by Mark Tufo
He slowly raised his foot and the floorboard that first protested his arrival now seemed doubly inclined to shout his departure. “Dammit,” he hissed.
We did not move, waiting to hear someone shout out, or the creak of a bed as one of the men came to investigate. When we were certain none of those things were going to happen, I pulled Tallow against the wall next to me. When he was safe I slid to the side, going deeper down the length of the room. I dragged my fingertips across the rough wooden surface of the wall, stepping as lightly as I could, hoping that the floor closest to the wall would not make any noise. I had just reached out and placed my hand against the heavy hemp fibers when I heard footsteps.
“Every night, the same time. You’d think I could take care of this before I went to sleep,” the man groused.
He had to relieve himself. With the weather still nice he was forgoing a chamber pot and most likely going outside, which meant passing by both of us. I didn’t see the flicker of a candle and there was just enough cloud cover to shield out a fair portion of the moon’s illumination. If my pounding heart didn’t give me away, there was a chance he wouldn’t see me. How he would miss Tallow was a different story; he was right next to the door and as soon as the Broker opened it, Tallow would be bathed in light.
I grabbed the rope and ran my arm through the loop so that I had it up over my shoulder. Then I quickly reached around for anything I could use as a weapon. I felt cold metal and then wrapped my hand around it. The stick made a slight tinkling noise as I pulled it away from the wall.
The shuffling feet stopped. The man knew something wasn’t right. “Who’s there? Lericho, are you messing with me again? I told you that isn’t funny.” His steps were warier, but they were still coming our way. I could just make out his silhouette as he stepped into the room. The light was getting brighter as the clouds moved past. I could see one of his legs as he moved closer to the window and its sphere of influence. He was heading toward the table and the lantern that was clearly framed in moonlight.
The stick was much heavier than I’d expected as I moved away from the wall and brought it toward my back. I didn’t know what I was doing–I was so scared I could barely think.
“Lericho?”
I swung with all my might, at first thinking I had misread my distance and was going to miss wildly. I would have spun to the floor and he would have been on me in less than a heartbeat. That reality never came to fruition as the stick vibrated mightily in my arms. I had crashed the wood and metal club into the side of his head. I felt a spray of blood as he cried out and then fell heavily to the floor.
My head spun as the alarm being sounded screamed throughout the sleeping chambers.
“Run,” Tallow had come up to me. “Run!”
I wanted to drop the stick that had caused so much damage but I’d seemingly forgotten about it. My hand had clamped down hard and would not let go. Tallow spun me around and half dragged me toward the door. Once the door was opened and the cold outside air hit me, I finally awoke and realized we needed to escape. Men were shouting and we were running, fleeing for our lives. If we got caught now we would receive a beating that not even the Meddies could fix. I had struck a Broker, and, judging by the sickening sound of bone crunching, I had hurt him bad. We ran until the town of Dystance was no longer in sight. We ran until my legs ached and my chest heaved in exhaustion. We ran until my lungs burned, and still we ran. I might have kept going straight through the Pickets if not for Tallow.
“Stop!” he shouted. I could tell from the hoarseness of the cry he was pulling ragged breaths to get that word out. “Winter, stop!”
I let the stick go and went to my knees, then to all fours. My back arched as I tried desperately to pull more air in. I threw up, ribbons of bile hung from my mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was from thoughts of the damage I had done to another being or the running. My sides heaved and my legs were shaking. I don’t know how long I was like that, but I figured long enough for the Brokers to catch up. I think at this point I would have welcomed them, as I had no more in me. Birds were chirping all around. It was then I realized that I could see the earth between my splayed fingers.
The sun was beginning its journey across the sky. I heard Tallow approach; I turned my head slightly. He looked pale and slightly unsteady.
“I knew you could run fast–just never knew how fast. You alright?”
I dipped my head slightly; to do anything more seemed impossible.
“What is this?” He bent down to retrieve the stick. I sickeningly noticed the dried blood and matted hair on the end of it.
“Stick,” was all I managed to get out. I rolled over onto my back, the sun feeling good across my body.
“This isn’t like any stick I’ve ever seen.” He was cleaning the end off with a clump of grass.
I sat up when I thought I could without falling back over. “Brokers?”
He turned quickly, thinking I meant I saw them. “No way.” He shook his head. “We must have run close to ten miles. There’s no way any of them would chase us this far.”
“Ten miles?” I wanted to lie back down, instead I got up. My legs were beginning to cramp and I wanted to stretch them out before that happened.
“What happened in there?” He was asking a question while simultaneously checking out the stick. “Look, there’s a hole here.” He was trying to stick one of his fingers down the skinnier end of the weapon.
“He was going to see you, I had to do something.”
Tallow was now looking at me, his gaze scrutinizing me. Would he think less of me? I wasn’t sure I could handle that right now. “Thank you, although I wish you’d let me handle it.”
“And what would you have done?”
“I don’t really know, not sure if I would have brained a Broker though.”
“If we got caught...”
