Botanicaust

by Linsey, Tam

  Her reward was a half bottle of semi-liquid she believed Levi could swallow. She gently rested a palm on his forehead, distressed at how hot his skin felt.

  “Levi, food.”

  His eyes didn’t open, although his bloodied, cracked lips tried to form words. “Water.”

  She gave him plain water. “Plants in basket. Water here.” She put the milky fluid to his mouth and he took a sip.

  His head dropped back and he smacked his tongue. “Good. Thank you.”

  “More. Food eat.” She urged him to take another sip. This time he managed a large gulp before stopping to breathe.

  The sun beat down on his exposed torso and would soon be overhead. If they were going to stay in one spot, he needed shelter. She scanned the landscape. Other than the river, the land was flat, without any hope of cover. Nearby, a triad of yuvee saplings cast a pocket of shadow, and although she hated the thought of boxing herself in with plants, she had an idea.

  Taking the blanket, she tossed it over the short trees. With a broken stick, she maneuvered the fabric into a sort of tent between the branches. It wouldn’t stand up to a wind, but it would keep the sun off.

  She helped Levi fumble upright. His eyes were still swollen shut, but once he gained his feet, he seemed sturdy. Leaning on her, he accompanied her to the tent and sat where she lowered him.

  “Sleep here. No sun,” she said.

  “Shade. Good.” He drank again, deeply, and Tula sighed with relief. But she’d used most of the water to wash him. The bottles needed filling.

  “Levi sleep.” She put her robe in his hands and urged him to lie down. “I get water.”

  He fumbled for her hand and clutched it. “Watch for cannibals. They will be near water.”

  “Yes.” She loaded the empty bottles into Levi’s basket and stepped out of the shelter, taking a good look around for indications of people. Cannibals could be hiding anywhere. Hunting.

  She hurried to the river, knife once again clutched in her hand. She thought about leaving it with Levi, but he couldn’t see to use it anyway. Avoiding the burned clearing, she wandered further downriver. Tamarisk trees grew thick along the banks, and she had to ease her way through the trunks to reach the water. Trapped between the river and the weeds, she filled bottles with brownish water. Across the channel, she saw a spiky stand of the weeds Levi harvested for roots, the fluff at the tips of the stalks drifting lazily to the sluggish water.

  Maybe there were some of the plants on this side of the river. A water bug skated by, but she was too slow to catch it. Her stomach purred at the thought of beetles. She hadn’t had protein in days. If she could catch a few bugs, she and Levi could both eat.

  Tucking the knife inside the basket, she searched the water around the base of the trees. The skating insects were too quick. She wondered how Mo found beetles when he was on the Burn. He said they were in the trees, and these were the only kind of trees she’d seen besides yuvee trees.

  She studied one of the reddish trunks. A bead of dried sap clung to the scaly, purple bark. Did beetles eat sap? A flutter above her head drew her attention. A tiny brown and grey bird darted between the branches. She’d only ever seen birds from afar, dots in the sky at the edge of the Reaches — carrion creatures cleaning up after the Burn Operatives.

  “Bird,” she whispered. Could a bird be dangerous? Like the scorpion Levi had named for her? This animal looked harmless. Maybe even friendly. The Protectorate taught that the world past the Burn was devoid of anything but toxic plants and cannibals. But that wasn’t true. She thought about the beetles Mo brought back. The agave pines the candy maker rendered into sugar. The muskrat Levi had cooked over the fire. There was more diversity out here than she’d been led to believe.

  The tiny bird landed in the crotch of a branch. Tilting its head, it turned a bright eye on her. Then it plucked something in its beak before flitting away. A shower of fuzzy seeds floated down around her head.

  Poison! Her brain shouted like the children in Albert’s class.

  She batted at seeds as they lodged in her hair. Some went up her nose and in her mouth as she sucked in panicked breaths. She choked, swallowing granules in the process. Retching, she leaned forward, grasping a trunk for support. Sticky resin coated her palm and she jerked her hand away in terror to wipe it on her skirt, but the stuff wouldn’t come off. More seeds drifted down around her, surrounding her like the cannibals who’d attacked Levi.

