Lotus and Thorn

by Sara Wilson Etienne

  CHAPTER 1

  657 Days Later

  I CROUCHED BEHIND a crumbling wall and pulled out my scope. Through two scratched camera lenses and a bit of plastic pipe, I scanned the blue haze hovering over the ridge of dunes. Something was moving on the other side. And nothing that moved was good.

  Right now, I was weak, and I was trapped. Our crewboss, Suji, had chosen this ravine—a little pocket between the mountains and the dunes—after the first symptoms of Red Death had shown themselves. The crescent of cliffs at our backs meant we only needed one lookout to keep an eye on the desert to the east. And there were enough decaying buildings to hide our movements. Suji said if we were lucky, no one would notice us.

  But we were not lucky.

  Yesterday, the vultures started screeching and circling, signaling to everyone in Tierra Muerta that there’d been death. That we were vulnerable. And by tonight, the stink would lure the wild dogs down from the mountains.

  But the dogs hardly mattered, because the men would get here first. I’d spotted them a few hours ago, a flash high up on the dunes—the noon sun bouncing off something metal. Now, as the sun dropped behind the mountains, the men had given up on even the pretense of stealth. I watched them through my scope . . . exiles with mangy beards sharpening knives. Swigging mezcal. Always keeping one eye on what they could see of our camp.

  They were waiting till dark. Then they’d come down here and pick us clean—food, scrap, and any recruits who might be willing. Or unwilling for that matter. And they could afford to wait to attack because we had nowhere else to go. It wouldn’t be long now. The only good news was that it looked like there were two different crews—they’d have to fight each other as well as me.

  Keeping low, I scurried back through the maze of ruins to camp. Though after two days without food and one without water, it was more like a limping stagger. “There’s two groups waiting to ambush. Thirty, maybe forty men in all,” I said.

  “Time for you to go.” Suji groaned as I ducked into the tent; she started coughing, blood splattering out of her mouth. Seizures racking through her.

  I’d thought she was too far gone to speak, but evidently she was still in the fighting ring with Red Death.

  My teeth clenched, crunching grit between them. “How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not going to abandon you.”

  I was fighting too. For the past three days, I’d been battling to save Suji’s life—to save all their lives.

  Suji managed to open her eyes. They were two gaping red holes in a sea of bruises. She looked like a monster from a fairy tale. She looked like Death.

  “Water.” The word gurgled up from her, as she forced air through the blood filling her lungs. And the surge of energy was gone. Seeping out with her blood. Her body curling her into a tight ball—as if death was unmaking her, returning her to the womb.

  “It’s okay.” I dropped to my knees and laid my hand lightly on her chest, breathing with her. Aching to breathe for her. “I’m here.”

  Suji reached for the water jug strapped to her nearby pack, but she was too weak to manage it.

  “I got it.” It was empty—had been since yesterday—but I doubted she’d notice at this point. Pulling the knife from her belt, I sliced through the rope holding the jug in place. Carefully, I managed to coerce a tiny droplet down the side. She closed her eyes as it reached her swollen tongue.

  “Are they all gone?” Her hand searched the empty sand next to her for her wife—forgetting we’d lost Maria yesterday.

  I was glad there was no water left in me for tears. I owed it to Suji to answer her with clear eyes. “Yes. They’re all waiting for you.”

  Three days ago, after we found the ancient remains of the shuttle, Suji had been the first to show signs of Red Death. It’d happened so fast. If Red Death found you, it usually made itself known in a matter of days. But her symptoms had appeared in minutes.

  The sudden fever. The speckled rash. And the undeniable bloodshot eyes. One by one, the women of the crew had followed, as they had always followed her—their organs liquefying inside of them. But Suji had outlasted them all, making sure they’d been taken care of before she would let go.

  And she’d never flinched. Not when she’d held the body of her dying lover, not when the pain was so fierce she’d passed out. Suji had clawed and spat and fought the plague every second. There was a reason she was our crewboss even though she was young. Only twenty-two to my seventeen. Then again, no one lasted long in exile.

