Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1)

by Jae Hill

  Rebekah knew what I was thinking. “Your notebook,” she said.

  Leah looked at me with deep concern in her eyes.

  “Do you have it with you?” she asked.

  I nodded and withdrew the computer from my bag. I turned it on and Leah was perplexed and amazed by the glowing screen. I showed her how it was linked to the Library in the capital. Every book ever written, every journal from every distant expedition…every video, movie, song, and map ever created.

  “This is frighteningly amazing,” she said, gently touching the device. “This is exactly what he spoke of.”

  She looked up at me with fear.

  “You have to leave.”

  “No,” Rebekah said on my behalf, clutching my arm possessively.

  “You’re not safe here,” Leah said worriedly. “Someone will see you. Someone will remember the Reverend’s words. Someone will try to take you and your glass to him. These are good folk, but you can never trust the hearts of men. You need to leave.”

  I didn’t want to put anyone in danger, least of all Rebekah. But I couldn’t help feel that I had brought her so far to a place that wasn’t much safer than the place we’d left. Maybe we should have gone west together. Maybe we should have snuck into the Preserve and taken a train home together. She would never have gone for such a scheme at the time. I was stunned, speechless, trying to figure out my next actions. With my actions in Old Vancouver, aiding and abetting Semper’s escape, evading the Police…I was a criminal, and criminals were detested in the Republic.

  “I don’t know where to go,” I stated. “It’s a long hike. And with all that happened, I don’t know if I can even go home. I broke a lot of our laws, even if they don’t know it yet.”

  Leah moved over to where I was and kneeled on the floor in front of me, holding my hand in hers.

  “You’re a good boy, Pax,” she smiled. “You brought me back my Rebekah from the clutches of death. You have a good soul, and the Lord will bless and keep you if you head home.”

  Rebekah looked really sad. I could tell that she didn’t want to let me go, but I had accomplished what I’d set out to do. She was safe. I needed to move on. I didn’t belong with these people. I wasn’t a farmer. I wasn’t sturdy or rugged. I was a child of the Republic, destined for space and a robot-body. It was time to accept my fate and head home.

  “You certainly can’t go back out on the street looking like that, young man,” Leah said as she looked intently at my clothes. “We’ll get you some different clothes. You don’t need to attract any more attention to yourself. I bet my grandson Michael was your size, let me see if I can find something that will fit you.”

  She hurried to the other room. Rebekah clutched my arm tightly and squeezed herself up against me. It was obvious she didn’t want me to go, but she didn’t say a word otherwise.

  Leah returned from the back of the house carrying a flannel shirt, some boots, and some canvas pants. She also had a blanket for me to wrap my backpack with and disguise it. She held the clothes up to me and nodded approving me, then patting me on the rear and shooing me into the other room to change.

  The clothes felt itchy and heavy compared to my normal garments. They were baggy and smelly, but they fit. The boots were clunky and heavy. I would certainly change back into my normal clothes as soon as I got out of town.

  Rebekah and Leah smiled when they saw me. I guess maybe I could have passed for any other member of their society for at least a little while.

  “Let me pack you some food,” Leah said, walking into the kitchen. “I don’t have much, but it should get you a couple of days out.”

  Rebekah walked over to me and looked up into my eyes. She was only five centimeters shorter than me. She raised herself up on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms over my shoulders, planting a kiss on my lips. Her hand reached up to the back of my head and held me close to her. She clutched my hair in her fingers, refusing to let me go. I don’t know how long we kissed, but we were startled when Leah coughed from the doorway, holding a sack with some bread, meat, and cheese for the trail.

  “Before you leave town,” Leah said, “you’ll need to go see Noah the Librarian. He’s the keeper of all the town’s knowledge and he’ll want to know you were here. He’s two streets west, on your way out.”

  “You be safe, Pax,” she stated, coming over to give me a hug. “And thank you again for bringing her home safe to me.”

  I quickly embraced her and then turned back to Rebekah.

  “I want you to stay,” Rebekah said with puffy eyes. “You…you…can’t…don’t….” she stuttered. “I love you.”

  Love. It was a word I had always heard in fables and fantasies. An animal impulse. A chemical reaction. I had loved my parents and they had loved me, but never this type of love. I had never known anything that made my heart race or my palms sweat or my head feel so light and dizzy as I had felt being in her presence.

  “I love you, too, Rebekah.”

  When the words crept past my lips, it was a complete surprise to me, albeit a pleasant one. One that made me swell with pride and want to scream and shout at the top of my lungs. It was an affirmation that I was worthy of something that felt so wonderful. Loving someone else, I determined, was just as valuable as being loved by them.

  She sniffled. We had been through a lot together, and if she felt even half as ill as I did at the thought of being apart, then she couldn’t bear it any more than I could.

  I hugged her again and kissed her long and hard, one last time.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed quietly.

  “Thank you, both, for everything,” I said.

  “It was no bother. Don’t forget to see the Librarian,” Leah said.

  And with that, I turned around, grabbed my backpack off the floor next to the front door and stepped outside into the hazy brown sky of Montana.

