I took a deep breath, removed the water bottles and bags of food from Caroline and Sid’s supplies, whispered I’m so sorry, and returned to the field. My mind spun with pent-up shock and grief. Nothing made sense anymore. All I knew for sure was that Sonny was headed east, and I had to go north with precious few items packed away in my backpack and a baby slung around my torso.
Chapter Twenty Two
North. It was the one direction we had dared not explore too deeply. When Earl, Sonny, and Fred had returned from their expedition, they had horrible accounts of what we would find if we ventured in this direction. It was a killing field. Vehicles scattered across the highway for miles. Bodies on top of bodies, as if they’d died climbing over one another.
Why was I going north? South wasn’t an option: it was flattened by the initial blast and fires still raged along the horizon. East we’d already covered for miles and the west was just more of the same: burned out townships barely capable of sustaining life. The north was unexplored beyond the word of three friends, friends that had become enemies.
I was still very scared, but I had been given hope. I had been in contact, to some degree, with our angel. That same angel Connor had seen and Joel had spoken to, that had guided Jake’s last act and who had showed Sidney his path in overtaking the flags. This angel of ours had actively addressed many of us over the course of the last year, but never me. I couldn’t understand how a guardian angel could let it get so bad for us. It seemed a desperate attempt to feel some sort of optimism. So transparent.
I was convinced that this angel concept had driven Joel mad. That and his addiction to the marijuana we’d pilfered that first week from the barn garden. Over time the stress of leadership, the angst he felt over the angel’s plans concerning his destiny, and the constant smoking overwhelmed him. Then, when Connor was executed in front of us by Gareth, Joel had snapped completely, and to some degree I had blamed this angel of his for having ever causing Joel such hopelessness and despair. But when he finally spoke to me, I listened. It was an out. And so, I marched north.
Before I had ventured far, I felt something guiding me. Maybe it was just intuition. Or maybe Joel’s angel was finally giving me some kind of hope to move forward on. Never before had I needed hope more. Even upon discovering the death of my entire family. Even upon learning that the world as we knew it had ceased to exist. Now, alone, with a baby strapped to my chest, I needed hope more than ever. So I listened. And something told me Joel was right. I should go north.
I continued, through my fatigue and fear. Travelling on foot with a new baby was going to prove difficult. If he wasn’t crying, he was attempting to sleep or feed. The rumors I’d heard that breastfeeding was a cruel endeavor - something I’d picked up during a stint in the maternity ward during my final month of co-op – were true. But Leif had no other option, so we persevered. Sometimes it felt endless. He would cry for an hour, feed for ten minutes, then an hour later start all over again.
Leif had not ‘attached’ to my breasts like I had expected. Every other animal on the planet seemed to effortlessly attach to their respective mother’s nipples, but human babies required weeks of practice and a team of nurses. What if this was the beginning of the end? What if nobody’s babies would suckle anymore without these expansive support structures? I don’t think Leif had had a satisfying feeding since he’d been born. Mostly he would fall asleep exhausted, never full. But looking at his face, so tiny, so helpless, gave me strength. I would live for him. I would do whatever I had to, to protect him.
*****
The days relinquished their light to the evenings as the sun was selfishly swallowed by the horizon. A gathering of storm clouds overhead. That night I settled down in a field as I had the night before, a single tree whose canopy of leaves had disappeared long ago offering little cover.
As I took a closer survey of our surroundings I saw a light flickering in the distance to the east. “Is that a house?” I wondered aloud.
It looked like candle light. But how far away was it? My perception of distance had all but left me. The monotonous flatness of the landscape and the colors, still mostly variations of grey, removed much of my ability to actually decipher one mile from ten. With so much of the forests burned to the ground and the old cattle and corn fields empty, the openness of everything left a person feeling very vulnerable. Turning back, I watched the clouds mirror the rest of the landscape – shades of grey. Up from down seemed a difficult separation.
I decided to move toward the light. A rusted cattle fence once employed to keep the cows and sheep from entering the adjacent corn field stood as a barrier between us and that light. I ran my hand across the brittle wire, careful not to take a sliver. The fence stood five feet high, just four or five inches shorter than me.
“We have to climb it, Leif,” I told him. Our only other option was to follow the fence south until we hit the road again, but there was no time before the darkness made it impossible to navigate. I rubbed his back, his body wrapped closely to mine.
Who might that light belong to? What if it were a group of men? What if they hadn’t seen a woman in months? I had my pistol, Joel’s gun. And I had a few rounds of ammunition to go with it. I’d shied away from killing in the past, but I resolved myself to do whatever I had to do to protect my baby.
