and uniforms and such. It’s just every able-bodied man and some of the younger women coming together to drill daily outside the school yard, half of them with long sticks instead of rifles. The older students slip outside to join them before lessons end. I pretend not to see, for I can’t stop them, probably wouldn’t if I could. They love their homes.
David is one of them—I wish that he weren’t. My throat seizes up every time I think of him at risk. I could ask him to stop, and I expect that he would, for me. But I can’t ask him to give up something so important to him as the defense of his home, so I never mention it, and neither does he, and it hovers in the air between us like a big dark cloud.
While the militia trains, David and I have another mission, an important one, but it’s going to be hard. We’re retracing steps we took last spring when I was still whole and we were accompanying a government agent with murder in his heart to find the lair of the dragons. After I was hurt, David found something more, an old machine still running after almost one hundred years of neglect and frigid weather. We think it’s what the dragons were guarding, and why the government wants the people in this area relocated. The hope is that this trip will give us an ace in the hole, or at least some more information that will help us make sense out of this mess.
My hand is cramping with effort from all this writing—must close—I have to pack. David is packed already, a light bag with hardly anything in it, but then he doesn’t feel the cold the way I do, so he doesn’t need the extra clothing and blankets and gloves that I seem to need, even in the height of summer. I’m from Florida, where we still can go out without shoes in summer. Anyone going out without shoes in the hills around here after dark, even in summer, risks the loss of their toes to frostbite. I’d love to take David to see my home someday, to walk with him barefoot along a beach in high summer. Not that I’ll ever be able to. I can’t go back there. That door is shut and locked.
David Anderson
Horses don’t care if who’s on them is rich or poor or well-read or unlearned, yet somehow they can see inside of people, pick up on the thoughts and feelings of their riders. I wasn’t much of a rider—our home mare, Lightning, was one step up from a livery nag, but with Mister Zack’s teaching, I was coming to learn more and more about the ways of horse-kind. They were better than most people, that was for certain.
I’d had a bad time over at the General that morning, running into one of the few folk left who were outright disapproving of me and Callan, and she’d had some words to say that had cut deep. Though I tried to let those filthy words fall off me, her condemnation clung to me till I got back to Mister Zack’s, climbed onto one of his mares and just rode and rode, letting the horse take the sting out of the words. I was supposed to be getting the animals used to loud noises in preparation for them being used by the militia, but I didn’t even try to do any training, just exercised the horse and worked out my pain before going home to Callan, for if I went home all agitated, he’d demand to know the cause.
And the last thing we needed that day of all days was more worry and fears. This journey was going to be hard enough, returning to the place where we both went through so much pain, where I run off, betrayed Callan and left him to die. And it was going to be physically hard on him too, as he’s still recovering and isn’t strong, though he hides it pretty well from me. Me, I can’t hide anything from him.
Mister Zack has given us two rooms at the far end of his west wing. His house is a big old red brick place built hundreds of years before the Ice, for his family had money and land going way back. His rooms are in the main part of the building along with the kitchen and living rooms and a ballroom so huge you could do trick riding in it. The east wing burned to the ground more than a dozen years ago and he ain’t never had it built back up again, saying the house was more than big enough anyways. The west wing was vacant before we come, all empty bedrooms with big old sheets over all the furnishings, the ghost of a house, really. Mister Zack could afford servants, and Lord knows there are folk who need the work, but other than the hands he hires for his farming, he don’t keep any help on the place. I’m glad of it mostly, for servants would be more people we’d have to be discreet in front of. Though I do feel the lack of a cook some.
We had the west wing to ourselves. It was a fine arrangement, though I knew it couldn’t last. Nothing good ever does, I’m finding.
Callan was writing in his journal when I came in, though he put the pencil down and closed the book when he heard me. He flexed his hand and shook it out, then run it through his hair. “What’s wrong?”
I sighed. Caught out again. Run into Miz Weaver at Haig’s General Store, she had a few things to say that weren’t so nice.”
Callan poured me a glass of water from the ironstone pitcher on the bedside table. He was getting quite skilled at managing one-handed. “I’m so sorry, love, but you know she doesn’t approve.”
“It ain’t her disapproval that worries me. It’s…I know she’s close to Mam. What if she’s not just speaking for herself?” I thought my mother had come to terms with Callan and me—but she was, of all my family, the only one who truly believed in Holy Writ, and the scripture had some pretty strong words for men who lie with other men.
“Your mother is more than capable of speaking for herself. She’s never going to like that we’re together, but I can’t see her gossiping. She came to see me yesterday, by the way.”
I looked up sharp at that. Callan was packing his bag and didn’t meet my eye, just kept clumsily rolling up clothes one handed and tucking them into his pack. “Why didn’t you say?”