  I walked along the street and this time no one stopped and stared. My disguise was working, although I’m sure I was walking strangely in the uncomfortable boots.

  I headed two streets west and found the Library. It was an unimpressive brick structure with a few boarded up windows and a hand-painted sign that said “Open” on the front door.

  I pushed open the door and entered a dimly lit room. Reading at a table in the center of the room, under a makeshift skylight in the ceiling, was an old man. Very old. Frail and feeble and wrinkly in a way I’d never seen. I couldn’t even guess his age, but he was definitely the oldest person I’d ever seen.

  “Hello, young man,” the elderly man said, his aged voice crackling and warbling.

  “Hello, sir. Leah said I should come speak to you.”

  “Aw, that Leah is a great woman,” he smiled. “I’ve known her since she was a baby.”

  “You’re the Librarian?” I asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” he replied.

  “My mother is a librarian, back home,” I said.

  “Oh is that so?” he asked. “And where might home be?”

  So I told him. Of Valhalla and the Republic. Of the Preserve. Of my trip to Magic Valley with Rebekah. I talked to him for the better part of two hours and he was fascinated, hanging on my every word. Never once did he contradict me or disbelieve the words I said. He was unlike anyone I’d ever met since leaving the Preserve. His mind was so…open.

  “It’s a shame you can’t stay in town longer, son,” he said, wringing his hands. “I don’t have a successor and my days are numbered, as I’m sure you can tell. You’d make a wonderful Librarian.”

  “Why don’t you have a successor?”

  “Most of the folk in this town can’t read or write a lick,” he said sadly. “The few that can read, only read the Bible and they have a hard time reading new things they ain’t read before. Mostly they don’t have the open minds or the desire to learn. I tried to find a new librarian years ago but no one wants my job. They criticize me for sitting in here alone—day-in, day-out—with my books, but when they have a problem they can’t so
lve you better believe they’re here with all their questions.”

  He licked his lips as he finished, “This world is full of people who want you to do the thinking for them. And all the answers, to every problem ever imagined, have already been solved. They’re in here-“ he waved around “-in these books. Ripe like apples in the fall, just waiting to be picked.”

  “I really must get out of town before it gets much later, sir,” I said to him. “Thank you for talking with me.”

  “The pleasure, son, has been all mine.”

  He reached for my hand and awkawardly shook it as I stood up, then gathered my things and turned to leave. I didn’t really know how to do a proper handshake and it felt strange.

  “If you ever come back this way,” he shouted, “you might think of a job as a librarian! I think you have it in your blood!”

  I stepped back onto the street and the light was already becoming dim from the setting sun. I figured I could get two hours out of town before I needed to set up camp somewhere. I looked back down the street toward Leah’s house, wanting to go back and spend just one more night with Rebekah, but I knew I needed to get going.

  Turning west, I hefted my bag on my shoulders and clomped down the street in my clunky boots. Little puffs of dust flew up from the dirt road and settled on my pants. I was exhausted unlike any tired feeling I’d ever known. But I needed to keep moving. Getting out of town was the only way to protect myself…and Rebekah.

  I had just barely passed the last row of homes on the road headed west when I saw a figure sitting in the shade of a lone cottonwood tree. I instantly knew who it was.

  At the sight of me, she stood up and ran hard toward me, throwing her arms around me as we collided like atoms in a fusion reaction, our heat building and exploding as we melted into each other.

  “I had hoped I’d see you again,” I laughed, “but I didn’t count on it being so soon!”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said matter of factly, pointing to her rucksack leaning against the tree.

  “Rebekah, you can’t. I mean, I want you to but I’m going to have a hard enough time getting home, let alone rejoining my society with any honor. It’s going to be almost impossible for you.”

  She looked rejected, but then said firmly, “I have nothing here. Just my great-aunt, but no future. I’m sorry we had to come all the way here to find out, but I think my future is with you. I just have to trust that God has a plan for me, and that plan involved meeting you.”

  Rebekah kissed me softly. “I’m coming with you. We’ll figure out the rest later. Together.”

  She walked over to the tree and grabbed her pack, slung it over her shoulders, and rejoined me on the road. She put her hand in mine, and started walking, puling me along.

  I was overjoyed. The electric tingle I got from holding her hand filled me with new energy. I felt like I could run a marathon. I felt like I could carry her the whole way back to New Vancouver.

  We walked in silence, our fingers interlocked and arms swinging. The sun dropped below the horizon and we made camp for the night just out of distance from the road.

  We lay in the tent together, holding each other closely. I ran my fingers through her hair, which she must have washed at Leah’s house before leaving. She smelled fresh and clean. Delicious. She traced her fingers along my jaw line, down my neck, and in circles on my chest. Every touch sizzled like a spark. Every caress charged and surged through both of us.

  I finally realized, as she lay there in my arms, that we were both robots—capable of purely rational thought and powered by electrical impulses—but that we were also both animals—slaves to our chemicals, desires, and raw instincts.

  When we awoke, we decided to take the old Beartooth Pass highway route over the mountains and into the Preserve. With any luck, I could lead Rebekah to the station and then get her aboard a train back home. From there, a whole new world would await her. Education. Science. She seemed interested. She had never contemplated life from my perspective, as I had never contemplated my life from hers.

