by Jon F. Merz
We boxed successfully around Diablo, but it took time. That was the problem with boxing. You couldn’t just head straight through but had to circumvent the area and that added time and distance to your travel. But in this case, it was completely necessary. Fighting bad guys while I was encrusted in their shit didn’t blow my skirt up any. There’d be time enough for them when I was done being funky.
By the time we finally resumed our original heading, it was almost eleven o’clock in the morning. We hadn’t had any food, but that was for the best. The thought of eating didn’t really appeal to me just then and I doubted Ares wanted to see anything edible.
Around noon, I heard the sound I was waiting for: water. We approached cautiously. I didn’t know if Warsaw or Kort had any sort of security around the water source. For all I knew, they might have a secondary outpost here that watched over their supply. Water wasn’t a huge commodity, but it was scarce enough that you wanted to make sure you could always get to it.
As we crested a small hill that overlooked a huge lake, I saw nothing to make me think there was anyone about. Which was good, because I needed to get to work. I now had a permanent colony of flies living in my hair and on my skin and I wanted them gone as soon as possible.
Ares hadn’t said much, preferring to keep her mouth closed and not risk anything flying in it while we walked. I didn’t blame her. We’d stayed quiet for the majority of the trip here, but now it was time to get busy.
I built a small fire in a shallow ditch on the shore of the lake and made sure Ares kept it fed.
The chain was only so long and that meant we had to stay in close proximity to each other. I started digging in the wet sand until I had something roughly eight feet by four feet. Then I dug out another one exactly like that twelve feet away. Close, but not so close that the walls would collapse.
As I’d dug the ditches, water had seeped in, which was exactly what I wanted. When I was finally done digging, I walked away from the water and found a bunch of rocks that Ares and I carried back to the fire, placing them in the coals. After about fifteen minutes of heating them up, I looked at Ares.
“You ready?” I asked.
“For what?”
I pointed. “Two baths. We put the stones into the first one and get the water as hot as we can stand it. Then we do the same in the other one. We get into the first bath, scrub as much gunk off, then we go to the second one and repeat. Hopefully after two hot baths, we’ll be clean enough that we can then hit the lake and finish de-funkifying.”
“De-funkifying,” said Ares. “Is that actually a term?”
I nodded. “Yup. Very scientific. Technical stuff. Are you ready?”
Ares looked around. “So what? We just strip down right here?”
“Pretty much. I didn’t have time to build dressing rooms. And like it or not, we’re in this together. We need to both use the baths at the same time, so don’t get any ideas, okay? Sex is literally the last thing on my mind right now.”
“Mine too,” said Ares. “What about the chain?”
I fished the key out of my pocket and used it to unlock the collar. It fell to the ground.
Ares looked at me and then started undressing.
I did the same.
18
We entered the baths together to take full advantage of the clean water that would soon be completely ruined. The stones that I’d added to the water brought the temperature up to a high degree which helped us feel better than we had before we stepped in. Unfortunately, as soon as the dried filth made contact with the water, it started to stink again and both of us retched as we tried to scrub the majority of it off. I was caked with the stuff and every time I ran my hands over my body, more of it fell away and I finally started to see clean patches of skin.
The water grew disgusting and then it was time to change baths. We climbed out and headed for the next one. As we did so, I kept glancing around the area. I’d stowed my weapons nearby but I didn’t want to suddenly be surprised by some type of ambush. But I saw no one in the immediate vicinity and stepped back into the new bath, grateful that the majority of disgusting stuff was back in the other one. The temperature was even warmer and I sighed as the hot water sank into my tired muscles. Stress will tighten everything in your body up, as I’d learned early on in my special operations career. It had been a while since I’d been able to relax in a bath and I realized how much I missed it.
Ares scrubbed her hair ferociously, determined to get it as clean as possible. The sight of us both in the nude didn’t really affect me, although I could see that Ares wasn’t as rail thin as I’d previously thought. But there wasn’t anything sexy about what we were doing. I wanted to be clean and this was the most expedient way to do so. If I’d let her go first, I would be washing in dirty water. With us both in at the same time, we would each have some degree of clean water to work with. Albeit temporarily.
As the water in the second bath grew dirtier, I knew we’d be moving into the lake itself to finish bathing. The baths at the shore had done their job and I felt confident we’d managed to clean the majority of gunk off of ourselves. Swimming and scrubbing in the lake waters would hopefully complete the process and we could fully submerge as well.
The dirty water in the baths I’d dug on the shore would filter down through the sand and make its way back into the lake. By the time it got back into the lake water, it would be somewhat cleaner than it had been. I didn’t think we were directly poisoning the people of Diablo by washing the sewage off our bodies in their drinking supply, but there was a chance it might be polluted. Still, the lake was large enough that the pollutant levels should be minimal. And there was also a chance Diablo had some type of filtration system in place anyway. It wasn’t a good idea to drink lake water right from the source. There was a ton of bacteria present in it that could ruin anyone’s health.
I climbed out of the bath.