“I know what would have happened. I guess you did the only thing you could, under the circumstances.”
“Do you think he’s...” I could barely ask the question. “...dead? I heard his skull crack, Tallow.” I wanted to be sick again.
“It’s alright, Winter.” He came over and wrapped his arms around me.
I cried into his shoulder. It had sounded like an adventure retrieving that rope, but now I had possibly killed a person. And for what? To sate my curiosity?
Tallow gently pushed me away and moved my hair out of my face. I looked up and could have stared into his eyes until the night made it impossible to do so. There was so much kindness and concern there; I wanted to melt into him.
“Come on, let’s go see what’s at the bottom of that hole, and maybe I’ll be able to figure out what this stick thing is.”
I appreciated the distraction. As long as we were doing something else I wouldn’t have to relive the feeling of my arms vibrating from the strike. We had to walk a few miles to get to the dry riverbed. We kept a lookout for any Brokers, or anyone else that might spot us out here, as there would be no doubt of our guilt if they found us. I was carrying the rope and Tallow the stick. I wanted him to get rid of the thing, but for some reason he was fascinated with it.
“Maybe I should go in first,” Tallow said as we looked down the hole.
“You have to lower me in. I won’t be able to support your weight, especially now.” I was tying the rope around my waist.
Tallow pulled on the knot to make sure it wouldn’t slip. “You ready?” He wrapped the rope around his back and sat down by the hole, bridging the gap with his legs.
I crawled between them and went down. Tallow grunted as he absorbed my full weight.
“Are you calling me fat?” I asked with a smile.
“Maybe if you didn’t steal double rations all the time this would be a little easier,” he said through gritted teeth.
The room was huge; I swung slowly back and forth as Tallow used up nearly half of the rope before my feet touched the floor.
“I’m down!” I called up. I was so excited I gave Tallow
rope burns as I ran toward one of the shelves.
“Hey!”
“Sorry!” I yelled, quickly unfastening the rope from my waist. “I’m free!” There was an overwhelming smell of must and disuse as I got closer to a debris pile.
“What’s down there?” Tallow called from above.
“Giant pamphlets,” I said as I picked up the pages of paper. “Hundreds of them!” I had never seen anything like this. There was more paper in this one room than I believe existed in all of Dystance. Just a single one of these large pamphlets, which I would soon learn were called books, held more paper than I’d ever seen in my entire life.
“Any food?” Tallow’s displeasure was evident in his tone. That we had risked our lives for giant pamphlets was not sitting well with him, his earlier enthusiasm having worn away with the broker encounter.
I brushed the dust off one of the books. It was called Dictionary. I had no sense of what that word meant until I opened it up. “There are so many words,” I said to myself as I leafed through the pages. I placed that to the side, feeling I was at some point going to need it. The next book I grabbed was a type of dictated journal, the adventures of a boy named Tom Sawyer.
“I’m coming down!”
“Bring your fire making kit!” There was enough light to see my location easily enough but not to read. My stomach was turning over on itself; I was nervous and excited–I was on the precipice of something huge. Maybe I didn’t know it yet, but somehow my mind and body did, if that makes any sense.
Within fifteen minutes Tallow was down and had the makings of a fire going. He had tied the rope around the stick I stole, then placed the stick across the window frame and lowered himself in. We’d be in some serious trouble if the stick came down. I didn’t like the fact that if someone happenstanced across the opening we’d be caught but there was little we could do if we wanted to be able to get back up. Right then I didn’t care. Tallow and I found a large oaken bench, righted it and placed it near the fire. The high ceiling vented the smoke, I just hoped no one was in the vicinity to see the black wisps.
I devoured Mark Twain’s story. I had become completely oblivious to the world around me, so immersed was I in the one he had lived in. At first, Tallow’s shuffling about had been a distraction, but even that had fallen away, like snow on a warm roof. When I finished and closed the back cover, I looked up, saddened, like I had just lost a good friend. I had a momentary pang of panic as I looked through the hole and noticed it was black, like it had been covered over. I snorted when I realized it was just that night had come to pass.
“Tallow?” I asked softly as I looked around.
He came through a stack of shelves that had partially fallen over, a book in his hands and a look of horror on his face.
“I think I know what caused The War.”
“Are you alright?” I got up, my body stiff from the run and the extended sitting.
“I...I was looking through this book...there was a fallout of zombies or something like that; it completely devastated the world.”
“What’s a ‘zombie?’”
“I...I think they were people that got sick and became cannibalistic; they were raving mad and hard to kill. Do you think that’s what we are out there fighting? Zombies?” He looked like he was going to be sick.
I took the book from his shaking hands. On the spine under the title was a small white sticker that read “Horror/Fiction.” I ran over and grabbed the dictionary. It only took a couple of minutes until I was nearly falling over I was laughing so much.
“This isn’t funny, Winter. I have to go and fight those things in a couple of years!”
While the part about him going to war was serious, his fear was unfounded. “It’s fiction, Tallow,” I said as if he should know what that meant. His face was still drained of color. “It’s just like this boy I read about–his town, his...adventures. It’s all fake, it’s made up, like, like a children’s fable.”
