The Girl Who Found the Sun

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Found it on a body.”

  “I mean knowing all that stuff.”

  “Oh. Duh. Books. They’re made up stories so I don’t really know for sure how true any of it is, but they sounded convincing. Some had pirates and noblemen who used thin swords called rapiers. Those fights sounded totally different from this other book set in Japan where they fought using swords like this one.”

  “What’s a Japan?”

  “Another place. Far away across the ocean.” She gazed up at the sky, squinting at the sun. If nothing else, this new jumpsuit handled the heat better. “Don’t know if it’s even still there. It was an island. Might have been flooded when the oceans got bigger.”

  “Ouch.”

  “So…” She rolled her arms around. “Doesn’t that poncho get in the way when you fight?”

  “Sometimes. Biggest problem is it gives an opponent something to grab.”

  “Why wear it then?”

  “Camo. Makes me harder to see in the forest.”

  “Ahh.” She looked at the gun again, which had to be four feet long with a barrel almost an inch around. “That looks bigger than I imagined guns from reading about them.”

  “Maybe it is. We didn’t have any to compare to. Just notes. It’s basically a breech-loading shotgun. One shell at a time. I use slugs though. Don’t have to pick all those little pills outta a deer that way.”

  Guns in the stories varied from flintlock pistols that took a few minutes to reload to machine guns that could spit hundreds of bullets in seconds. A few stories even had lasers or fancier energy weapons, though she thought those had been all made up. Kyle’s rifle didn’t look as though it would be as slow as a flintlock musket.

  When they reached the bridge outside the ruins, he pointed at the side. “This thing isn’t safe. We usually walk on the rail.”

  Her stomach nearly fell out at watching him leap up to walk on top of the wall. A little too far of a lean to his left and down he’d go.

  “Yeah, we found out the hard way. Sienna nearly went swimming.” She kept her feet on the sidewalk, as close as possible to the wall.

  A little shy of the midway point, she indicated the hole that swallowed Sienna. “Cheyenne, the oldest girl, fell in one, too. She would’ve hit the water except for that bone.”

  “Bone?”

  Raven explained the femur-turned-club, and how the girl had dangled from it because the bone hadn’t fit sideways through the hole.

  “Damn, that’s one lucky kid.”

  “Would they have died if they fell?”

  He exhaled. “Depends on how they landed. If they hit the water feet first, probably would’ve been okay. Landing flat or on their face, yeah, bad.”

  “What about the current? Is the water dangerous?”

  “Nah. Not here. It’s bad about a mile that way.” He pointed south. “Sometimes the kids sneak out here to go swimming.”

  “Sneak? They’re not allowed to?”

  “Not without some of us to watch for cougars. The cats usually keep their distance from Oasis, but they show up at the river to drink sometimes. Small enough kid, they’d carry right off.”

  She cringed. “Yeah…”

  They left the bridge behind and entered the ruins at a brisk walk. She told him about their encounter with the cougars and how Tinsley had nearly been dragged off.

  “Best not to run. They’re cats. Fast motion makes them want to chase.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out pretty quick.”

  “Sorry.”

  She nudged him. “Nothing of you to apologize over.”

  Not having children along—and not having to sit underground hiding from cougars—did speed up the pace. They cleared the whole ruin in probably a touch under two hours, though it felt faster since they talked the entire time. She described life in the Arc to him while he spoke of growing up in Oasis. He struggled with math and science stuff in school, but also got into a fair number of fights defending another kid everyone picked on because he acted more like a girl than a boy.

  “Always pissed me off that they gave Brian a hard time over that. Who cares if he thinks boys are cute?”

  She knew of a few people like that in the Arc, a pair of older women who loved each other, two of the guys who worked in the water room considered themselves married. Elena Vasquez, Ariana’s mother, lived with Melanie like a married couple. It astounded her that the woman had agreed to have a baby. But then again, Noah managed to talk Raven into doing that at sixteen using the ‘humanity is going to die off unless we do this’ guilt. She suspected the doc preferred men, though he’d never been romantically involved with anyone that she knew of.