“Because amazingly, she didn’t want to talk about us. She’s worried about Benny C, thinks he’s joined the militia to impress Daisy, and that he’s going to get himself killed.”
The water tasted cool and clear and good. It had been a long morning with a longer afternoon ahead of us. “What did you tell her?”
“The truth. That to the best of my knowledge, he joined because he cares about the town, and because of what happened to Almond.”
“And what did you tell her about getting himself killed?” I knew, though he never said, that Callan didn’t like the militia. He felt like we’d be better off using talk to get things settled, and when talk failed, he’d be likely to cut and run. But he ain’t got roots here, so he just doesn’t see what this place means to those of us born and raised in these hills.
“I told her you’d look out for him as best you could.”
That was the first time he’d ever let on that he knew I was drilling with the men. “Callan, I—”
“No, just forget it, okay? Come and help me with the clasps on this pack.” He never, ever asked me for help on anything he could manage himself, so I figured that was his way of trying to put an end to that subject. I took the rebellious pack and slid the clasps into their holders. This was something we was going to have to talk of before long. I didn’t know how long we had before the army came. I didn’t think the outcome of any fighting was like to be in our favor. There was more than a fair chance that I wasn’t going to come home.
“Look, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but I really think—”
His hand tangled in my hair and he shut me up the one sure way that would always work. Lips met lips, and when he pulled gently away, he rested his forehead against mine and whispered, “Please. I know we have to, but not now, okay? Just not now.”
I could feel the sweat on his brow from where he’d had to struggle to make the pencil obey, the taste of his kiss, salt and something else, something strong and pungent still lingered between us. My heart sank and I pulled back. “You’ve been drinking?”
He nodded, refusing to meet my eyes. “It was just a taste and I won’t do it again. I thought it might take the edge off.”
I remembered Mister Zack had said that Callan would be tempted to lose himself in a bottle. I wasn’t about to let that happen. “There are better ways we can take the edge off,” I said, and kissed him again. “I’m sorry I ain’t been around as much as I should.” School had been running only half-days, that gave Callan a lot of time to just be on his own. I’d thought when we’d come to stay here that I’d be mostly around the place, working with the horses and helping Callan learn to manage, but Mister Zack had been finding errands for me, sending me hither and yon on Mayor’s business and militia business. “Can’t Jeannie give you something for your arm? Something better than rotgut, anyway?”
He pulled away and sat down on the big double bed. “She could, but she won’t, and she’s right.
I rolled him over onto his belly and started rubbing his shoulders, noticing how tight they were. I was getting used to the way his right shoulder just ended while his left kept going down into his arm, it was beginning to be not strange, to be Callan as he was, not as I remembered him. “You sure you want to start out today? We could go in the morning early, like…” I broke off. Like we done last time, I was going to say, but I understood him not wanting to retrace it the same as before. We’d leave in the afternoon, camp far short of that place where things had gone so wrong, and it would be like a whole new journey, not one of those nightmares where you’re trapped doing the same horrible things again and again.
“Mmm, that’s so nice, thank you. No, let’s go today.” My hands strayed under the fine cloth of his store-bought shirt. “In an hour or so, though, okay?”
Oh, yes. I let my hands wander over Callan’s back, tracing the scars the lashing had left on his back, teasing low near his trousers, kissing the back of his neck till he groaned with delight. “Better than whiskey, ain’t it?”
“You have to ask?”
There was a sharp rap on the door. “You boys decent?”
“Damn it.” I pulled off and we both stood up, breathing hard. “Yes, sir, come on in.”
The door opened and Zack Tyree come in. He glanced at me, then at Callan and snorted. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”
I looked over at Callan, saw how his shirt was all mussed up and his hair disheveled, and his eyes was sort of glazed. Figured I didn’t look much better.
Callan blushed. “You’re not – we were just packing up.”
Mister Zack smiled. “So that’s what they’re calling it these days. Glad I caught you before you headed out. I’ve got food in the kitchens for you to take, nothing fancy, dried meat and cheese mostly, a bit of bread.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Zack sat himself down in the old wingback chair I used as a clothes hook. “Don’t mind if I sit down, do you? I’m worn out and it’s barely past noon.”
“It’s your house, sir.”
“Not this part of it. Far as I’m concerned, this part is yours. And David, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Zack?”
No matter how many things in my life conspired to make me feel like a grown man, in the presence of friends of my Pa, I always felt like a child. “Sorry… Zack.”
“Just wanted to wish you boys the best. I don’t know what you’ll find up there, but I hope to hell it’s something we can use.”