  Now the fight was almost over. Red Death had stolen even her bitter smile and mutated Suji’s brown skin into an unrecognizable purple bruise. Her lips were cracked and red pus oozed from them. Her body had broken down until it could no longer hold its own blood—it leaked from her eyes and nose and ears. Streaking her skin.

  “Then . . .” Suji’s bloodshot eyes struggled to focus on mine again. “You’re the only one. You have to go back for it . . . Just don’t let me rot out here.”

  I knew what she was asking of me, but I had no words to give her. If I tried to speak now, I would fall apart. There’s only so much ripping a soul can take before it shreds to pieces. Before it disintegrates. My body ached with hunger and thirst and exhaustion, but it was this soul death I truly feared. Because in my deepest of secret places, I knew that all I wanted was to lie down there next to Suji. To fold in on myself. To let this desert take me.

  But she deserved better than that from me. Because if Suji had the choice, she would live. She would fight.

  And I would too.

  So I used the first trick Suji’d taught me when I got to Tierra Muerta. The world wants you to believe it’s all noise and bigness, she’d say. That’s how it thinks to beat you. But survival is in the details . . . If you look close enough, there’s always a way.

  I sat in that treacherous valley—watching, listening for it.

  The wind gusted, slap-slapping against the tent. Trying to pull it from its anchors.

  Night shadows crawled their way across the ravine. Snaking between the dunes standing guard at its mouth.

  Bright red blood trickled from Suji’s eye. One drop among thousands that’d already been lost in this place.

  And I saw it. Saw how I would make it out of there alive. Or at least, how I would try to.

  But first, there was Suji. I wiped the blood from her face with the sleeve of my tattered shirt—one more stain wouldn’t hurt. I’d been coughed on, bled on, puked on, and a lot of other things I didn’t want to remember, and I hadn’t so much as spiked a fever. Red Death always passed over a few. What would the Abuelos say if they knew someone so Corrupted as myself had survived out here? Their God certainly had a twisted sense of humor.

  “Promise you won’t leave me here.” Suji forced me to face her, laying a burning hand on mine—her five fingers against my six. She’d never been one to shrink away from my Corruption. Not like the others . . . even here in Tierra Muerta.

  I opened my mouth, but the words stuck in my scorched throat.

  “I’m your crewboss.” Her eyes flashed with the last of the light inside her. “Now promise me!”

  I still had her knife in my hand. I gripped the handle hard, letting the metal edge bite into my skin—the pain driving out my grief. Fortifying me. I touched Suji’s chest, her heart beating weakly, the heat of her fever searing through her soaked shirt.

  “I promise.”

  The knife glinted in the hot afternoon sun. And—with a single slash—I slit her throat.

  CHAPTER 2

  IT WAS OVER in seconds. Suji didn’t have much blood left to spill. The blade glistened red and I thrust it into the sand to clean it. Then I slid the dagger back into her belt.

  Only when I looked at her face—at the shell of what had been Suji—did I cave. My stomach cramped, doubling me over in the sand. But there was nothing in there to lose. As my forehead p
ressed into the hot grit, I let the smell of dust and sagebrush and sweat blot out everything else.

  You don’t know what you’re capable of until you’re doing it. I didn’t make the mistake of looking at Suji’s face again as I wrapped the blanket around her and dragged her into the pile with the rest. There were sixteen bodies on the pyre now. I forced myself to think of them like that. Not my crew. Not my friends. Just bodies.

  I wouldn’t let the horror of it swallow me whole. But I knew it would be there . . . waiting for me. If I’d learned anything in Tierra Muerta, it was that you couldn’t escape retribution. I’d seen it a hundred times in the desert. Greediness and cruelty always met themselves in the end. And grief was the same. Even now, I could feel it pooling inside of me—a kind of liquid ache seeping into my hollow, fractured places. I knew I would have to pay the price of the last three days. But that would have to come later. Because right now, there was no one coming to save me.