  At least no one back home cared. She’d never heard of anyone being teased or harassed over who they wanted to live with… probably due to the grim finality that everyone believed. Thinking that only 183 people existed on the planet tended to make life seem valuable.

  They left the ruins behind, hurrying into the forest as best Raven could remember the way they’d come—and using her compass to keep them going west. In the waning moments of daylight, she managed to find her way back to the house with the garden.

  She gathered a few vegetables, which they ate for dinner along with more of the stuff he called ‘trail mix’ that they’d eaten for lunch while walking. Though she’d only known Kyle for a single day, she didn’t feel at all nervous falling asleep near him. Mostly, worry about how Tinsley coped with her being away kept her staring at the ceiling longer than she wanted to.

  A few hours after they’d resumed walking the next morning, rustling came from the woods.

  Expecting deer, Raven casually glanced toward the disturbance—and nearly screamed at the sight of four scrawny, naked men charging at them. Kyle swung the shotgun off his shoulder, but didn’t have time to get his hand on the trigger before needing to use the weapon like a club.

  He walloped one man across the head, knocking him over, senseless. Another feral jumped on him from behind. Two ran at her, one suntanned, the other dark brown. They grunted back and forth as if to say ‘you go for her legs, I’ll get the arms.’

  Raven backpedaled, yanking the katana out while ducking the white guy’s attempt to grab her hair and circling to his right to put him between her and the other man. The one Kyle clubbed hit the ground on his front and didn’t move to get up. Feral Three wrestled him for control of the shotgun, grappling him from behind.

  She grasped the sword in both hands, stepping toward the white dude and slashing high. The attack failed to draw blood, but she slashed four feet of beard off. Both men on her grunted in alarm, staring at the sliced mass of hair as if witnessing literal magic happen. After a second, the black guy pointed at her and barked a word that sounded like ‘moog.’

  They ran at her simultaneously. She raised the sword, yelling a war cry. When neither slowed nor stopped, she slashed downward, slicing a long but shallow wound across the black man’s chest that made him stop short. The other guy grabbed her by the shoulders; too close for the sword, she rammed her knee into his groin.

  He grabbed himself and collapsed to the ground.

  The black guy swiped a hand at the blood running down his chest, stared at it, and let out an enraged howl. Raven pointed the sword at him in a ‘don’t you dare’ gesture, but he came after her anyway.

  She swung at his face; the man caught the blade in both hands, snarling. Despite the edge digging into his palms, he refused to let go. Raven set her heels, pulling as hard as she could. Still, the man’s grip held solid despite the blood dribbling from his hands. He twisted, attempting to wrench the weapon out of her grasp—and seemed likely to succeed.

  Thud.

  Raven glanced left. The shotgun lay on the ground. Feral Three perched on Kyle’s shoulders like a living backpack. He’d gotten hold of a knife, which he attempted to ram into Kyle’s throat. Despite the guy being scrawny, Kyle appeared to be struggling to hold him at bay.

  The one she nailed in the balls r
ocked side to side, emitting a repetitive grunt of pain.

  Few things she’d ever seen unnerved her as much as the man grabbing her sword by the blade, cutting himself, and refusing to let go. His bulging eyes promised to make whatever they had in mind for her—likely cannibalism—hurt as much as possible.

  Kyle gurgled.

  The knife point came within a half inch of his throat.

  Raven let go of the katana. The sudden release sent the man holding the blade stumbling backward. She dove for the shotgun, scooped it up, and thrust the front end into Feral Three’s cheek like a spear before pulling the trigger.

  Boom!

  Feral Three’s entire head exploded in a shower of red gore. The shotgun hammered into her shoulder, nearly taking her off her feet. Feral Three’s body careened over backward and hit the ground behind Kyle, who staggered around in a drunken stupor, both hands clamped over his ears.

