by C.L. Bevill
* * *
It didn’t go the way I would have liked. The consensus was to send a small group of people (i.e., men with weapons) to recover their bodies and possibly track the Burned Man. The instructions were to go in quickly, never leave the group, and ensure that Max and Thad weren’t still alive.
“He likes to burn things,” I added morosely. “A watch should be kept while the others are sleeping.”
Gideon nodded at me.
Ethan frowned. It was clear that he didn’t appreciate the advice. I thought I knew what he saw. A weak girl who had drugged her companions to do something risky. A girl who was barely an adult but who he didn’t think acted like one. What could I really offer that was of value?
“A house that’s away from forest, a house that’s not on the edge of town,” I went on regardless of Ethan’s attitude. “Zach can tell you where we stayed that night. It’s got a view that will let anyone see what’s coming.”
“Zach can go,” Gideon decided with a sideways glance at me. My muscles jerked in unspoken objection, but I didn’t say anything. After a moment, something else occurred to me.
“Robert,” I said. “He’s got a way of tracking…things. Animals. He should go, as well.”
Calida said, “And what do we do if we find the Burned Man, Sophie?” Her face was serious; she wanted to know what was next as much as anyone else.
I looked at the fire, reminded of the fires that he had set while we were fleeing from him. “I couldn’t kill him. I don’t expect someone else to commit murder. It’s not right.” Then I looked at Calida. “He’s a murderer, a vicious psychopath who will kill more members of the group if given another chance. But this is a new society. Have you thought about how crimes committed in this group are to be addressed?”
Leander took a deep breath. “We haven’t given it much thought. So far everyone has been so glad to be with other people, problems of the former society haven’t cropped up yet. Nothing’s been stolen. No one’s been assaulted. Everyone seems fairly stable and content. I can only think of trivial disagreements.”
“And when the worst happens, what will you do?” I asked. Speaking of the devil, I had to play that old familiar role, the devil’s advocate. I didn’t like it much but it felt like no one else was willing to take on the role.
“Punishment of some sort,” Ethan answered. “Depending on the crime. But we’re talking about the Burned Man. We’re talking about a crime so atrocious that even our society would have demanded the ultimate punishment.” Everyone knew what he meant – death.
“Who is going to perform the execution, Ethan?” I asked carefully. “Who gets to be the one to push the button, or use the axe, or push the stump out from under the Burned Man’s legs in order to let him strangle to death from a rope? Who gets to become a murderer in order to stop a murderer?”
Sinclair cleared his throat. “We could draw lots.”
“And if it’s Calida who draws the lot, for example,” I said, “how would that sit with you, Ethan?”
“She’s pregnant,” Ethan snarled at me. “She shouldn’t have to do anything like that.”
“And Elan?” I asked. “He’s too young, right? How about you, Ethan? Would you be able to sleep at night? Could you be okay with slicing the Burned Man’s throat? Or would we find some other way of doing it? Push him off the highest cliff? Maybe use an axe to chop off his head? You could wear a hood so no one would know, but everyone would know anyway.”
Gideon sighed, and the sound made me stop speaking. “You’ve made your point, Sophie.”
“What about jailing him?” Leander asked.
“I don’t see how well that would lie with everyone,” I said. “You’d have to build a prison. You’d have to have people guarding the prison every moment of the day and night. This man, this beast who walks in man’s form, isn’t like us. I don’t know what he was before the change, but he could never be rehabilitated. He could never be freed. And if he escaped, he would probably kill someone or more than one. We’d be charged with caring for him until the day he died of natural causes. ”
Calida grimaced. “I can’t see that people would want to take care of a man who had killed two of our own. There would be dissent. There might be more than dissent.” She frowned unhappily. “Isn’t there another answer?”
“Banish him,” Sinclair suggested. “I could take him in a boat to the Big Mamas’ islands. Let him live there, if he can. Leave him with minimal supplies. Possibly offer to re-supply in six weeks or several times a year.”
“Sophie has informed me that traveling in a boat might be unsafe. There are new creatures out in the ocean that may be hazardous to us,” Gideon interjected.
“Things that are bigger than the Big Mamas?” Ethan asked incredulously.
I shrugged. “We didn’t have a measuring tape. It looked like it really liked fish and not particularly small ones either.”
“Oh,” he said, obviously trying to think about what could be that large.
“We need options here,” Gideon said. “Tomorrow we’ll meet as the larger group and let everyone know what happened. We’ll make a decision then. I’m leaning toward a jail. We could even take advantage of the prison up past Crescent City. It was a supermax facility. Perhaps it would be good enough to hold this man.”
“If a lack of electricity wouldn’t be a problem,” I said before I could close my mouth. It was possible to go too far with a big mouth. God knew I did it all the time.
“That’s something else to consider,” Gideon acknowledged.
Sinclair snorted. “I think Sophie’s new job is to put forth all the things we don’t want to hear. A good position considering our obvious lack of healthy paranoia. We haven’t had to fear much of anything except the new creatures, and they mostly seem to be busy adjusting to a new world.”
“So glad I could help,” I said dryly.
The meeting broke up with no decisions made.
Gideon held me back as the others filed out the door. Ethan would be taking someone out to each of the guards’ sites to inform them of the need for extra vigilance. Sinclair was going to talk to the men designated to undertake recovery of the bodies. I could have told them not to go, that it would be fruitless, but I didn’t think they would listen to me on that call.
When we were alone, Gideon said, “When did you change your mind?”
I looked away from his youthful face. What did he see when he looked at my face, I pondered. A seventeen-year-old girl with all her dreams bashed in? A girl with a mark on her face that glowed in the dark and a connection to something otherworldly? Someone who could help them to survive? “About what?”
“You’ve started to use ‘our’ and ‘we’ in the conversations,” Gideon stated baldly.
I shuddered. I didn’t want to be part of the bigger group. It meant I was going to inevitably get hurt again. So I shook my head at him. He made a little face and shrugged. Then he melted into the darkness.
I hesitated at the door. Somewhere out there Zach was waiting for me. I turned around and went out the back of the office building.
Someone else was waiting for me there.