  When I’d first been exiled and walked out into Tierra Muerta, I was dehydrated and starving and too stupid to know not to travel at night or in the worst of the sun. And it’d been Suji who had found me and given me her share of water and made me part of her crew. And now she was dead, and the only single fucking thing I could do about that was to save myself.

  A kind of holy anger seized me as I hauled everything in our camp to the pyre. Tents, blankets, scrap, I threw it all on. I wasn’t about to leave anything for those bastards on the dunes to scavenge. Finally, I added the tires—our makeshift chairs—so they formed a ring around the edge of the unlit bonfire. Everything was brittle-dry in this barren desert on this barren planet . . . It might take a few minutes, but they’d burn. Everything burned.

  Finally, I uncorked the last bottle of mezcal and took a swig—letting it roar down my throat. We might have broken the law, we might be Indignos, but we still deserved respect. So I intoned the cremation prayer freeing their souls from their bones.

  “May the fire cleanse you. May you take wing from the ashes and be remade. May God find you worthy.” But the words felt feeble in the face of such loss, their meaning robbed by what I’d seen of God’s “mercy” over the past few years. I wasn’t sure I could believe in a God who was this cruel. I threw the rest of the alcohol over the mound, dousing the bodies. Then, taking a glowing stick from the morning’s bonfire, I lit the pyre.

  Fire ate around the edges—first tracing the path of the alcohol. Then the blankets caught, the flame sinking its teeth into the pile of debris and corpses. Smoke stung my eyes. I wanted to think it could burn away the hell of the last three days, but all that happened was the stench of burning flesh and plastic filled my nose. I pulled on my sandmask but it barely dulled the smell.

  Turning my back on the pyre, I darted through the rubble and half buildings to the low wall where I’d left my belongings. I loaded up my pack—my empty water jug, my blanket, my book. Then I tied the whole thing onto the long plastic sledge we used for hauling Finds across the sand. A door from the shuttle we’d found was already strapped to the slideboard—the only piece small enough for us to salvage—and I cinched my pack on top of it. Then I grabbed one of the harnesses, but they were all tangled up together. As I worked on the knot, my extra fingers caught on the straps, pulling the mess tighter. I tried again, but I couldn’t loosen the snarl.

  “Mierda!” I threw the harnesses on the ground and buried my face in my hands.

  Then I heard my dad’s voice in my ear, his massive hand on my shoulder, saying, “Loosen your grip. Loosen your breath. Loosen the knot.”

  He wasn’t there, of course, but I heard his words anyway. They were sewn into my center.

  I took a deep breath, picked up the harnesses, easing the thick straps apart from each other—taking my time, even as I knew I was running out of it. When I finally untangled them, I sliced away the extra sets of harnesses. When fully loaded with salvage, the slideboard would be hauled by four or five people—but right now, the extra straps would only get in the way.

  The air was growing hazy by the time I finally slipped on the remaining harness. I triple-checked the fastenings on the shuttle door and my pack, then eyed my route out of there. A small dip between the two sand dunes. Dusk already draped the path—but the mountains were still rimmed with reds and purples—there was enough light to see where I was going. And any second, the men would spot the smoke from the pyre and realize I wasn’t going to let them take what was mine. I made myself focus.

  I needed to get out of there. I needed to get past the men without being seen. I needed to make it to the Exchange to trade for water and food. I needed to survive, not just for myself, but because I was the only one alive who’d heard the voice over the shuttle’s radio. The only one who knew how to contact Earth. After all the sermons and laws and Rememberings, this could be the Citizens’ chance.

  A shout went up from the dunes and all at once, the men came pouring down the hill. Sunset gave their faces a gruesome cast and their mouths gaped, howling in anger and battle—knowing I was burning the very things they needed to survive. I stayed crouched behind that wall, inhaling acrid smoke through my sandmask as they charged toward me. Pulling out my knife, I got ready.

  My heart was racing with the same call to battle. Suji liked to call it the euphoria. It drowned out fear and reason, and by the time the first of them reached the ruins, everything inside was screaming at me to fight. The men were already wheezing in the smoke, their shirts torn and their rank beards matted with sand. You can take them, a voice shouted in my head. But this time it was not my father—it was the madness of the fight.