He wasn’t a handsome man, Mister Zack Tyree, but he had a presence about him, a way of talking that made it clear he was the one in charge of any gathering or group he was part of. We’d told him, Healer Jeannie Findlay and my Pa about the machine I’d found, and nobody else. I figured the fewer folk who knew, the better till we knew for sure what it was all about.
Callan answered. “I hope so too. Thank you for letting me close the school so I could make the trip. It’s likely to take three days or more—I’m not up to a very fast pace,” he finished, apologizing.
“No problem, son. I needed a few days school holiday myself with the older students free and the schoolyard empty. And speaking of that, David, I wanted to ask you a favor. I got word from Nate Clemmons in Richmond this morning, he sent one of his hired men down to tell me the army’s been ordered into Moline.”
Callan had walked over to the window, just staring out onto Mister Zack’s fine front yard. I wanted to follow, to take him in my arms and tell him it would be all right, but I couldn’t do it in front of Zack and couldn’t say lies in any case. “Are you asking me to stay here? Zack, I can’t let Callan do this trip by himself, I’m sorry, I—”
“No, that wasn’t what I meant. I wouldn’t expect that of you. Besides, we’ve got probably a good week or more before they get here, maybe longer depending on the weather and the roads and how much stuff they’ve got with them. The information you boys bring back might give us a bargaining chip or some leverage that we’ll need. No, what I’m asking is for later.”
Zack stood up and went over to stand by Callan and put a hand on his shoulder. My mouth dried up. Zack Tyree was a good man, but not at all physically affectionate. Him giving comfort to Callan didn’t bode well. “You know we’ve been sort of staying away from military titles and ranks in this whole thing, none of us being at all experienced in war, but it’s come to the point where I need some men I can trust to lead others and be able to make decisions.”
I knew where he was going, didn’t want him to go there. “Zack, I…I’m not even a grown man. Surely there’s someone else—”
“Son, deeds make men, not years. I’ve watched you teaching the town folk to shoot, helping those both younger and older than you the skills they’ll need to survive in the woods in all weather. You’re a born leader.” He let go of Callan and faced me head on.
I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. If Callan was whole, he’d be the one—he had the book learning and knew strategy and all that. I couldn’t even play chess proper.
“And you’re one of the few men in this town who’ve actually taken a man’s life. David, I worry that when the time comes for most of these people to pull that trigger and send a bullet into another man that they’ll hesitate. I don’t fear that about you.”
But he should’ve, for I’d never killed anyone. Oh, I’d wanted to, but it had been Callan that done it, using my belt knife to end George Delahaye before he’d had a chance to shoot me, though Zack and the whole town thought otherwise, for I’d told the lie to spare Callan from trouble. “Sir, I’m honored, of course, but—”
“Don’t be honored. Be worried. If you do this, it’s going to mean the minute the army’s sighted, you’ll be taking a small group off to the hills and staying there, keeping an eye on the situation. Men’s lives will be in your hands. And you won’t be able to…” he glanced at Callan who was still looking out the window, “…come home, nor communicate with anyone here in town in any way till it’s over.”
“My Pa, he’d be—”
“He’s already got a job. I need you for this, David. I’m hoping what you two find will somehow give us an avenue out of this thing without bloodshed, but if it doesn’t, then we fight or we let them relocate us, it’s as simple as that.”
“I’ll think on it, is that all right? I can’t give you an answer now.”
He wandered over towards the door. “You two talk it over—not like you won’t have time to talk, after all.” He smiled. “I wish you the best. And take some time up there to just enjoy the last of the summer if you can—I’d say in about a week everything’s going straight to hell.”
Chapter 2
David Anderson
Zack’s place was at the far end of the county from the mountain that held the machine and the rotting bodies of those dragons, so Zack had offered us horses to take us across town. I’d accepted, figuring we’d leave them stabled at the General. Being on horseback made it harder for us to talk, which was a blessing just then, for his request was weighing on my mind.
Despite being scared half to death at the thought of other people looking to me for guidance and direction, I was flattered by his trust and, if I dug down deep into my heart, wanted to accept for a whole mess of reasons. Of course I cared about doing what was right, for what kind of man could sit by and let others take his home without protest? But it was also just the thought of it, being out in the woods with others under my command, fighting for a good cause. I’d spent my life, short though it was, in those hills, and nobody was better suited, save for Pa, to do this.
And I knew, without even having to ask, that Callan would rather I not.