Ares looked up. “Where are you going?”
I pointed at the lake. “This water is dirty. It’s time to swim, scrub, rinse, and repeat. This should hopefully finish off our cleaning.”
Ares stopped scrubbing her hair, paused as if she was thinking something through, and then held out her hand to me. I helped her up and out of the bath and then we waded out into the lake together. I dove under the surface and felt amazing as the brisk water snapped my pores shut. I came up, spitting water and running my hands through my short bristly hair.
Ares kept dipping her head down and scrubbing her hair. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel completely clean again. That was truly disgusting what we did last night.”
I nodded. “And an awful lot of people wouldn’t have been able to do what you did. Congratulations on understanding that what you did was necessary to our survival.”
“Yeah, well, don’t ever tell anyone I lay in a sewage field.”
“Who am I going to tell?” I asked. “We’re not exactly hosting Friday night dinners with friends here, are we?”
She smiled. It was a nice smile. I dove back under the water and continued to do that for the next half hour. I kept swimming to different parts of the lake, convinced the water would get dirty wherever I was as I cleaned more junk off of me. I wanted to be as clean as was possible. But Ares was right; I wasn’t sure if I’d ever feel clean again.
Using the sand, I scrubbed my skin to a bright red glow. Eventually, something told me that I was as clean as I was going to get and I crawled up to a sandy beach and sat there scrubbing my fingernail beds clean with small grains of sand. I still had junk caked underneath them and I wanted it gone. Fortunately, I keep my fingernails short anyway, so it wasn’t that hard to get them clean again.
Ares walked over, seemingly uncaring about her nudity. I respected that. I was naked as a jaybird myself and it didn’t really matter when the overriding concern had been just getting clean.
“What now?”
I pointed at the stack of clothes on the beach. “Got to get them as clean as we can
.”
“How?”
“The lake. No sense dunking them in the dirty baths I built. We’ll use the lake and then get a fire going to get them dry again. There will probably be a lingering scent for a while, but I’m a bit short on detergent. When we finish our business in Diablo, we’ll get new clothes and burn those.”
“Burning sounds good,” said Ares.
We gathered our clothes and spent the next hour scrubbing them using the sand and small rocks and then dunking them into the lake. I got a raging fire going and built a rack over it to lay the clothes on.
A breeze blew in, but the sun was still high and warm. I was hoping to get back to Diablo just as the sun was setting. But I didn’t tell Ares about that plan, because I didn’t think she was going to be thrilled with what I was proposing.
I wanted to sneak us back into Diablo and find out exactly what was going on. But I had a problem: the chain I was using to keep Ares around. If I took it off, then there would be nothing to stop her from running the first chance she got. After all, who wants to be used as bait to lure a sucker in to be killed? I couldn’t begrudge her the desire to flee. In her place, I would have done exactly the same thing.
But sneaking back into Diablo with a chain that rattled the way this one did was going to alert every Warsaw goon in the immediate area. And I didn’t want to leave a trail of bodies in my wake. Tonight’s goal was information, not destruction.
I watched as Ares sat on the beach staring off into nothing. She was running from something. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was happy to get away from her past. I knew I certainly had my share of demons back there. And Ares knew about my biggest ones: the death of my family.
At my hand.
I don’t know when it had happened but somewhere along the line, she’d stopped being just bait. I knew I wasn’t looking at her the same as I had when I first got her. Maybe it was the suspicion that Ares had her own demons. And maybe they weren’t all different from mine.
“What are you looking at?” I asked her then.
She smiled. “The horizon. Nothing. The trees. Who knows?” She turned her head to me. “There was a time when I lost sight of everything that ever mattered to me. I got wrapped up in drugs and that was all I lived for. I needed the high all the time. Not just every night, but all the time. I didn’t care who got screwed over as long as I had what I craved.”
I didn’t say a word. I knew the importance of silence when people were working through their own shit. The worst thing in the world I could have done was project my observations on the moment.
“Would you think I was a terrible person for doing what I did?”
I shrugged. “Depending on who you ask, I’ve been a fairly awful person myself.”
Ares turned back to the lake. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything. Then she took a breath, made a decision, and turned back to stare me in the eyes.
“I sold my baby, Declan. Sold it. For drugs.” Her eyes welled up. “Can you imagine being so imprisoned to something that you would sell the very thing you birthed - just to feed that habit? I couldn’t, and yet that’s exactly what I did. Sold her. My baby girl.” She sucked in a breath and it stuttered back out again. “I never saw her again. I may as well have killed her.”
I took a moment. “I told you what I did to my family.”
“They were suckers,” said Ares. “Did you have a choice?”
“Did you?” I asked softly.
She said nothing for a moment and then turned to stare back at the horizon. “I don’t even know anymore.”
19
Around two in the afternoon, I got us up and moving again. We needed to be back in the area of Diablo before the sun set and sitting by the lake wasn’t going to get me any closer to killing the Source. I was also worried that her hunt tonight would be much more intense than it had been last night. She’d known we were out there, but she couldn’t pinpoint us. That was liable to make her more angry and more determined. And frankly, the safest place for us wasn’t outside: it was in Diablo itself.
