That’s when five other men stepped from the shadows and surrounded them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Aserra
They stood silent and ready, all holding weapons. They had done this before. They had no intention of taking captives. The only questions were how long it would take and when it would begin.
The answers came quickly when the tallest one near the stairs made a sound with his tongue. But before the air left his mouth, the girl was in motion, drawing the knife from her belt and tossing it to Robinson. Unfortunately, his hands were shaking so badly, he failed to catch it and it clattered to the floor. When he bent to grab it, he felt the air above his head move with the whistle of something that sunk into the wall behind him.
For her part, the girl didn’t panic or hesitate. She took a single step back, twisted under the descending arc of the doorman’s blade, and cleaved off his jaw with a single swipe of her axe. He let out an inhuman wail as he tumbled forward, but she caught him under the arm and spun him just as a one-armed foe let a spiked ball connected to a chain fly. It landed with a wet, sick thud in the first man’s chest, ending his cries and his life. But before the flail could be drawn free, the girl pirouetted backward with unbelievable speed, her good leg whipping hard across the back of the dead man’s knees. As his torso pitched backward, the one-armed man was wrenched forward and in one motion, the girl lopped off his remaining hand at the wrist before flinging the axe into kitchen, where it struck the head of a man loading a bolt into a crossbow.
The man teetered there for what seemed like an eternity before he fell back with a sickening plop. Everyone in the room suddenly froze. It had taken less than three seconds, but half their party was dead or maimed—all at the hands of a skinny girl.
The most astonishing part was that she was barely breathing. When she glanced at Robinson, it appeared as if all the green had gone out of her eyes, replaced by something black. She didn’t look surprised or affected by the fact that the leader now had his hand wrapped around her companion’s mouth or his blade positioned at his throat.
Truth be told, Robinson didn’t understand why he was still alive. And then he heard the man whisper the word.
“Aserra.”
It was tinged with awe and reverence, but mostly fear. When the assailants in the kitchen heard it, both seemed to wither as if the air had been let out of them. Robinson looked at the girl and saw the brand on her arm was showing, but by then, the men knew what they were up against. He even thought that the one in the kitchen might run when he turned and looked at the back door. But that hesitation cost him.
The second half of the battle came as quickly as the first, but this time it was on the girl’s terms. One moment she was standing empty handed, the next she had a blade in it and was racing across the room. To his credit, the leader didn’t bother killing Robinson. He knew it would only cost him time. Instead, he pushed the teen out of the way so he and his companions could attack the girl simultaneously. When Robinson fell to the floor, he covered his head to avoid the scuffle and closed his eyes. The din that followed was pure horror: the clash of metal, grunts and shrieks, the spray of blood, and the rattle of the dying.
When he finally looked up, the girl stood alone, a single stitch of red lining her forearm. He must have gasped because she turned and pointed the blade at him, her eyes momentarily wild.
“It’s me,” he said, his hands in the air.
The girl looked through him before lowering the blade and turning away.
“Are they … all dead?” Robinson asked.
The girl didn’t answer. She was too busy examining their weapons. The leader’s blade was by far the best of them, but when she looked at it closely, she saw faults in the steel and eventually put it under her boot and broke it in half. The weapon she was most interested in was the crossbow, but it was in poor shape too. By the way the man had handled it and how it had misfired over Robinson’s head despite his being so close, it was obviously worthless. She destroyed it as well.
When Robinson stood up, his heart was still hammering in his chest and he gagged from the smell that had filled the room. And then he heard a whimper and saw the man with no hands sobbing softly, his new stump in the cradle of his old one. The girl crossed to him and he murmured a few words. It was unclear if they were pleas of mercy or something else, but when the girl went to retrieve her axe, Robinson quietly slipped out the door.
Outside, he closed his eyes, trying to forget everything he’d seen, but the void was quickly filling up with such memories and he knew if he was to survive with his sanity intact, he needed to accept that such events were a part of his new life. Only by learning from them might he avoid similar situations in the future. He also knew he had relied on others for far too long. The Old Man, the girl, and even Resi had at some point saved him.
It was time to start looking after himself.
Inside, he heard the girl opening closets and cupboards, but she didn’t find what she was looking for. She exited a short while later and made her way to a detached garage. Robinson followed her there only to see her dig out an old shovel and a pickaxe with half a handle.
They made it home just before sunset, but already the chill had seeped in. Robinson started a fire in the stove, but the smoke brought out the renders. He knew the barricade would hold them, but their incessant buzz was like a wooden sliver sunk deep beneath the skin. It grew worse and worse until finally he climbed onto the roof and flung several full cans of oil over the side. The beasts pulled back but didn’t fully retreat until morning.
The girl ate mechanically. Resi sat at her feet, having sensed something bad had happened. Robinson tried to think of something that would make her feel better but nothing came to mind. Only when she made for her bed did it hit him.
“Teach me,” he said.
She turned, her face wary but curious. Robinson pointed to the brand on her arm.