So we walked the horses along without speaking till we come up to the livery stable behind the General. Like so many of our buildings, the stable used to be something else, a repair house for cars, its wide open space now chopped into stalls, horse tack hanging on the walls along with the rotting rubber of old tires and belts. Joe Haig still had one car he kept in the very back of the stable covered in old horse blankets and I remember when I was a young boy, maybe my sister Ruby’s age, I used to love coming down to the General with Pa so I could sneak back to the stable and raise the blanket and trace my fingers along the curving metal, a wonderful fading orange color not found anywhere in the natural world that I’d ever seen. The tires were near to being rotted away, and rust was starting to overtake the body, but it was still the beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I dismounted and hurried over to help Callan off, but he was already sliding awkwardly out of the saddle, so I took both sets of reins and led the horses back into the cavernous old building and sure enough, there was the car, still hiding under its cover. I wondered if Joe Haig used to pull that blanket off, sit in that car and pretend he was driving. I surely would have. I started to tell Callan about the car and then stopped short. He hadn’t followed me.
I couldn’t recall ever a time since we’d known each other that he’d been silent with me this long. No matter how angry he’d been before, he’d just blow up and have it over. This was new, this silent treatment, and I didn’t much like it.
I saw that he’d gone up into the General, so I set down my pack and followed. The General is just what it sounds—a general store with merchandise we can’t make ourselves: fine cloth, store-sugar, matches, metal goods and the like. In summer it’s also been used as a field office for the Relocation & Agriculture agents who’d come through giving advice on seeds and plantings, but not this year, of course. The small table that Mister Haig set aside for the R&A was covered up with some claim farmer’s peas for sale. And the shelves, usually full to bursting, were almost bare. There’d been no shipments nor mail for the whole summer.
Mister Haig, a short, balding man with hanging jowls that reminded me of the picture of a bulldog in the dog book at school, was deep in conversation with Jeannie Findlay, but they’d broken off when Callan came in and Jeannie hurried towards Callan and caught him up in a big hug that seemed to swallow him up, no small feat as she was a slight woman and he was tall, over six feet.
“David,” she greeted me, still keeping hold of Callan’s arm. “I’m so glad I caught you two before you left.”
“Me too,” I answered, for I truly loved the healer, who’d always stood by Callan and by me too, no matter what sort of trouble it brought upon her. “You shopping?”
She shook her head and as always, her wiry grey hair slipped out of its bun with each movement. “Not hardly. There’s nothing to shop for. I was just telling Joe that my medical supplies are dwindling down to nothing, and if we don’t get some shipments soon, I’ll be reduced to faith healing and voodoo.”
That was serious. We didn’t have proper doctors anymore. Callan, who knew more about medicine than anyone I’d ever even heard tell of, says the knowledge is still there, being passed along in the few medical schools remaining, but it’s only book knowledge as so much of what those old time doctors did relied on machines we don’t have access to now. It don’t do no good to know how to read fancy x-rays and scans if you couldn’t make them in the first place. We did have medicines, though. Some natural ones like foxglove and willow bark, but also tincture of poppy and a few other such drugs we import from the south.
“We’re going right by the turn-off to Crawford.” I was worried about how we’d manage without proper medicines. “You want us to stop, see if their healer left anything behind when they was forced out?”
She shook her head. “No, David, just do the job you’re set to do. I’m concerned enough about having you boys out of the valley right now, don’t be away any longer than you must.” She met my eyes unblinking and I knew she must have known about the coming of the army.
“We’d better go,” Callan said shortly, and bent down to kiss Jeannie on the top of her head. “I’ll come see you when we get back, if that’s all right?”
“Always. You know I miss you,” she said. He went back out to the porch and I made to follow, but Jeannie stopped me.
“Has Zack Tyree talked to you?” The look on my face must have given it away. “Yes, I see that he has. He’s asking a lot of a seventeen year old, David, and you mustn’t feel any shame in turning him down.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I mumbled. Lying never came easy for me.
“Well, just remember that you’re not responsible for the welfare of this town and the folk here are adults and made their own choice to stay.”
“I can’t help feeling... I mean, it was me that brought all this down and...”
“David Anderson, I’m beginning to think guilt is a sexually transmitted disease!”
I turned scarlet red. Jeannie Findlay came from an old family with money and property—her brother was a lawyer in Richmond soon to be made a judge, so you expected her to be a prim and proper lady, then she’d come out with something like that and I realized there was far more to her than just the healer I’d always known.
“All you did was lift up the rock so we could see the ugly, squirmy bugs beneath it. You didn’t create them, and now you let somebody else try to smash those bugs. You’ve done your job.” She glanced out the door to where Callan was waiting, leaning on the porch rail. “You have other priorities now. You’ve done your part and more.”
“I ain’t about to forget Callan, you don’t need to be fearful of that.” I kissed her cheek, it felt warm and dry, like my Grandmam’s had and I realized Jeannie was getting old too. “I’ll look out for him, I promise.”
