by V. K. Ludwig
When he punched his fist into the air, engines roared up once more and half of them rolled toward us, parking their motorcycles perfectly lined up in a row of metal and rubber. Twenty guys hopped off and walked over, gathering around the trailer.
“This one over there,” Bird pointed at a guy with a cantering horse tattooed into the side of his neck. “His name is Arizona, and he will be overlooking my men. You got trouble with any of them, you take it to Arizona. He’ll make sure they march in line. Now, which one of your men’s gonna ride with me?”
“Let me have a word with my men,” Rowan said and gave a jut with his chin.
We followed behind him until he brought some distance between us and them, then he anchored his hands by his hips. “I hate sending someone with them, so please tell me one of you is crazy enough to volunteer.”
River shrugged. “I’ll go.”
“Someone without having a baby on the way, please.”
Everyone's eyes sunk to the ground, as if someone had hidden excuses between those layers of ash and dirt. Except for me. I stared straight over to the group of bikers, their outlines blurring more with each breath I took.
The thought of going with Bird and bringing even more distance between me and Ruth made an agonizing pain gnaw my insides. But no matter how much it would hurt, it had nothing on the way going back to Ruth would make me die a slow and even more painful death.
Whatever she would offer wasn’t enough. Not anymore. And not for as long as it didn’t come with making her mine.
Clammy air covered my lungs.
With each breath I took, Bird’s outline blurred some more.
With each breath I took, the right course of action became more clear.
It was right there on my tongue. I’ll go. I’ll go.
A volunteer stepped up and pushed out his chest. “I have no troubles going with them.”
“Alright,” Rowan mumbled. “It’s settled then.”
Chapter 17
The Woodlands
Ruth
The old excavator clanked and clunked underneath the strain of lifting the soggy ground. Each time it dug its teeth deeper into the rectangular hole in the churchyard, the hydraulic hissed and emptied the bucket on top of the dirt mound beside it.
“Are you holding it?” Oriel asked and looked up at Hazel and me through his protective glasses. “Remember, you’ll be stemming the entire weight of it once it’s cut, okay?”
“Do it already,” Hazel said.
She gripped the black wrought-iron a bit tighter, and I adjusted my hands once more. Oriel gave us a nod, angled the sharp-toothed blade against the fence and began cutting.
A firework of sparks exploded, sending orange and yellow gleams toward us. The noise of the saw might have been deafening for some, but it did little to fade out my overly loud thoughts. I have to talk to Adair. I have to confess how much he means to me. I have to —
“Ruth!” Hazel shouted, her shoulders rolled and her back crooked.
I lifted the chunk of metal higher, mumbling a quick sorry her way before we took five steps and lowered the fence-piece onto the ground. We carefully leaned it against the part of wrought-iron which remained, hoping the opening would be big enough for the final truckload to pass through.
“I almost broke my back because of you,” Hazel hissed, stretching her neck in one, then in the other direction.
The Clan had been busy widening the grave ever since Oriel’s return, now that we knew things were worse than expected. He spoke of over one-hundred-and-thirty men, women, and children. A number that should have me hang my head in mourning, perhaps even shame, but all I could think of was what I would say to Adair.
He had shown me that there could be more to sex than piece A goes into slot B. After all, he had been gone for three and a half days now, but what I missed the most wasn’t the sex. It was the way he took me into his arms after. The way brushed my tangled hair back from my eyes. And the way he safeguarded me before it happened, and after — day in and out.
“Are we making progress?” Max asked and gaped into the hole, a large, wooden cross dangling from his shoulder.
“It’s his last bucket, and we’ll be ready,” I said, trailing my fingers over the tooled letters which embellished the cross. “You think this is the way your dad would have wanted it?”
“He would have wanted single graves for sure but…” His voice trailed off, and he gently lowered the wood onto his boot. “Well, this is the best we can do with three truckloads full of bones. But I asked the carpenter to make this cross, which will go behind the grave.”
I stepped up in front of him, letting my fingertips once more glide over the smoothed and sanded ridges. “Dum vita est, spes est. What does it mean?”
“While there is life, there is hope.”
“And that’s a verse from the bible?”
Max shook his head. There should have been the hint of a boyish smirk on his lips, if the weight of the occasion hadn’t dragged the corners. “I don’t think it is, but it’s something I remember my dad told us when we were little. Like I said, I’m doing the best I can here.”
“Did Oriel say anything about your dad?”
“Only to wait fo—” he hesitated when his voice broke off, and cleared his throat before he continued. “Only to wait for Rowan. And we all know what that means. I didn’t expect him to be alive, honestly. And if he died feeling like he fulfilled his purpose, I have no reason to be sad. The only thing I regret is the many years I left him on his own.”
My heart stalled in my chest, compressed by how every single gap between my ribs filled with sadness. Before I could reach out to him, he shouldered the cross once more and walked off.
“They’re back!” someone shouted.
I swung around along with everyone else, each of us shifting our weight from one side to the other, trying to glimpse a familiar face. My eyes trailed from window to window, searching for a set of tired, blue eyes. I found many tired ones, their eyelids saggy and the skin around them pale-gray — none of them were blue.