“Aserra,” he said before pointing to himself. “Teach me.”
Her grim expression softened, but he didn’t like what had replaced it.
She stepped close—closer than they had ever been—and tapped him on the bicep and said, “Aserra.” She tapped him lightly on the head and said, “Aserra.” She tapped her own stomach and said, “Aserra.” Then she touched his and shook her head.
He didn’t need to speak her language to understand. She was saying he didn’t have the stomach for it. He didn’t have the heart. It was a blow that rivaled Tessa’s deception. It might have hurt even worse because this one wasn’t born of some petty cause or political strife, but of his own failings.
He wanted to run away. He wanted to hide. He felt an incredible sense of shame, but when his eyes fell down, she lifted his chin with her hand and then walked over, picked up a book, and handed it to him.
“Nian,” she said.
“You want me to read this?”
She nodded. “Read.”
Robinson read well into the night, his voice echoing lightly under the glass that bore a star-laden sky. They were separated by the breadth of the room, but that night, they felt closer. His words and her presence were a comfort to each other where nothing else would do.
How strange, he thought, that she could be so proficient at killing and yet feel so low because of it. She was like a beautiful flower whose stem was riddled with thorns. Robinson knew that nature often secured its greatest treasures in hardened shells, making sure any that valued them won their prize only with patience and considerable effort.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Friday
The next day he found out what the shovel was for. They returned to the field near the farmhouse and crossed over the low cliff where the bovine fed. The girl walked the circumference of a ravine, eventually settling on a section of narrows where she tossed Robinson the shovel and ordered him to dig. It was backbreaking work, but Robinson came to enjoy the strike of the blade, the weight of the earth, and the cadence of his swing. Resi watched from t
he lip of the trench as the girl hobbled off. He heard the crack of wood as she swung her axe. Only a few turns later when they broke for lunch did Robinson see that she had cut several small tree limbs and shaped the ends to a point. He knew then they were building a deadfall and if her plan worked—as they almost always did—they’d have beef that night. The idea made his mouth water.
After the spears were set, Robinson climbed from the hole as the girl dragged branches and leaves over the top until it was well disguised. She then drew up a plan of attack in which they would chase the bovine down the ravine, into the narrows, and toward the deadfall. When she was finished, she looked to him for confirmation and he shrugged. Mistake. The stick whistled. He howled. Resi’s yap sounded surprisingly like a laugh.
The plan did not go quite as expected. They managed to get behind the bovine and chase them into the ravine, but as they neared the narrows, they’d forgotten about Resi. The minute he saw the creatures, he charged. The bovines knotted up and quickly turned toward the pair. Robinson was lucky enough to scramble up the side of a hill to escape the stampede. The girl, unfortunately, dove into a pond full of mud. When she emerged sodden and simmering, Robinson bellowed. She immediately went after him. He ran down the ravine laughing. He was afraid the hobbled girl might skewer him with her spear when she yelled. Down the ravine, one bovine was returning with Resi hot on its tail. Together, Robinson and the girl waved their arms, driving the animal into the narrows. A few seconds later, they heard a crash and a cry. When they arrived at the trap, they looked down to see the bovine was dead.
Robinson let out a triumphant roar and hugged the girl. She hit him three times with the stick, but for the first time, she smiled.
Getting the meat back to the memorial would be no easy task. The girl indicated that Robinson should find two large branches on which they would drag the carcass, but he ran back to the farmhouse instead and returned with the molded canoe from the garage. She looked it over and gave a curt nod of approval.
“Aserra,” he said lightly. “Teach me.”
She grinned but shook her head again.
“No?” he asked.
“No,” she answered.
Robinson shrugged and started transferring the butchered meat.
The next two weeks went on the same. They rose early and hunted, fed the smoker in the afternoon, and he read after dinner.
After each meal he would ask, “Aserra?” And she would shake her head and say, “No.”
The snow finally came around the first week of December. The city was bathed in a pastoral white.
They had amassed enough meat to make it through the winter, but it was still bitterly cold in the memorial. Steadily, the girl’s leg got better until one day she took the boot off and tossed it into the river. She then constructed a pole to fish the river with, collecting only those that weren’t blighted.
With the weather came one welcomed dividend. The renders seemed to vanish from the city. Robinson soon learned they were only hibernating. When he and the girl stumbled upon a warren of sleeping renders while hunting for supplies, she prepared to kill them, but he reminded her of her own words: people should only kill what they eat.
With the rivers frozen over, the savages could not return. Robinson never asked the girl about them and she never volunteered anything, but several times, when she thought he was busy, he would catch her looking toward the monument with that forlorn look that said, like him, she had a whole other life waiting elsewhere.
His duties fell to collecting firewood and reading bedtime tales, but he also kept the roof clean of snow and patched the areas where rain seeped in. When the weather was really cruel, he repaired the pipes that led to the indoor privy. When he showed the girl how it worked, she made the sign of evil but eventually used it, albeit grudgingly.