I joined Callan on the porch, wordlessly helping him into his pack and shouldering my own before setting out up the road. Roads were getting worse all the time, crumbling away more with each passing year. Whatever the Before people used to hold their pavements together must have reached the end of its life, and we had to watch our footing as we made our way out of town. In town, we all worked to keep them level, filling in the holes with dirt best we could during the Common Days after harvest, that time of year when we paid our labor taxes. I hadn’t been required to help on the Common Days till now for I’d been counted as a child, but this year, assuming anything was normal at all, I would be there with my shovel in hand.
My mind was ranging all over the place, trying to fill the silence that Callan had created, but it weren’t no use. “Callan, are you mad at me?”
He’d been moving along at a fair clip, making better time than I’d figured he would, probably out of sheer determination. There’s nobody can beat Callan Landers for determination. “No,” he said, shortly through hard fought breaths. “No, just concentrating on keeping my footing.”
We were moving upwards now, and the wide old road was narrowing down as nature had reclaimed the edges with pine trees and grasses pushing through pavement.
“And was you concentrating on keeping your footing when we was riding through the center of town?” I stopped, not intending to take another step till we had it worked through.
Callan had gone a few feet further and then stopped himself and turned back to face me. His face was red from exertion, and I could see sweat on his brow. “I’m not mad at you. You can believe that or not as it suits you, but it seems to me we should be concentrating on this trip and what we hope to find, not fretting over our relationship like a pair of lovesick adolescents.” He shrugged his pack higher on his shoulder, set his face like stone and walked on up the road, away from me.
I followed after him, making no further attempt to talk, for his words stung sharp. Lovesick adolescents. That was Benny C and Daisy, not us, never us. Our love was real and strong and it was going to last the distance, like my Mam and Pa, who’d been married going on twenty years and you could still see the spark between them.
He was slowing, and I would have slowed with him and walked alongside, but not today, today I just pushed past without speaking, figuring he’d follow. What had got into Callan? It couldn’t be just the militia—that made no sense for he’d known I’d joined up, surely he wasn’t expecting me to sit out the actual fighting? I loved him, but sometimes it was like carving on granite with a pocketknife trying to get through the masks and layers he’d wrapped around himself for protection.
We passed by the turn off to Crawford, the old sign fading and barely legible. In a year, it would be gone, but it didn’t matter as there was nobody left in Crawford. Not one single person—man, woman, nor child. We’d been told they’d been resettled west, but nobody’d heard from any of those folk, and for all I knew, they were all dead. That was what faced us if we lost this fight. That was why I had to go, had to do what I could. I’d buried a child in Crawford when Callan and I had gone there. A tiny girl, burned to death by dragons. She was all that was left of that town. I couldn’t let that happen to my home while I had breath in my body.
I heard a voice behind me. I turned and saw that Callan had slumped down to the ground, bleach-white and shivering. The sun was getting low in the sky and the warmth of the day was burning off, but I didn’t think it cold. It probably wouldn’t even get down to freezing. But Callan was always cold here and he’d pushed too hard. I ran to him and helped him up, leading him off the torn up asphalt into a grove of pines out of the wind. He relaxed against me, his body sheltering against mine, and I knew from his body’s language that it was true what he’d said. “You ain’t mad, then?”
“I told you I wasn’t.” Lord, he was pale. The next day would have to be slower, especially as we hit the steeper hills.
“Let’s just stop here. I’ll get a fire going, put up the tent.” He nodded and closed his eyes, so I slipped a blanket out of my pack and wrapped him in it and set to work making a fire. This was no small feat as rain is plentiful during summer and wood left out uncovered gets saturated. I collected some fairly dry kindling and used pine straw to make it catch, and before the sun was fully down had a nice cheering fire going.
“I’m sorry I said those things,” Callan said.
“Don’t think on it—you were tired and cold and pushing yourself too hard. Just rest in front of the fire. A good fire always makes me feel better.” I watched the tongues of flame lick at the pine logs. “Guess it’s what separates us from the animals. Well, that and opposable thumbs,” I added, remembering a book of Callan’s I’d been reading that summer.
“Monkeys have those too. No, it’s fire. Fire and an insane need to invent gods.”
Neither of us had much use for religion, not surprisingly as the faith of my fathers teaches that we’re both abominations who ought to be stoned to death. I knew there were people of faith who weren’t like that—my Ma was a believer and so was Mister Nate Clemmons who was our state senator and a fine man. But I couldn’t forget that the judge at Callan’s trial had used the Word of God to condemn him. That weren’t God’s fault, I knew, but it was more than I could manage to separate Him from his followers. If there was a Judgment and a heaven and hell, He’d just have to understand.
I sat down took out some of the food Zack had prepared for us. “I ain’t said I was going.”