A loud beep shattered against the bricks of the church, and a massive truck backed up toward me.
“Everyone out of the way,” Max shouted, grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and pulled me behind him.
The tires stopped less than a foot from the edge of the grave which reached around seven feet deep. Moments later, the flatbed lifted up at the side of the cabin, letting particles of sand and ash gently glide off the metal. And everything happened fast.
A single bone tumbled off the flatbed and fell into the grave. People all around me sucked in their breaths. Others moaned or whimpered. Next, a large skull rolled. By the time a dreadful rumble unclogged itself from the truck, I had pressed my eyes shut tight. The only thing I could hear were bones shattering against bones. The only thing I could feel was particles of dust blowing into my face, rubbing the scent of something barbaric deep into my nostrils.
It was then that I noticed something was wrong, and it had nothing to do with the cruelty my people had put onto these bones. Something was missing. Something that would make my knees shake a little less. Someone who would whisper in my ears to look at him.
When I opened my eyes again, people stood about paralyzed, most of them holding a palm to their faces, covering up the shock and disgust.
A guy I’ve never seen before walked up next to me, his tousled hair falling in ash-blond strands over his cheeks. “Need a hug, beautiful?”
“Get your ass back in the truck, Jack,” another guy said and anchored his hands by his hips. “This ain’t home, brother, and Bird wants you at your best behavior.”
Jack gave a scoff, marched off and climbed back into the truck, putting it into gear and leaving through the gap we had cut into the fence
“Sorry ’bout that,” the other one said and gave me a wink. “I’m Arizona, and that charming guy you met was Jack. Sometimes he can’t help himself around the ladies, but he’s a good guy inside i
f you know what I mean.”
“Arizona?” I asked. “Like the former state?”
“I’d like to say born and bred, but that ain’t the truth for no-one anymore, unless you’re over sixty. Nothing’s being born out there anymore unless it’s an ash storm or a tornado. But it’s where my folks are from.”
“And they named you after their former home-state?”
“No, ma’am. Arizona is what they call me back home, but my real name is Jessie. Now, if you’d excuse me… I gotta talk with that chieftain of yours.”
With a dip of his head, he disappeared, hugging himself and rubbing his palms up and down his arms as he strolled over to Rowan.
I followed closely behind him and joined the crowd which had assembled around Rowan in a half-moon. Babbles and excited chatter boomed from all around, spiking my impatience into something so desperate, I struggled for air over my pounding heart.
“I will try to answer all questions as good as I can tonight, during our assembly,” Rowan yelled over the many-pitched voices. “If you don’t got the stomach for this, go home and return once the grave has been closed. This is the best we can manage, given the circumstances.”
“Rowan,” I shouted and swung my hand up.
A young woman jumped up in front of me. “How can we help?”
“Get cold-season grass seeds if you’ve got any at home,” Rowan said. “Once Oriel leveled the ground, we will arrange a flower bed on top of it this spring. But we’ll have to frost-seed the area around as soon as possible.”
“Where is Adair?” I asked, but the rumble of voices swallowed each of my words. The only response I received in return was Rowan holding one hand to his ear asking “Huh?”
I followed along the outline if the crowd until I reached a gap and slipped through.
“Where is Adair? I have to talk to him,” I said.
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot.” Rowan leaned over and cocked his head. “He told me to —”
“Should I bring in the next truck?” Oriel asked.
Rowan gazed around. “Ehh… let me think for a sec.”
Then Oriel turned his attention to me with an unexpected smile on his face. “Did he tell you already?”
An uneasy feeling settled at the bottom of my stomach. “Told me what? Hey, did you see Adair?”
“Guess you haven’t heard yet then. I didn’t wanna blurt it out earlier but, yeah, um… Rowan assigned me as your new guard.”
A quiver swept over my body, and the world around me spun faster than my heart thumped against my temples. Adair had asked Rowan to replace him. I didn’t so much as blink now.
The fear of seeing him anchored my eyes to Oriel’s boots, who continued to shine a smile down on me — I could tell by the way it burnt my cheeks.
“Did you tell her?” Rowan asked and stepped up beside us, those wrinkles he had carried around on his forehead ever since I met him now softer.
“I don’t want another guard,” it blurted out of me, the desperation of my voice leaving a bitter taste on the back of my tongue. “Maybe you should call Adair over here, so we can discuss it. Why am I being handed around like this?”
Rowan’s eyes darted to Oriel; he shook his head and went on. “You don’t understand, sweetie. This was necessary because Adair didn’t come back with us. He volunteered to go to the Ash Zones to retrieve the b… um… to retrieve something for us.”
That thumping against my temples again.
Faster now.
Flooding every pore of my being with crippling anxiety.
Rowan’s voice continued. It talked about another volunteer. About Adair having a point and something about importance. Everything he said quickly lost itself amid my clouded head, as I reminded myself every three seconds to take a breath.