  A vicious yank on Raven’s hair pulled her back into the grip of the man she’d nutted. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand clamped around her left wrist, the other arm clutching her across the chest. The black guy, his entire chest covered in blood, grabbed her right wrist and wrapped his other hand around her throat, staring into her eyes while squeezing.

  She thrashed, trying to whack him in the sensitive bits with the gun, but the way the men controlled her wrists made that impossible. She could barely move. Pressure on her neck increased, cutting off her air. She flailed, trying to kick for his balls, unable to tell if she hit thigh or if he simply ignored the pain.

  The katana blade flashed up behind the black guy, then swung down into the side of his neck. Blood spurted from the wound, pulsing into the air. His eyes rolled back as he lapsed unconscious in seconds, his crushing grip on her throat falling away. Raven coughed and sucked in a huge breath.

  Kyle pointed the katana at the feral still holding her from behind. “Let go of her.”

  He grunted into her ear.

  “They don’t understand English,” rasped Raven before ramming her head backward into his face.

  Moaning in pain, the guy lost his grip on her and stumbled sideways, bleeding from the nose. She whirled, rounding the shotgun pipe in a home run swing. The heavy, wooden butt crashed into his chin, shattering the jaw and knocking him out cold. His sinewy body twirled around and collapsed in a heap.

  Raven spun in place, scanning their surroundings. Once confident no more ferals lay in wait, she looked down at the four men. Two unconscious. Two dead. None moving.

  It finally hit her how bad they stank. She coughed, eyes watering, and held the shotgun out to Kyle. “This is yours.”

  Grinning, he offered the sword and yelled, “This is yours.”

  She cringed, but took the blade. “No need to shout.”

  He took the rifle. “Sorry. Thing went off right by my ear. Ringing’s gonna last all damn day.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No… don’t be sorry.” He pushed on a clasp where the steel barrel met the butt, opening the breech. “For a skinny bastard, the guy had a lot of arm power.”

  “I thought you knew how to fight.”

  “I do.” He pulled a smoking half plastic, half metal cartridge out of the barrel end. “Took the first guy out right away, didn’t I? Fighting isn’t pretty to look at. Not like in the stories.” He pocketed the spent shell and loaded a new one before snapping the shotgun closed. “First thing I learned about fighting is that it doesn’t matter how good you are, or how fancy you try to be… most fights are going to end up on the ground, rolling around like a pair of idiots. You did well for someone who doesn’t know how to fight.”

  Raven crouched to wipe the blade off on the grass. “I don’t.”

  “Nice move ramming your skull into his nose. Who taught you that?”

  “No one. Thought of doing it a second before I did it. The only thing I could think of to get him off me. My head kinda hurts now.”

  “Beats dead, right?” He turned in place, surveying the woods. “Looks like that’s all of them.”

  Shit. I killed a guy. Raven doubled over, heaved a couple times, and sank to sit in the grass, shaking.

  “You okay?”

  “Not really. I just killed someone. A person.”

  Kyle shot a sideways stare at the headless body. “That’s debatable.”

  “Seriously, even if they’re nonverbal and functionally as dumb as gorillas, they’re still people.”

  “What’s a gorilla?”

  She sat there shivering from nerves. “I’ll explain later. There aren’t enough of us left to kill each other. Every person that dies is a real chance humanity dies off.”

  “That’s what they taught you growing up?”

  “Yeah.” She wrapped her arms around her legs, burying her face in her knees.

  Kyle sat next to her. “It makes sense when you think there are only 200 people left in the world. There are a lot more than that. They built arcologies all over the planet. For another thing, those guys would have killed both of us. If two people are going to die, I’d much rather it be them than us. That little girl of yours still has a momma.”

  “Yeah.” She exhaled hard. The shaking her in hands lessened a bit.

  “Last, if you feel this way about ending a guy trying to murder and eat us… there’s 200 more people waiting back in your arcology.”