“But you are, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
The fire popped and cracked and I fed it some small branches. Callan stared at the food I’d put out, but didn’t eat. “It isn’t that I don’t care about the town, you know that.”
“I know.”
He took up a round piece of smoked sausage and laid it on a small pine stump, then fished out his pocketknife and attempted to cut a slice, but with no hand to steady the meat it shifted position and rolled away like it had a mind of its own. I knelt down and put my hand over his. “Let me help you with that.”
He flung my hand away. “No! I have to do it myself. I have to learn, or what am I going to do when you aren’t there?”
I watched as he chopped at the sausage, leaving it mauled into bits. “Is that what this is all about?”
Callan nodded and I took the knife out of his hand and held him close. “I thought maybe it was you not wanting any fighting at all, being one of those folks who don’t approve of killing.”
“A pacifist.” My chest muffled his words. “No, there’s a proper time to fight, and this very well may be it. It would be naïve of me to think otherwise, to expect the army to just go away because we want it to be so. I know there will have to be fighting—I just don’t want you to have to do it. I’m not a pacifist. I’m selfish.”
“You ain’t,” I said softly, remembering so many occasions when Callan had proved that.
“I am.” He sat up. “I don’t want to let you go, even though I know it’s the right thing for you to do.”
And it was. Jeannie had talked of me having other priorities now, and while Callan would always come first, it was for him I was fighting as well as for me and the home folks. “I’m afraid too. I wish we could just go away, sometimes. Leave right now, just turn west and keep walking, away from all this to someplace safe.” But I wouldn’t do it, couldn’t leave my Pa and Ma and my sisters and Benny C, nor did I think Callan could truly walk away from Jeannie and Zack and the friends he’d made, and the acceptance we’d fought so hard for.
“I know we can’t—not sure there is anyplace safe for us, anyway.” He swept the sausage onto the ground where it would feed the small creatures of the forest at least. “I made a proper mess of this, didn’t I?”
I knew he weren’t just talking about the sausage. “That ain’t true. Now that I know the cause, and that you’re not mad at me, it’s okay. We’ll work through this somehow.”
He sighed. “We’ve been through so much, I just hoped…” He gave a short shake of the head and smiled for the first time that day. “You wouldn’t be you, wouldn’t the man I loved if you’d back away from this fight.
“We’ve got this trip together, and I’ll be back, nothing’s going to happen to me, Callan. I’ll be careful.” I slid closer, my arm going around him. Our bodies fit so well together. “I got something special to come home to.”
The tent went up quick and we ate, with Callan allowing me to cut the cheese and bread and lay out the dried fruit. We still didn’t speak much, but it was all right. We was all right, at least for that moment. I’ll be back, I’d said, and I intended those words to be true, but my Grandmam, who’d been Danish and much taken with the tales of the old Viking people, used to talk about a man’s wyrd, his fate. Preachers called it God’s will, non-believers called it chance or dumb luck, but it all come down to the same thing—no man knows the moment of his death, only that its coming is inevitable.
Callan’s Journal
I lied to David today. I was angry, though not at him, at myself. At my own selfish heart that doesn’t give a damn for the whole town of Moline or for the machinations of the R&A or any of it. I’d happily turn my back on the whole mess and run away with him to New Orleans or even clear out to California if he’d have it. And that knowledge shames me, for by and large, this town has been good to me. I don’t hold my arrest and trial against them—most of those who had condemned me have gone already, and really, what choice did they have? The law was the law, and I’d been foolish beyond measure.
No, they’re good people, and brave, staying on in a doomed town awaiting certain defeat and destruction because they love their homes and have some faith that their democratically elected government ought to be representing them, not repressing them. They still have hope. I don’t. I lost that sort of innocence a long time ago. I try not to dwell on my losses, but now, with David sleeping a few feet away from me after lovemaking that even now always brings a sense of wonder and awe and absolute gratitude at what I have, all I can think of is how much I’ve lost, how many people who’ve been close to me are either lost through death or exile and I don’t want David to be the next.
Chapter 3
David Anderson
Things was better between us the next day, though we still didn’t talk much on the trail because Callan was too worn down to talk much beyond what was necessary. He’d spent an entire month and a half flat in bed and was only beginning to get his strength back. It was too soon for this. But it was too important, and we had no choice. I couldn’t make sense of the papers I’d seen scattered around that underground chamber, but possibly Callan could. I’d offered to fetch them for him and spare him the trip, but he said he needed to see the machine for himself.
So we pushed on, stopping every hour or so, and each time we started off again, I could see what it was taking him to stand, watched his lips grow tight and the set of his shoulders stiffen. So I started to talk, just babbling nonsense to distract him from the steep climb over slippery pine straw and rocks that was strewn all over the hillsides.