“Wait...there’s no zombies?”
“No zombies.”
“You sure.”
“Pretty sure.”
“But Winter, this pamphlet...”
“Book.”
“Fine, this book says there is. Why would they use paper on something that wasn’t real?”
“Look around, Tallow. I think our ancestors had more paper than they knew what to do with. Enough that they could take their ideas and write them down.”
“Okay, I get keeping histories and maybe even some ideas...but why would anyone write about dead cannibalistic monsters?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
He came over to me and was looking at the book I was holding.
“What’s that one about? Ghosts?”
“This is a dictionary. It gives the meaning of words.”
He whistled and hefted the huge, blue volume. “There’s a whole book to tell you what words mean? What is this place?”
Before I could answer any of the previous questions he asked me another.
“Hey, look for the word ‘rifle.’ I saw it in the zombie book.”
This definition was accompanied with a picture that looked strikingly similar to the stick we were now using as a climbing apparatus. We both looked up at the same time. Our “stick” had just magically transformed into something completely different and very dangerous.
“Whoa.” Tallow said it, but I was thinking it. “I need to see if it has bullets.”
“What are bullets?”
“Ask your fancy book there.” He was moving toward the rope. He was halfway up by the time I read the definition.
“Is that even possible?” I asked about the projectiles. It sounded like more fiction.
“You coming up? I’m starving.”
Now that I thought about it, so was I. I doused what little flame was left with water from my skin canteen. I thought about taking the dictionary with me, but it was large and bulky and getting caught with it would create a lot more questions than I was willing to answer, not to mention it would be taken from me. But, there was something more; I also had a strong feeling that it was dangerous, maybe even more dangerous than our stick that had just become a rifle that apparently shot bullets that could kill people. That was still open for debate.
The night had a slight chill, or maybe it was just the difference between the world outside and the coziness of our private bunker and the fire we had just left. Tallow had undone the rope around the rifle almost before I had completely crested the hole.
“Look at you with your new toy.”
“This is no toy.” He was turning the thing around and around in his hands, once again looking down what I now knew was the barrel.
“You do know that’s where the bullets come from, right?”
He quickly pulled his head away. “Umm, yeah, I knew that. Why do the Brokers have these and how come we’ve never seen them before?”
“I don’t know, Tallow, but you can’t go walking around with that thing. You get caught with it and they’re going to know who stole it.”
“You stole it.” He was smiling mischievously at me.
“Funny. Like that would make any difference anyway.”
“I wonder how you make the bullet come out?”
“I thought you said you were hungry.”
I shut the window to the book building as Tallow coiled up the rope and placed the rifle in the depression alongside it. We then threw some grass over it. We slept under the stars that night, fearful to go back into town in case the Brokers were patrolling and looking for anyone outside. I laid my head on Tallow’s chest, his heartbeat quickened from the contact. After a long while it slowed and he began to breathe rhythmically. I did not think I’d ever be able to sleep being that close to him. The next thing I remember was a robin’s head cocking back and forth as it looked at me from a few feet away. The morning sun was shining bright and Tallow’s arm was draped over my shoulder. I moved slowly, trying not to disturb him. I felt his muscles tighten as he pi
nned me against his body.
With his free arm he found the hollow between my neck and shoulder and began to tickle me. I have been vulnerable to this torture since my ninth birthday; fortunately he rarely uses it because it renders me completely helpless. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe. I twisted and punched him in the ribs. He ‘umphed’ loudly and redoubled his efforts. His arms felt like steel cables, yet I always felt in control until I pushed up with my legs and found myself face to face with him. The tickling stopped; we were now no more than inches apart. Our heartbeats were crashing into each other. For a moment we stared, each hesitant as to what might happen next. I let his arms pull me in closer, our lips brushed together. I would have gladly surrendered myself to him if not for the distant booming sound.
I pushed up and off, the spell broken. “Did you hear that?”
He was still looking at me. “No.”
And then it came again. He sat up.
“That’s coming from town,” I said.
“We don’t have to go back.”
And for a moment those were the best words I had ever heard. I closed my eyes. It would be possible to live out the rest of our existence here. We both knew how to hunt and there was plenty of food, at least during the spring and summer. We would still need to gather some things, though, and sneak them out here. And now we had the book house–protection enough from the elements, and no one would ever find us…but some of our friends were sure to miss us. What would we tell them? My friends were used to me being gone a night or two, but eventually someone was bound to report our disappearance. Then what? My stomach lurched when I remembered what I'd done; the Brokers would look to blame someone for the injury of one of their own. They would hunt us down and maybe punish our friends if they couldn't find us.
“We have to,” I finally answered.
“I know. I just don’t want to.”
I ran my hand along the side of his face.
We were back in town within a few hours. It could have been faster but we didn’t want to arouse suspicion, so we snuck back in as best we could. The Brokers had everyone in the center of town and they were all carrying the rifles now.