  She frowned. “More like 175 but, yeah, I get the point.”

  He stood and helped her up.

  “Stupid question.”

  “Okay?” He tilted his head.

  She checked the compass to get her bearings. “In the stories I read, when people get shot, they just kinda fall over. Why did his whole head burst like that? Is that normal? Are the books wrong?”

  “Nah. I don’t think so. This is a cannon.”

  “Don’t those belong on ships?”

  He chuckled. “No, not a literal cannon. I mean it’s huge for a gun.”

  “Oh. You ever shoot a person before?”

  “Once, yeah. Another feral. I was out on a scouting team, exploring the wilds to the north of Oasis…”

  She fell in step beside him as he told her of an ambush where ten or so ferals attacked his team of three. The way he described it sounded like she listened to her father reading a story from a book. Her shock at having to kill someone eased enough to set aside for the time being. Mostly, she let his voice lull her into a feeling of security. None of the characters she ever read about felt sick to their stomach like she did after killing people, and they often killed lots of bad guys.

  Maybe we will make it back home—to Oasis.

  38

  Wanderer’s Spirit

  I’m getting old, kiddo. Need to scratch that itch and see as much of topside as I can before standing up the wrong way puts me in the infirmary for two days. – Ellis Wilder.

  Moonlight, though captivatingly beautiful, didn’t penetrate the forest cover well.

  Once it became difficult to see, they decided to stop for the night. While munching on more trail mix and some bread, Kyle absentmindedly talked about how sleeping directly on the ground leeched body heat, a problem they didn’t have in the house the previous night. Both backpacks contained blankets, which he arranged as sleeping mats. Not entirely ideal, but better than stretching out on bare ground.

  She tried to consider blowing that guy’s head off as defending herself against a monster. In a way, the ferals not speaking any discernible language helped distance her from the idea of them being human. That exploding skull would haunt her dreams for years no matter how necessary doing it had been.

  “How much do you know about those ferals? Like… what do they want?”

  He lowered a water bottle away from his mouth. “Not much. There are a handful of scattered groups. Almost impossible for us to tell the different tribes apart. No idea if they attack each other or just us. If they have a language, it’s not one we know. Anyone’s guess why they attack, probably territorial.”

 
“I think they’re cannibals. The first one I saw kept trying to bite me.”

  “Hmm.” He drank more water, swishing it side to side in his mouth in thought. “Maybe. But, they don’t have weapons. Biting could just be a means of attack.”

  She gnawed on her bread. “Did they come from an arcology?”

  “Again, don’t know. If I see one again, I’ll try to ask but I wouldn’t expect an answer.”

  “Ass.” She chuckled.

  Kyle failed to conceal a smile. “No one from Oasis has tried to study them. Some of the scientists think the tribals might actually be descended from people who weren’t able to shelter in an arcology, but found somewhere to take cover that didn’t have a perfect seal. Like, they’ve suffered damage in the head from whatever toxins floated around back then. One of the doctors said something like ‘genetic damage’ affected their intelligence.”

  “Oh. That kinda makes sense. I’m not that smart, but I did read about DNA and stuff. I guess that would technically make them mutants. Our stories mention there being dangerous mutants out there, but I grew up thinking that meant like giant monsters with tentacles instead of arms or furry creatures like werewolves.”

  “What is a werewolf?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “A made-up monster from stories. They’re basically normal people most of the time, but depending on which universe you’re reading about, they either go crazy during the full moon or they can change whenever they want.”

  “Change?”

  “They turn into beasts. Big, furry, claws, teeth.”

  “You’ve seen these?” He stared at her.

  “No, dammit.” She shoved at his shoulder. “They’re made up. Not real. Just stories. My point is, everyone in the Arc thinks there are mutants out here and they’re giant scary things… not crazy naked dudes.”

  He laughed.

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “Do you want to sleep first or should I?” asked Kyle.

  “I’m still kinda wound up from shooting a guy. Not sure I will be able to sleep at all.”