As we started walking, Ares held up the chain. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I looked at the chain and then took it from her, gathering it up in coils as I did so. I walked over to the first bath pit I’d dug, the one with the most filth in it, and dropped the chain into it before covering it up with sand.
“We’re in this together,” I said. “And if we work well, then we can discuss your future once we kill the Source.”
“You’re supposed to use me to kill her,” said Ares. “And after what I told you about my daughter, I’d be shocked if it hadn’t hardened your resolve. I’m just bait, after all. Right?”
I stopped and looked at her. “You know, when people make mistakes, you have two choices. Really. You can wallow in it. Live in the experience of misery. Just completely lose your way and any hope you ever had to ever getting out of it.”
“Or?”
“Or you can resolve to learn from it and never make that mistake again.”
“Easier said than done,” said Ares.
“Which is why most pick option one. It’s easier.” I nodded at her. “You told me you were getting sober. Is that the truth?”
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s the truth.”
“Then you’re trying to choose option two. I respect that. It takes real strength to attempt it. And frankly, all of the other baits I’ve used in the past were just losers on their way out anyway. Whiners. People who would rather be a victim than do the work to become a winner. I didn’t mind when they got turned and I had to kill them as suckers. I didn’t care about them.”
Ares stayed quiet for a moment. “You care about me, Declan?”
“I respect you,” I said. “The chain needs to go because I don’t think of you as bait anymore.”
“You don’t?”
“You’re my partner in this.” I smirked. “You know, unless you’ve got something else going on.”
“You’re saying I’m free?”
“Not yet. I need your help. But I’d like you to give it voluntarily instead of me forcing you to do it.”
Ares chewed her lip for a moment. I watched she took a glance around at the lake, the forests, and the sky. Maybe she was trying to figure out what the odds of her surviving on her own. Personally, I didn’t think they were that good. Not yet, anyway.
“I don’t know that I have a choice just yet,” said Ares. “On my own, I’m just a walking target.”
“Possibly.”
“My best chance for survival is sticking with you.”
I stared at her. “You understand what that means? I’ve got to see this thing through to the end.”
“Yeah,” said Ares. “I understand.”
“Okay then.”
We turned and headed out.
The question was how to get inside Diablo without being spotted. The ramparts had guards on them every twenty meters or so. Not to keep out suckers, but to keep watch for any bands of survivors who had designs on taking over Diablo for themselves. And why not? It was a juicy target, with plenty of security and running water. That alone would be tempting for an awful lot of people. Warsaw had known that his town would present a decent target, so he’d tried to harden it as much as possible. The question was: had he done enough to discourage people from trying?
I didn’t have a choice. I needed to get us inside Diablo. Only there would I find out who the Source was and where she was hiding during the daylight hours. If she indeed had some sort of arrangement with Warsaw, then he would take it seriously and ensure that she was protected. The last thing Warsaw would want is to try to screw her over. She would exact a terrible vengeance upon him if he did so. And he didn’t strike me as a fool, even though I hadn’t met him yet.
We trekked back the way we’d come and I noticed that we didn’t smell nearly as awful as I thought we would. The lake waters had purified us as much as was possible and I was grateful that we’d been able to clean. I ha
d no intention of laying in a sewage field ever again - once was enough for me to fully grasp the awfulness of that experience.
Ares stayed quiet as we walked. I didn’t know what to think about that, honestly. I’ve never tried to judge people for their mistakes - despite the fact that I’ve acted as executioner for a lot of them. I’d screwed up plenty in my life and I’d been judged by people on their high horses who thought themselves superior for one reason or another; there’s nothing quite as infuriating as people who refuse to acknowledge their own shit stinks just as bad as anyone else’s.
So I try to refrain when I can. Ares was an addict; addicts do crazy things that seem perfectly rational to them. Even something as potentially crazy as selling your baby can seem like the perfectly sane thing to do when you’re in the rapture of a drug.
Plus, I could see the remorse she carried with her. She’d cried silently as we’d walked and I gave her the time to do so. I had my own remorse to shoulder and I wasn’t about to stand there offering up all sorts of pseudo-psychological pep talks when I didn’t really think I had a right to tell her how to feel. She’d eventually make peace with what she’d done or it would continue to eat her up for the rest of her years.
Life ain’t easy.
As the afternoon sun began tilting toward the horizon around three-thirty, we drew within about a mile of Diablo. I stopped us and we squatted in the tall harsh grass that covered a small hill overlooking the town itself. We lay there listening to the buzzes of bugs around us while I scanned the ramparts and tried to figure out how we were going to penetrate the security cordons around the place.
The men on the ramparts didn’t look as alert as they’d been when we’d initially approached the place yesterday, which suggested they might only come alive - so to speak - when they knew someone was in the area and coming in. Instead of maintaining their distance, they tended to collect in bunches. Two here, three there. That left sections of the ramparts technically unwatched.