  One of the men sprinted right past me—so close I could smell the putrid sweat of him. His eyes were crazed as he started pulling things from the mass of bodies and flames—salvaging what supplies he could. The wind pushed the smoke farther out into the ravine, not enough yet to truly hide me but enough to tighten my lungs. I tried not to cough, counting the men as they passed, knowing that any second one of them might notice me.

  Six. Eleven. Seventeen.

  Almost.

  Then, when I couldn’t risk waiting any longer, there was a loud popping and the tires finally caught fire, spewing thick, dark smoke into the camp.

  Now.

  I plunged out from hiding place—dragging the slideboard with me—and into the oncoming flood of exiles. Making for the cleft between the two dunes, I let the adrenaline take me, running faster than I had in my entire life.

  They saw me, but not well. The noxious smoke was already filling the ravine and none of them had masks on. They hadn’t had time. Some made a grab for me—I dodged, giddy with the game. But most were on their knees, choking. Even with my own filter, I was gagging as I sprinted.

  I could barely see either—but I focused on moving in a straight line, keeping the trailing slideboard balanced. Ahead, I could just make out the space between the dunes. Shapes emerged out of the smoke and disappeared again. Soon dusk would enfold us and I’d be safe. I’d almost made it. A sharp call of triumph barked out of me.

  Then a face solidified out of the smog. It was different from the rest of the frenzied mob. This one had a sandmask on and he was just standing in my path. Like he’d been waiting for me. He reached out and I swerved, dodging past him.

  But I went barreling headlong into a second man. My brain isolated every detail, searching for weaknesses, like in the final blows of a fight. The man’s beard was threaded through with grey, but it was trimmed neatly—square along his jawline. A sandmask hid most of this one’s face as well, but what I saw in his eyes was disconcerting. Not anger or greed or lust. But a patient cunning. Like he knew whatever he wanted would simply come to him.

  And I had. Despite my careful plan, I’d run straight to him. I managed to dance away, but barely—my slideboard made me clumsy. And not two meters on, there was a third man . . . They were everywhere. I switched directions again, but the
sand slid out from under my feet. I skidded sideways and the man with the grey beard grabbed my arm.

  “Over here!” He shouted to the exiles around him. But I’d come too far to be taken as some man’s Find. His words turned into a howl as I jabbed my knife into his ribs.

  I shook him off, but there was another one. And another. I ran, lashing out with my blade as I went. Screams telling me when I’d connected with flesh.

  The slideboard was heavy with the shuttle piece strapped to it and the thing almost took me down a couple times—swinging wide whenever I changed directions. But I couldn’t cut it loose. No point making it to the Exchange with nothing to trade. It’d simply mean I’d die there, rather than here.

  The wind shifted and the black smoke thickened, pressing down on us. The last of the light tried to filter through, but I could barely see anything.

  Not even a meter away from me, a man shouted, “Where’d she go?” and an arm jetted out of the swirling clouds.

  I froze, then backed away from his grasping hand.

  Another man tore out of the haze and snatched at me. This time, I darted to the left, jerking sharply as I did, so that my slideboard whipped around behind me, knocking him down. Running him over.

  The surge of smoke pushed its way between the dunes—and I pushed with it. Dusk and haze were swallowing the desert, and I disappeared into it. Running low and fast. Staying in its shelter.

  Soon there were no more grabbing hands. And eventually even the screams and shouts faded. I don’t know how long I snaked through the shadows of the dunes. Until the smoke cleared and the stars were the only light left in the sky.

  The frenzy of the fight cleared too and left me vulnerable. In my head, my blade sliced through the thin skin at Suji’s throat over and over. One by one, I hauled the bodies of my crew onto the pile, heavy arms dragging—leaving gouges behind them in the sand like the tracks of some nightmare animal. I jabbed my knife into the bearded man again, feeling it slide between his ribs.