  Water bottles forgotten, she crashed through the trees. Before, she’d done her best not to touch the trunks, but now she shoved them aside in terror. All her years of being warned about plants crowded into her brain at once. She couldn’t get away. The floating seeds followed her. Showers of fluff rained everywhere. Sap stuck to her hands and skin as she blindly lurched from trunk to trunk, panting in dread. She finally cleared the trees and collapsed on the dry red soil, chest heaving until her vision spun out from under her.

  Levi woke, his right shoulder throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Unable to open his eyelids enough to see anything but a slim crack of fuzzy light, he sat up. His left wrist shot bolts of pain up his arm and he fell back in agony.

  “Tula.” His voice creaked from his throat like a rusty door hinge.

  No answer. She’d gone for water — how long ago? Everything since the flying machine felt like a bad dream. Forcing one eye open a tiny bit more, he spotted the open emergency kit holding a few meager packages of gauze and a spray bottle of antiseptic. Outside the blanket tent, something moved on the rocky ground. His heart lurched. Cannibals? What if they’d already gotten Tula? Her ploy last night had worked brilliantly, but if they caught her unaware, she’d be skewered.

  He rocked forward without using his hand. Hot blood trickled across the cracked burn on his shoulder blade, tracing trails of fire along his spine. He held his breath against the agony of the bruises on his lower back as it wrapped a fist around his kidneys and clamped his belly in a vice. His heart seemed to stop and he once again collapsed. They had to get out of here, but he could barely blink without pain, let alone travel. Be a man, Levi. Get up. He trembled, building his courage to try again, but failed. He released his breath and slumped on the hard ground.

  Hadn’t he seen pills in the emergency kit? Maybe they were painkillers. He cracked an eye and managed to shuffle through the kit. No pills.

  “Tula,” he called again. How he wanted Tula. As much to be sure she was safe as for the comfort her presence provided. He felt horrible for treating her so badly after the duster incident. She’d saved him twice. And all he’d done was ogle her body and nearly kill her with leaves and drowning. He inhaled long and slow, remembering when he’d put his mouth on hers to resuscitate her at the pool.

  Eyes still shut, Levi frowned. Two times, now, he’d touched her lips with his and forgotten himself. He was prone to a woman’s influence, but with Tula he truly could not keep control. Like he was drugged. Hadn’t he even wondered that before?

  The beginning of an idea took shape in Levi’s mind. Physical contact with Tula produced something — alcohol, morphine, aphrodisiac, whatever. Would simply kissing her be enough to kill pain? More importantly, would kissing her be too much to resist … the rest? He remembered the warm evergreen scent that was all Tula, the silky texture of her skin beneath his hands. The single-minded purpose her lips gave him.

  Lord, forgive me.

  He needed to kiss her.

  After a long time lying on the hard ground near the tamarisk thicket, Tula caught her breath and acknowledged no chemical waves were poisoning her. She looked at her sap-covered arms, seeds stuck like feathers on a bird. Why wasn’t she sick?

  Maybe the suppression pills worked better than she’d been told. Or maybe not all plants are poisonous. Had the Protectorate taught her wrong? Yuvee leaves definitely poisoned her, but that didn’t seem true of the tamarisk. The sap was uncomfortable, but she wasn’t breaking out. She wasn’t unconscious. She was just sticky and crusted with dirt
in tacky patches impervious to water.

  At a loss, she retrieved the basket of water bottles and trudged back to Levi. She didn’t see any sign of cannibals, but they were out there.

  Falling to her knees beside him, she evaluated his purple, swollen eyes. “Levi?”

  He lifted his right hand and threaded his fingers through the hair at the base of her neck. With surprising strength, he pulled her down, then put his lips against hers, and her world turned upside down.

  He was in no condition to have sex. She ought to tell him no. But his lips were so gentle, so hesitant and searching. And she wanted to be with him again. To forget the world and lose herself in him and in the alkaloids rushing through her body.