“Harvest Fair’s going to be a might disappointing this year, with none of the folk from outside coming,” I said, though I knew perfectly well there most likely wouldn’t be a Harvest Fair, as we was about to be invaded. “Used to be traveling folk would come through and there’d be games and curiosities, you know, like fire eaters and bearded ladies and a two-headed goat one year. Pa said the goat was a fake, but I still paid a penny to have a peek at it, for how many times in your life could you say you’d seen such a marvel?”
“Could have been a birth defect,” Callan said. “Though probably faked.”
“There’s a book at the school, you might have seen it, shows all these pictures of monsters from outer space. Not drawings, actual pictures, and old Burke told me that in the Before times, they could make up pictures that would look absolutely real, but weren’t. Anyway, the Harvest Fair was always a lot of fun, and I’d been looking forward to taking you. There’s a dance, too, and—”
I broke off. It weren’t like Callan and me could take the floor together in a waltz or reel. “And...” I struggled for direction. “Real good food, city food, fruits clear from Mexico and sweet cakes and ginger beer and sarsaparilla to drink. Remember, I told you about that, how it was fizzy like that champagne you found us, over to Crawford?”
“I remember.”
The incline had leveled off slightly, but we was still going upwards and would be till we reached the entrance of the cave. There was two entrances—one from the summit and one below which I’d found by accident when I was running away and fell over the side of a small cliff. The summit one would have been easier to find, but that would mean walking by the rotting carcasses of the dragons and of George Delahaye, and I weren’t about to do that unless we had no choice at all. The other entrance took you through a long passageway up into the mountain. The door there was locked, but I’d brought tools and figured I could have it off its hinges.
I’d been quiet while thinking all this through, so I hadn’t noticed that Callan had stopped and was staring off through the pines towards a small grove of trees and stumps where the remnants of an old fire lay forgotten, along with cast off clothing and debris abandoned by us when we’d come this way before.
“Do you think there’s anything worth salvaging?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then there ain’t no need to stop here.” I took firm hold of his hand and led him away. We was close now, within a few hours of the place where I’d found the opening. If we stuck west, we should come upon the spot without having to go through the trouble of falling down a cliff.
I ain’t so good at book learning. My true strength lies in things of nature. I can track most anything, just like my Pa, and I almost always know where I am in the woods. There’s just this feeling I get when I start to go astray, like a little voice telling me to stop, or turn, or stay. Even knowing that, I had a moment of triumph when we rounded a corner of the hill and I saw the broad, flat surface, covered with a hundred years’ worth of rotting leaves that I’d identified before as an unknown road.
“Here’s the road,” I said, unnecessarily, for it could be nothing else. No other part of this hilltop was flat—it couldn’t have been natural.
“This road seems unfinished.” Callan was right, for it stopped about ten paces ahead of us, not fading off into crumbling pavement like most of our roads did, but as if the concrete had been cleaved in two by a big axe and part removed.
“Guess they started it at the cave, then maybe the Ice come before they had a chance to connect it down to the old highway.” Though that seemed what my Grandmam would have called ass-backwards way of building a road. We walked along it as it followed the cliffside until we come to the entrance, still uncovered. I led the way through the tunnel, flipping on the light switch that somehow miraculously still connected to working lights, all the while drinking in Callan’s wonderment at it, watching him tracing the fingers of his left hand over the box and switch, following the wires as far up as he could reach into the ceiling of the rock-cut tunnel.
“It must be solar batteries, but where are the cells? They’d have to be kept free of debris, and these bulbs should have burnt out or deteriorated long ago. I can’t imagine what type of filament they’re using, they don’t seem to be fluorescent…” His voice trailed off, deadened by the walls of the cave.
“However it’s managed, it’s a good thing the light works.” We turned upwards toward where the door would be. “The door into the machine room locked behind me when I came through before and I’ll need decent light to try and work it open.”
But it weren’t locked. In the half light, Callan gave me a strange look, and I could see he was thinking I’d got it wrong, had been so overcome by thinking him dead back that I’d forgot it was left open. But I hadn’t. It had been the locked door that had forced me to go on through the tunnel into the natural cave and brought me out at the dragons’ lair. And now it stood not only unlocked but open. This didn’t feel right at all.
“Stay behind me.” I took out my belt knife, wishing like crazy it was a pistol, but I didn’t own a gun. Pa had promised me one for my birthday, but there weren’t a way to buy anything we didn’t make for ourselves, being cut off like we was.