The wood stove burned well enough, but it proved too small to heat the entire room, so Robinson went back to the library and began reading up on various energy sources. He was shocked how many there were and by their complexity. He was surprised that the previous civilization could engineer such things as thermal, chemical, radiant, nuclear, and electric power. Most were beyond his understanding. But he did understand that at the height of the previous civilization, petroleum was one of the chief sources of energy and that it was the same stygian oil he had gathered from the park to fend off the renders.
Processing it would be no easy task. Theoretically, it all came down to boiling. By using superheated steam, he was able to run the oil through a distillation chamber that, at different temperatures, separated the hydrocarbons into various groupings: petroleum gas, naphtha, liquid gasoline, kerosene, diesel, lubricating oil, fuel oil, and some residuals. He collected these in old bottles, most often slender and colored white, green or brown with names like Coca-Cola and Budweiser stenciled across them. He scavenged tubing where he could find it and polyester sheeting for filters. Lastly, he boiled moldy rubber tires for seals.
Again, it was trial and error learning to collect the individual hydrocarbons, which was why he built his small refinery downwind and only ran it during the day. On the third day, while he was out retrieving tubing, he heard an explosion and knew the distillery had blown. Thankfully, he had built the refinery in the rubble of a burned building, so nothing else could be destroyed. He was not deterred by this failure, no matter how often the girl made her gestures to ward off evil.
The following week, he succeeded at gathering a healthy sum of liquid gasoline, kerosene, and oil. The oil he used for lubrication. The liquid gasoline, he discovered, was incredibly volatile, and although he did not want to lose it, he decided to store it in barrels near the river, far enough from the memorial to stay safe, but close enough that, should the need arise, he could get to them. He chose the kerosene as his method of every day fuel since it burned cleanly and seemed the easiest to store. He then fashioned a small boiler from an old steel sink, which he connected to the building’s old furnace. Although it smelled terrible for several days, it did keep their home quite toasty.
Resi also seemed to thrive, although he spent more and more time with the girl despite the fact that Robinson fed him and let him out when nature called. One day, the girl invented a game by which they chased Resi with curved sticks and the one who could grasp his collar and bring him down into the snow was the winner. The girl almost always won, but Robinson thought it was mostly due to Resi feeling sorry for her.
The fiercest storm came at the end of December and for two long weeks, they remained confined inside. Robinson was reading through the latest collection of books for the second time when he noticed something hanging from the wall. It was a calendar turned oddly enough to December.
He looked to the girl and said, “You know, I still don’t know your name.” The girl looked at him strangely. “I mean we are living together. And will be at least until spring. Don’t you think we should be on a first name basis by now?”
Her eyes narrowed the way they always seemed to when he’d overstepped himself.
“Fine, I’ll start,” he said, pointing to himself. “I am Robinson. Robinson Crusoe. And you are?”
When he pointed to her, she looked very self-conscious.
“Me, Robinson Crusoe,” he said again. “You …?”
“Yolareinai-esa-tu-shin-zhi-ma-coctera-wal-pan-bayamasay-fri.”
He shook his head and then asked her to repeat it. She did.
“That’s quite a mouthful. Honestly, I was hoping for something a bit shorter. See, me, Robinson Crusoe. Short and sweet.” He held his hands together. “You, Yobo-sata-singa-whatever.” He held his hands far part. “Do you have a nickname?”
“Cru-soe,” she said.
“Yes! Like Crusoe. I am Crusoe. And you?”
“Bayamasay-fri?”
“Closer, but still …” And then he noticed some words scribbled on the calendar. The ink was faded but he could just make out, “Thank God it’s Friday!”
“Fri-day. How about ‘Friday’?
”
She considered it and shrugged.
“Great. Friday, I am Crusoe. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
He held out his hand for her to shake, but she slapped it away.
“Okay. Baby steps,” he said. “But I’ll make a civilized girl out of you yet.”
He was about to sit back down when she stopped and pointed to the water spigot and asked a question.
“Sorry, I missed the first part. And the middle and the end.”
She spoke again, this time pointing to the spigot, then to the pipes that led to the furnace, and then to the privy.
“Are you asking me how I built these things?”
She nodded. He turned and grabbed a book, holding it out for her.
“The wealth of the world is inside, milady. All you have to do is open one.”
She took the book and paged through several sections.
“Teach me,” she said.
Robinson smiled. “And in return, you teach me to fight.”
She paused, and then nodded. “Friday teach Cru-soe … fight.” But then she raised a finger and shook her head. “No Aserra.”
“Deal.”
He held out his hand and this time she took it.
Chapter Thirty
Fire and Ice
And so began the days of fire and ice, of a boy broken and a man reborn. They rose each morning at the crack of dawn and struck out into the city. The first lessons were of balance and speed and the two were always in motion. They ran along paths slick with ice and atop the rims of the tallest buildings. They scaled stairs and bridges, danced over the rocks on the edge of high falls. They leaped, they crawled, and they climbed and never stopped.
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