  She flicked her tongue into his mouth, tasting the roughness of a split on his lip. His hand left her neck to cup her cheek, his thumb scratchy against her skin. With quiet pressure he eased her away. She rocked back onto her knees, head swimming with desire.

  Still obviously weak, he pushed to a sitting position and remained with his bruised eyes closed. Then he cracked them open and looked at her. “Medicine.”

  She stared at him through waves of desire. Her hand flew to her lips. “Medicine.” Of course. Her alkaloids. He didn’t want sex. Only the chemicals.

  He nodded contentedly. Disappointment fluttered in her breast. But he was right. They had to move.

  They packed up and Tula swung the basket over her shoulders. The bottles were heavy, but he couldn’t carry them. Every few hours, when Levi’s strength seemed to flag, she administered a kiss. They followed the river, looking for a place to cross.

  After two days, his pain was worse, and his skin burned with fever. She changed the poultices morning and night, but the cut on his arm remained swollen, stretched and gaping between the butterfly closures.

  “Bad.”

  He nodded. “Infection.”

  She sprayed the wound with the last of the antiseptic and wrapped it in the last of the gauze.

  They stopped at a cluster of cattails and Levi waded in. He’d hardly eaten anything since the cannibal attack except for one tiny fish he’d caught with the bent needle from the stitch kit, and a few longhorned beetles he’d showed her how to find in the tamarisk. Beetles were a lot harder to come by than she realized, and she’d let him eat them all, though her mouth watered at the thought of protein.

  As he waded into the cattails, she grabbed his arm. “Let me. No water. Wet. Bad.” She pointed to his arm.

  “You can’t touch plants.” He pointed in return at her hands, blistered from applications of yuvee leaves on his burned shoulder.

  Directly touching the yuvee leaves caused her blisters, but she’d been discreetly interacting with other plants while they travelled. The amarantox caused a minor reaction when touched, but neither the scraggly, finely haired weed nor the round, thorny tumbleweed appeared to affect her. The cattails would be another test.

  She pushed past him into the water and yanked at the stalks. Getting the roots up proved tougher than she imagined, and she ended up with a large number of spiky fronds with no edible parts. Her hands became chapped and sore, but she ignored the pain. No overabundance of chemicals flooded her system, and the cuts on her hands were just cuts, not an allergic reaction. A growing sense of triumph swelled within her with every root she freed.

  Once she pulled up what felt like half the river, she gave Levi the roots. He sat on the bank picking at the cut on his arm. She looked from him to the infection and frowned.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”

  It needed to be drained and scrubbed. “I will do.”

  They set up camp in a hollow on the plain. The flame starter made things easy, and while Levi ate, Tula sterilized the knife blade and the scissors over the fire and gathered more leaves. They were out of gauze, and the yuvee seemed to be helping his burn. Maybe it would also help the cut on his arm.

  When the knife was ready, she knelt in front of him and cupped his face in her hands. “No worry,” she said, and kissed him. The swelling around his eyes had diminished, and although she closed her eyes out of habit when their lips met, she opened them to find him searching her face. She saw why Mo was enamored with her blue eyes.

  He pulled back and she clutched him tight. “Medicine, not hurt.” He needed a large dose for this. He relaxed and allowed her to linger. As the chemicals passed between them, she breathed his breath, eyes on his, her own control over the chemical euphoria sliding sideways. His right hand slid around her waist and pulled her tight against him, her naked breasts crushed to the fine hair on his chest. Desire arced from her nipples to her belly as his heartbeat thrummed against her.

  Her hands crept around his neck. Contact with his burn made him shudder, reminding her of her purpose. She was about to perform surgery, of a sort, and she needed to be clear headed. Reluctantly she broke contact, sucking his lower lip for an indulgent second before releasing altogether. He had a starry look in his eyes, pupils dilated in response to the chemicals.

  He put a thumb to her lips, his face serious. “You are so beautiful.”

  You won’t think so in a minute. She kissed his thumb and gripped his other hand with both of hers.

  She tested the wound, pressing at the swollen edges. The tang of putrefaction rose from the greasy looking fluid leaking out. Bits of white flesh glistened sickly in the bright sun. He sucked in as she prodded, and all thoughts of intimacy vanished.