Callan pressed back against the side of the tunnel, trying to still and slow his breathing as I nudged the door farther open. It was grey metal with a tiny window set into it and heavier than our wooden doors, but instead of creaking comfortably like a proper door, it moved with a slithering near-silence that set my teeth at edge. The chamber, a large, high-ceilinged room, walls covered with maps of the world and the country and Virginia, sat just as I’d left it. There was still dust over much of the surfaces, though I could feel air flowing from somewhere. The machine was still giving off its gentle hum, and the letters on its side still smudged and damaged too badly to truly make out. Looking around with a more careful eye, I saw armless chairs on wheels and strange half walls marking off sort of private areas around metal desks. A clock on the wall was stuck forever at 3:17.
Callan walked up to one desk, its chair pushed back like its owner had just stepped out for a break and would be back directly. He looked down at the desk, then up at me sharply. “There used to be papers on this desk. You can tell by the pattern of the dust.”
He was right. Almond, my baby sister who the dragon killed, used to have a dirt box in the summer. Grandmam had said in her day, young kids had sandboxes, and even if you lived miles and miles from anything close to a beach or ocean, you could buy sand in bags at stores to fill them. We couldn’t do such a thing, but Almond liked the idea, so Pa made her a frame box from pine logs and filled it with soil, and she’d played in it. Building walls. Pressing things down to make shapes in the dirt. That was what this desk looked like, as though papers and objects had pressed down through the dirt to leave their marks and then been taken up.
The other desks looked the same. The papers and books which had littered the floor before was gone. Every single one of them. “There was papers. I swear it—you know I wouldn’t have drug you up here—”
“Hush, love. I know. I can see where they’ve been, remember? Someone’s been here. Someone’s taken anything that might have been of value.”
We stood in the silence of that dying place with only the hum of the machine, and I strained to listen for the echoes of footsteps, for some sign of people. Something scuttled across the back wall of the room and I jumped.
A rat. “Guess it come in through the door.”
“Yes, I expect they did that on purpose too—the door left ajar so that animals will come in, chew on wires and things, the snow will blow in and eventually the whole room will be destroyed.” Callan shivered, and I came behind him and took him in my arms.
“Guess there’s nothing here for us, then.”
“Probably not. I should take a look at the device, though. Not that I know anything much about 21st century physics and engineering.” He slipped out of my arms and started to examine the knobs and dials that covered the sides of the machine, shaking his head as though he didn’t have any more idea of what it all meant than I did.
“Wait, David. Do you have any water left?” Callan sounded excited. “There’s something here, but it’s hidden behind dirt.”
I tore a strip from an old blanket in my pack and wet it with water from my pack, then scrubbed at the place where the marking was. The dirt was stuck on like it had been baked, but my Mam had taught me to put my back into my chores and slowly it yielded to my pressure - a design, shield shaped, with a bird across the top, wings out. I knew it, of course, as it was the badge of the R&A.
“This makes no sense.” Callan was still shaking his head, sitting baffled. “There was no Department of Reintroduction and Agriculture before the Ice. There was no need for it. Why on earth would this symbol have even existed, let alone be found on this device?”
“What’s that thing under the bird?” I squinted hard at the symbol where normally the initials R&A would have been, but this close to the floor, the light was just not good enough to make it out. I tried to feel over it, the way I’ve been told that blind people used to read, but my fingers were too big and calloused to make sense of it. Callan’s more sensitive hand traced over where mine had been and found something I’d missed.
“I can’t make out what the design is, but here’s a screw. This is a plate, screwed onto the machine.”
Using a screwdriver from my pack, I forced the two old screws out of their holes and then used the flat blade of the tool to pry up the plate from the surrounding metal. It came loose with a snap and I fell back, tumbling near head over heels, and as I righted myself I heard footsteps.
Not another rat. Not scuffling but steel-toed boots clattering against the stone floor of the tunnel, coming towards us. We weren’t alone anymore.
No time to think and nowhere to go except through the door I’d hoped like mad to avoid, the door leading to the mountaintop. I grabbed for our packs, stuffed the plate I’d pried from the machine into one of them. Callan was looking around for any clue, any remaining thing we might take.
“Come on,” I whispered with my hand on the door latch. He took one last agonizing look at the machine; I knew he was damn curios and wanted nothing more than to spend the next three days taking it apart, but there just wasn’t time.
I could make out voices now, men’s voices, and close, too close. I opened the door. Callan ran through it, and I followed, pulling it shut behind me just as I caught a glimpse of a leg in mottled green cloth, then another wearing the same. Uniforms. The army had come. The door had a small deadbolt latch, and I turned it, hoping its click wouldn’t be heard over their voices. I followed Callan up the passageway. It was a hard slope upwards, and soon the electric light gave out and the only light was coming down from the outside, from where I knew the dragons lay.