  As we walked, she asked me innumerable questions about the universe. I surprisingly had almost all of the answers. One question, however, plagued me.

  “When did it all begin?”

  We were taught that the Common Initial Event, also known in antiquity as the Big Bang, was the creation of the known universe, but all modeling had indicated that there had been previous “bangs”. In billions of years, the universe would cool and contract on itself in a violent storm of swirling matter until it recompressed and “banged” again. Everything would start over.

  Rebekah had “known” her whole life that the finite beginning of the universe was when God commanded light to exist from the darkness. The answer to the question “What existed before God?” was a standard “God is and always was.” There was no room for doubt. No room for questions.

  The more we talked, however, I saw that the story of the Creation, as viewed as a parable instead of immovable fact, was fairly accurate. In the beginning, there was nothing. Then there was light. Then the dust swirled together and formed the planet. The oceans formed. Life sprang from the dust and water. Man took dominion over all the universe. It took billions of years instead of seven days, but the order of events was correct.

  This story was so accurate, at its basest form, that it made me wonder how such primitive creatures as the wandering tribes of the desert could have invented it. What if some higher power really had given them the secrets of the universe in a form that they could understand? Maybe…just maybe…science and religion could reconcile each other.

  As our conversation spun and twirled, I realized our relationship was similar to story of the creation. There was nothing but darkness after Semper had flung himself to his death. Meeting her was the light. Her whole life had been spent in the dust while mine had been spent on the water. We took dominion over our circumstances. I only hoped there would be time for days of rest—a time to be thankful for the blessings I’d received by bringing her into my heart.

  She suddenly stopped in her tracks, yanking my arm as I kept walking.

  “We’re being followed,” she whispered, her head flinging over her shoulder.

  We both stared backwards into the sage and rabbitbrush.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said, squinting into the distance.

  “It’s in that patch of greasewood over there,” she pointed, “two o’clock from the rocks.”

  I couldn’t see a thing. She was pointing toward a pile of rocks a quarter kilometer away.

  “It looks like a man,” she said quietly.

  I was nervous. Why would we be followed? Who would follow us? I feared it might be because of me.

  “If anything happens, you run,” I said sternly.

  “No,” she replied harshly. “We do this together.”

  We watched but the figure didn’t move for five minutes.

  “Let’s keep going,” she said. “We’ll round that corner up there and set a trap.”

  “I have no idea how to do what you’re talking about,” I whispered. “What if he’s armed?”

  “Okay,” she smirked, “you’re just the bait. Wait here.”

  She ran off into some taller brush to our left, in the middle of which was a patch of dusty junipers. I stood there, just waiting. I still couldn’t see what she saw. She grew up hunting and tracking, so I could only imagine what kind of prowess she had in that skill set.

  About ten minutes later, as I stood there in the blistering sun, she came scampering back to me, covered in dirt and sweat.

  “How fast can you run?” she asked.

  “Really fast,” was my curious reply. My parents’ planned genetic superiority had produced a body which ran under-four-minute miles.

  “Well, I need you to start walking toward him, get his attention, and then run like hell back toward me. Run through the forest until you get to the patch of junipers, then sit on the rock, and act like you’re really out of
breath.”

  “What rock?” I asked.

  “You’ll know it when you see it. Now go!”

  She kissed me on the cheek, leaving a smear of sweaty dirt and a nose print, before bounding off into the trees again.

  I did as I was told, picking my way through the grass toward where she said she could see the man crouched on the rocks. Halfway to the outcropping, I saw what she meant. There was the top of a head and two eyes barely poking over a rock, watching me approach. I got within a few hundred meters, and then took off running back to the south—following Rebekah’s instructions. I could hear him scrambling behind me but I didn’t look back.

  Before long, I reached the safety of the trees and could vaguely make out the shape of a granite slab in the middle of the patch. I sat down on it, and though I’d barely broken a sweat, I acted winded. I heard him picking through the scrubby trees and then he came into the open, holding what might have been an older sort of rifle.

  “Don’t move,” he panted. “Put your hands where I can see them.”

  He was definitely holding a primitive looking firearm. I slowly lifted my hands. I wondered what Rebekah’s plan was.

  And then a bent tree swung into the man from behind, throwing him forward through the air and forcing him to toss his weapon. He landed at my feet, writhing in pain, and I stood above him, towering.

  Rebekah has somehow braided a strip of her dress into a crude rope, pulled a tree taut, and then cut the rope at the perfect second.

  The man moaned and cried on the ground.

  “My back!” he shouted. “You son of a bitch!”

  Rebekah strolled triumphantly into the clearing, munching on a crab apple, and stood on the man’s hand, causing him to scream further.

  “Why are you following us?” she said with a mouthful of apple.

  The man said nothing but kept writhing. She ground her heel harder into his hand.

  “I think my back’s broke,” he cried.

  “Why are you following us?” she repeated, angrily.

  “Reward for the boy with the magic glass,” he mumbled. “Worth a fortune to the Man.”