  Her next kiss was purely clinical. To cut away the gangrene, she needed him completely drugged. Keeping her body tilted away, she placed her hands on both sides of his face, controlling the transfer.

  Once satisfied with his sedation, she laid him on his stomach and straddled his out-flung arm. Willing her hand to remain steady, she applied the knife to reopen the wound. His arm twitched.

  Blood and pus dribbled from his wrist. She rinsed away the fluids and then scraped away dead tissue with the back of the knife, her gag reflex vying for control. Gritting her teeth, she next used the scissors to cut away small sections and expose healthy tissue. He flopped like a fish, involuntary spasms shaking him as she worked, but he didn’t make a sound.

  Once the entire wound had been cleaned down to fresh tissue, she rinsed again. With a length of cattail fiber, she crudely bound the leaves against his skin.

  Releasing his arm, she leaned to the side to look at his face. He held the wadded blanket tight against his face.

  “Medicine?” she asked.

  He didn’t move. His chest rose and fell in panting breaths. She hoped he was unconscious.

  Levi had slept two days now, asking for nothing but her kisses. She forced him to drink, easing his fever with cool compresses as best she could. Today she’d collected seven beetles in an empty water bottle; the calm water around the tamarisk grove teemed with the creatures. If she caught one more, that would be four each. A feast. If Levi would wake for food.

  So far she’d seen birds, a fuzzy little black creature on the bank that disappeared into the water before she managed a close look, and a glossy-backed brown frog no bigger than her thumbnail. Why did the history books teach the Botanicaust destroyed all life? A slight movement in the water near a submerged tree caught her eye and she froze.

  In a shady pool, a dull gray thing moved. She leaned closer. A big fish swayed gently in a hollow beneath the roots. Squatting in wonder, she gaped at the animal. Levi had caught a tiny fish a few days ago, but it was dead before she saw it. This fish was as long as her fingertip to elbow, and fat. The flat face looked alien, sprouting whiskers that swayed in the slight current and beady little eyes. She wondered if it could see her.

  She slowly put her hand into the water. What did a fish feel like? Hard, like beetles? She hadn’t touched the other fish, in spite of her curiosity. The fact it had been dead bothered her.

  She eased her fingers forward into the water. Could a fish hurt her? The spiny whiskers looked potentially dangerous. But Levi had never mentioned dan
ger. She just wanted to touch its head. Another living creature that escaped the Botanicaust. When her hand slid close, the fish darted forward and latched onto her fingers.

  Tula screamed and reared back, dragging the fish out of the river with her. It’s mouth in a vice around her fingers, the fish thrashed as she floundered backwards against a wall of trunks. On instinct, she bashed her hand against the nearest tree. The fish twitched and slid flopping into a shallow basin of roots.

  Shaking, she looked at her fingers. Pinpricks of blood marked a line where the fish’s teeth had pierced her skin. The fish lay half submerged, a small trickle of blood clouding the water. Did I kill it? The thought horrified her. She picked up a floating stick and prodded the fish. It thrashed a few times and lay still.

  She had to save it. Put it back in the water. But she didn’t want to get bitten again. Grasping it by the tail, she lifted it. It was heavier than she remembered, and slimy, slipping from her grip to plop into the water at her feet. Again it flopped, as if to swim away, and then lolled to the surface sideways. The huge mouth gaped open and closed once, as if gasping for breath.

  Hands coated in slime, she grasped the fish around the middle, trying to make it swim. No response.

  She leaned against the tamarisk. The bottle holding a few beetles bumped against her leg in the water. She killed and ate beetles without a second thought. How was the fish any different? It would be a shame to leave it here to rot.

  Tucking the water bottle into the back waistband of her skirt, she used both hands to lug the fish back to camp, feeling an awful lot like a cannibal.

  He woke yearning for her. How long had he lain here? His head spun with drugs, and he wanted another kiss more than anything. Not just the rush. He wanted the comfort of her lips, her hands against him, her firm breasts crushed between them.