I threw my jacket on top of the fence. Climbing up was easy enough - it was navigating my legs over the top that proved difficult. The fence began to wiggle violently under my weight as my right leg shifted to the other side. “Shit, shit, shit…”
The top wire snapped as I attempted to lift my left leg. I tumbled to the wet earth with a thud, narrowly avoiding crushing Leif. He began to wail. Picking myself up, I pulled him out of his swaddle and kissed his cheeks, bouncing him for a time in my arms until he settled. He was hungry; so was I.
Suddenly there was a voice above me.
“Come child.” It was a woman’s voice. How was I caught so off guard? How did this woman know I was here? The crying. Still, where the hell did she come from?
“Quickly, the rains are coming.” She took my arm and led me toward the flickering light. I followed, slowly relaxing.
It took all of one minute to reach a veranda in the middle of what might have been a yard in life. The remains of a house stood just a few meters away, mostly burned out, uninhabitable. The woman picked up the flickering gas lamp and raised it to my face. This was the light I had seen, the light I’d been drawn to like a moth.
“Come.” She bent down and lifted a trapdoor in the center of the veranda. “We’ll take you in.” The old woman gestured that I walk down a ladder affixed to a dirt wall. With little other option, and a sense that this woman was genuinely trying to help us, I carefully navigated the darkness, feeling my way down each rung until I hit solid ground.
Turning, I saw more gas lamps, leading down a long corridor. Behind me, the old woman handed me her lamp and took the lead. “Follow me.”
Chapter Twenty Three
We were in a large room. This was a bomb shelter of some kind. To my left was a massive basin. Like the fuel tank at Joel’s house. The ceiling was some twenty feet overhead and lined with cables and piping. The room itself was quite cozy: a smokeless fire burned in the far corner while rugs and furs seemed to cover the place from floor to ceiling. The lighting was dim, but my eyes rapidly adjusted to take it all in. The air was dry, and smelled of steel and leather.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“This is my home,” the woman answered. “Our home,” she corrected herself, panning an outstretched arm across the wall to my right. Here three other women sat staring at me. Each seemed to be performing some task; one knitting, another chewing at something, while the third rubbed a stone against a hide of some kind.
“Hello,” I said meekly. Despite my fatigue and bewilderment, I was impressed. This was a well structured hideout. Had these four women survived all this time underground? “I’m Sara,” I continued. “Th
is is Leif.” I rubbed my hand in a circular motion on the baby still wrapped across my chest.
The women nodded at me. I turned back to the old lady who brought me to the hideout. She was placing the lamp on a table, which was stacked high with dried, prepackaged fruit. “Have a mango, dear.”
I was still wary, having learned most things were not what they seemed. Still, the fruit proved too much to resist. Eating the dried fruit, I felt a surge of energy.
“Your baby,” said my hostess. “He is how old?”
“Just two days.”
“Just two days,” she repeated. She looked past me. “The child is two days old.” The others nodded.
“Two days is right,” said another one; I could see now that she was chewing the end of a rope. Bizarre.
This back and forth puzzled me, and since my baby was the topic of discussion, I fought down suspicion and worry.
“He is a Gemini.” Another of the three women at the wall spoke up. “The messenger God rules his house from Mercury.” She set her rock down and stared straight at me. “Instill a sense of destiny in Leif, and he will be that which he is meant to be.”
The suggestion that Leif had a destiny upset me. Talk of destiny was all Joel ever spoke of in his sleep towards the end. To these women, Leif should only have been a baby. My brow raised and creased. My hostess read my face, but ventured another question.
“Where was Leif born, Sara?”
“Just an eight hour walk from here, to the south.”
“It is as it should be then,” said the last of the three women at the wall. “As you predicted.”
“As Tages predicted,” corrected my hostess.
“He is great,” the three said in unison.
This was becoming alarming. Was this a cult of sorts? Were they lulling me into a false sense of security so they could take my baby from me? My jaw flexed.
“We ask, Sara, because we need to be sure.” The old woman rested a hand on my shoulder.
“Sure of what?”
“We’ve seen,” said the woman chewing the rope, her eyes narrowed to slits.
“What is it you think you’ve seen?” I crossed my arms over Leif, shielding him from what I feared might come.
“Tages has shown us.”
“Who is Tages?”
“Tages is a divine being, with the appearance of a child, but the wisdom of an old man,” explained my hostess as she circled round the table. “Tages is the ancient seer from the Etruscan religion.”
“The Etruscan religion?” I did not relax my guard.
“It is an ancient religion which foretold everything that would ever come to pass.”
“And my son is mentioned?”