“Nobody here wants to hand you around,” Rowan’s voice finally cut through. “But you better get used to it. Darya mentioned something about you having no interest in getting married.”
“But —”
“You don’t have to justify yourself. That’s all your business. I need you to understand that men marry. They get assigned to missions. They die. Without a husband, something like this will happen again.”
One, two, three. Breathe!
“But once Adair is back…”
I looked up at Rowan only to find concern gathered at the corners of his mouth. “It might take him a while. Their people said it took them an entire day only to reach one of their outposts. Nobody knows where they’re located. Trust me, I wasn’t happy about him volunteering. But it made sense since he is probably the most capable, and he seemed eager to get away for a while.”
He gestured Oriel to step away with a jut of his chin, then he leaned in closer to me. “I think Adair might like you more than he should have, do you understand? Good thing he left. That way, he can get it out of his system. None of it is your fault.”
Everything was my fault.
A different kind of anxiety replaced the one from before: a smothering, suffocating, strangling one. He didn’t leave to get it out of his system. He left to get me out of his system.
“Oriel and I agreed you can stay at Hazel’s place for… let’s say two weeks. Make sure he is with you whenever you want to go somewhere. If Adair isn’t back by that time, we’ll make it permanent.”
At that, he left, only to be quickly replaced by a gleaming Oriel who didn’t seem to mind nor notice my wandering about without a destination. He talked about his sister, his mother, and his dad, but each of their stories were lost to the fog inside my head.
All I could hope for now was that Adair would return within two weeks — with me still in his system. But what if he figured out I wasn’t good enough for him?
“Are you happy now?” Hazel’s voice cut violently through Oriel’s story of his last hunting trip. She pointed her finger straight at me, a quarter of an inch away from drilling through my ribcage. “This is all your fault. If my brother gets killed out there, I hope you’ll know it was because of you and your foolishness.”
Oriel furrowed his brows. “Ehh… what?”
“Rowan said he only left to retrieve something, which means he will be back.” Something pulled on my shoulders. Invisible, but strong enough to drag them into a slouch. “I’m sure he’ll return.”
Hazel built herself up, her finger jabbing my coat now and her forehead veined in dark purple underneath her pale skin. “If you think that, then you’re not just foolish, you’re fucking stupid. Nobody ever returned from there. You hear that? Nobody!”
“Hazel,” Oriel said in an appeasing tone, “they helped us dig up the bones and bring them over here.”
“That has nothing to do with him making it back alive. What do we know about those people? What do we know about how they live? What if he doesn’t want to…”
Her voice broke off, but the energy which remained clinging to the surrounding air finished her sentence for me. What if he had no intention of returning?
Chapter 18
The Ash Zones
Adair
The two-day journey on the back of Bird’s bike had turned my joints stiff and my nuts into maracas.
With each mile we rolled west, the terrain darkened and changed from jagged mountain edges to smooth rock formations, which reminded of a stone golem taking a shit on a laxative.
The worn edges of my hazmat mask cut through my beard and deep into my cheeks, covering my skin with depleted, wet air.
Trees were non-existent, except for the remains of their trunks, which rose from the ground like gray-charred stalagmites, their spikes glistening underneath the burning sun. Our sunroom in August had nothing on this place, and yet, filling that deep, cold hole inside my chest seemed hopeless.
Bird swung his hand up and waved it around, splitting his group of riders in two. They quickly disappeared behind a bunch of rectangular buildings, their walls faced in sheets of metal and their roofs hooped with a clear kind of plastic.
He weaved his b
ike through piles of junk and toward a sky-high pole with massive speakers at the top. Right underneath them hung an old traffic light, the red dot shining right at me.
The tires stopped rolling, and he plunged both legs to the ground, roaring his engine once more before he cut it off for good. After that, there was nothing. No singing of birds or chirping of crickets. Only the wind whistling across stone and shale and a compressed layer of ash underneath.
Bird picked up his foot and first pointed at the spikes on his soles, then at the ground, his words coming heavy and breathed through his outlet valve. “You fall, you’ll wake up hours later with a concussion. I speak from experience.”
I got off, bent over and hammered my knuckles against the soil, hard like concrete, leaving a speck of chalky dust behind on my skin. It crunched underfoot but made me slip at the same time, turning the stroll over to one of the buildings into a game of focus.
Large vent pipes protruded from each building, connected to fans the size of trucks. They spun in a steady rhythm, adding a lazy whooosh… whooosh… whooosh to the otherwise quiet environment.
Bird stopped right in front of a metal door, grabbed a mask which dangled from a hook and said, “We all carry our masks with us at all times. But if you’re ever being stupid and get caught in red light without it, you’ll find these dangling at each building. Don’t take ’em unless you really need ’em.”
I gave a nod, my eyes glued to the door which let through excerpts of conversations and fragments of a laugh.
“The doors are sealed,” Bird said. “Gotta give it a good pull and be quick about it. In and out as fast as you can, or you’ll piss off Lily, and you never want to piss off Lily.”
“Who?”
He worked the handle down, threw his shoulder against the door, and pulled me through the gap.