“In not so many words, yes.”
“How can you say that?”
“As we saw this end, we have seen a future end.” The old woman at the table picked up a long wooden stick, a staff.
“Your religion predicted this end? The Reaper?”
“It predicted the outcome of the Reaper’s threats, and is what drove us underground.”
“You were prepared.”
“We were.” The woman chewing the rope appeared at my side suddenly. I jumped.
“Jesus Christ!” I shouted. Leif jolted, cried out. I pulled the sling over my head and set him on the table, all the while frowning at the thin woman. I turned him over and rubbed his back. He began to settle down.
“Tell me what you know,” I demanded.
“Your child is guarded,” the hostess explained, her head tilting sideways as she inspected him.
She picked him up and pulled him close to her emaciated face. Sunken eyes darted back and forth as she examined Leif. She blew along the silhouette of his head. I grimaced. What must this woman’s breath smell of – eyes of newt and wing of bat? She studied him with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. Why had I handed my son over to this woman? Admittedly I had felt immediately drawn to her. But I could not be too trusting.
“He is guarded by the others. He has an old soul.”
I shook my head and retrieved him. “What are you saying?”
“Your son’s aura is like fire.” She looked as though she had come out of a daze.
“So, what should that mean to me?”
“That means that he is a person of interest to the other side.”
The other side, the angel, the undertones of what she was explaining made me want to scream. I became visibly shaken.
“Your aura spoke to me the moment I saw you,” she said quietly. “I know you are confused, frustrated, angry, and so very sad. You have lost much, but no more than everyone else. It is what you have gained that is important now.”
She understood so much about me, that I lowered my guard slightly. “Then what is it about us? Why has the other side shown such an interest in me?”
“Everything is for a reason.”
“You wouldn’t be so sure if you heard my story.”
“Everything,” she repeated. “We play off one another.” She circled the table again. “It’s like Shakespeare wrote: ‘All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…’”
“What is it you believe then? Is it fate, destiny?”
“I believe; that is enough.”
“Do you believe everything that will ever be has already been determined?” I still had a hard time buying this theory. How could any sort of God or higher power have orchestrated the destruction of all it had created?
“There are many different paths, but ultimately, only one can play itself out. For that, we are all responsible.”
“So choice - free will, that exists?”
“Yes, of course, this would all be little more than a dress rehearsal otherwise. For every path a script will be followed, but the path is a choice made by us all.”
“What choice did we all have in the Reaper’s decision?” I asked, challenging the old woman’s theories.
“I only speak the wisdom of the Etruscans. That the path is written is how seers have seen. That is how I am able to see.”
“You see the future?”
“Not in so many words. Destiny reveals itself to me through my practices. The Etruscans believed that among us exists an immutable course of divine will. They were devoted to the question and interpretation of destiny.”
“Are you a psychic?”
“No. I admit, I am able to see auras, which is the energy emitted from an individual, but my abilities to read events and chart people’s destinies are granted through the ancient practices passed down by the Etruscans.”
“Who are the Etruscans?”
“An ancient people that were conquered and integrated into the Roman empire over two thousand years ago. They were wise in their ability to read the signs in nature by asking questions to Tages, their profit seer.”
“How does it work?”
“You are curious, Sara. That’s good; we have much to teach you.” She lifted her stick and continued. “I use my staff to draw out an invisible frame to the sky and horizon.” Her staff was a twisted branch maybe five feet in length and very thin. “Then I ask a question. The answer is interpreted in nature’s reaction. It is a complex science. Perhaps more of an art.”
My initial interest in this complete stranger’s religion had grown into something more. What if she could tell me what would happen next? What if she could guide me and my son to safety? As crazy as it all sounded, the last year of my life demanded I approach this woman with an open mind.
“How can you be so sure it works?”
“I have seen it work, Sara. I have counseled dozens of people in my life through these means. When the Grimm Reaper was first mentioned in the news I drew my box and I watched the sky. I asked the question; ‘What might this threat bring about to the world?’ Within two minutes I had my answer. A raven flew into my magical field, and upon entering it dropped out of the sky. Dead.”
>
My skin crawled; was it the story or the story teller? Either way, this woman both unsettled and reassured me. What if she could help me make sense of this chaos?
“The dead bird was nature’s answer…” I trailed off.
“Yes, an obvious interpretation of what would come to pass.”
“And so did you try to stop it?”
“As powerful as one person’s actions can be, I knew that any warning on my part would fall on deaf ears. The powers that be would not succumb to the Reaper’s demands. We all knew that. And when five billion people share a common idea, it is impossible to change that path.”
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