Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  Sidney counts that the bot sings it over a hundred times before she finally stops again and keeps her arms by her side long enough for the others to realize she's done. Sidney stays frozen, staring at her. Well that was a bit silly, she thinks, but also pretty to watch.

  Petra just stares ahead of her, doesn't move.

  Henry places the coat back over her shoulders. "All right, can we keep going now?"

  Her face remains passive. She's still as a statue.

  Sidney says, "What's she doing now?"

  "Darned if I know," Henry replies. "Maybe whatever she went through has taken all the charge out of her. Maybe she's replenishing now. So you and I have two options—"

  "We're staying with her," Sidney says, cutting him off. Like she'd even consider going anywhere with him, without Petra in tow. Right. "We'll make camp here."

  “Sounds like a great plan,” a gruff voice says to their right and, turning, Sidney flinches when she stares into the sneering eyes of another raider. He’s just under five feet tall, dressed in ratty blue jeans and a shirt that could have been blue once.

  Sidney stands to run to a tree, but not before she sees Henry painstakingly move between herself and Petra and the man.

  He’s still not quite healed, she knows, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he ran off. Instead he stands in front of the man in a slight crouch, like he’s ready for a fight. What’s he thinking? He’ll get himself killed.

  “Nuthin’ for ya here, mate,” Henry growls. “Just walk away.”

  To which the man utters a sound that almost comes across as a howl to Sidney.

  “We can barter,” he says as he takes a step forward. “You not in fightin’ shape, mate. I have medicine that’ll help you. Just give me one. You can keep the other—”

  His words are cut off when Henry slams into him with his head and hands first. When a distinct grunt reaches her ears, Sidney knows that action probably cost Henry some. Still, he doesn’t let up though the stranger looks like he could kill him with one finger.

  Henry’s on his back with the stranger over him, throwing punches at his head. Sidney drops to the ground again, not thinking about it, just knowing she can’t watch this happen, watch the man kill Henry. Even if Henry is a raider.

  One part of her wants to run away, far enough that she’ll never know what had happened here. Another part knows she doesn’t actually want to leave Petra in this frozen state.

  Yet another part already has her running at full speed, not stopping until she jumps on the raider’s broad back and, without thinking about it, she opens her mouth wide and sinks her teeth into his groddy neck.

  He howls again, but this time there’s a lot less humor in the sound.

  Then he drops to his side and Sidney falls off his back as Henry jumps on to his feet, blood dripping from his head. Both of them face the raider head on, one on either side of him.

  Then he grins a big yellow gap-toothed grin and pulls a long metal rod from his side.

  She eyes it, recognizing it to be some sort of antenna from an old bot or vehicle.

  He brandishes the weapon and smiles even wider, despite blood pooling on the side of his neck, with Sidney’s teeth marks clear.

  “You’ve just made this even more fun, girlie,” he says to her. Then he moves forward with his arm high, about to whack it into her face.

  Henry grunts again and scrambles forward, but he’s not fast enough.

  The raider’s rod slams into the side of Sidney’s face and she cries out, feeling like the entire left side of her face has just been ripped off. She raises her left hand to hold it against her cheek as it burns and throbs.

  Her left eye’s shut, but she sees clearly with her right. Henry’s already got the raider on the ground and he’s slamming his fists into the man’s head. He must be in pain, she thinks, and simply moving with pure rage at this point.

  She stands again, meaning to help him stop the raider, but by the time she gets to them, the raider’s already pushed Henry off him and he runs towards where Petra stands, leans in to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder.

  Oh—hell no, Sidney thinks, and she rams into him again, at the same time Henry attacks him from the side, kicking him until he’s down, his breaths shallow.

  Before she can grab at him, before Henry can kick him again, he stands and stumbles towards the trees, running faster than either one of them can catch him.

  They both lean over their knees, staring after him silently, and Sidney worries that’s not the last they’ll see of him but she can’t catch a breath, least of all chase after him.

  She looks at Henry’s bloody, huffy form, and knows he’s in a worse state than she is.

  Then he looks at her and offers a small smile. “We make a good team,” he says. She doesn’t respond, still not trusting him entirely, but knowing something’s changed between them.

  She knows to remain wary, but at the same time, there’s something that tells her he’s not as dangerous as that raider they’d just fought.

  He says, “I know you still think I’m this awful human being, but I promise to never hurt you or Petra.”

  He fights to take a deep breath and stands a little taller. “You saved my life. Both of you. I intend to return the favor, for the rest of my life.”

  Though she knows they’re just words, she’s inclined to believe him. She’ll still watch her back of course, but she decides he can’t be all bad after all that. He nearly got himself killed—again—to stop that raider from grabbing her or Petra.

  So when a part of her softens to him, she doesn’t fight the small smile she offers in return.

  She looks around them, finally seeing that they're still surrounded by trees but are in a clearing of sorts, far enough in the forest they can easily camp out of view of wandering raiders or creepy twins.

  Henry's already up and picking up branches and dry leaves from the forest floor, gasping every now and then from the pain.

  Sidney looks over at Petra one more time then goes about picking up branches too. It's still late afternoon but who knows how long Petra will need to recharge in the sun, especially since it's partially hidden under the trees?

  She ignores the pain on her face. She finds bark and throws it into the same pile Henry's been collecting, then she eyes the trees around them and, finally finding a trunk that looks large enough to hold her weight, starts to climb.

  "Where you going, kid?" Henry calls up. She's already half way up the tree.

  "Getting food," she says. She's hardly hungry—she's certainly had her fair share at the twins' mansion, but she knows from experience that won't last. She might as well scavenge now while she's still good and full and has the energy to do it.

  The tree is empty, so she climbs the next one and the next, until, finally, she finds a nest—three tiny birds chirp at her from the nest as she gathers four eggs and pops them into a pouch she'd fashioned over her shirt. The birds’ chirps get louder and, though she's more than accustomed at hunting birds to eat them, she can see these ones are far too tiny to have much meat on them, so she leaves them alone. Their unborn brothers and sisters will do, she reckons.

  Back on the ground now, she sees that Henry's got Petra's hand in his as he turns it over, prodding at her nails as if he's looking for something.

  Sidney places the eggs on the ground. "What are you doing?" She approaches and stares at his grubby hands. They don't belong on Petra's clear skin, she decides, so she pushes him away from the still figure.

  They may have made a great team, but she’s still not a hundred percent sure about him.

  "I'm just looking for her lighter, kid," he says as he backs off. "Thought she'd start us a fire, but hey do you know how long that'll take to make from scratch!?"

  She glares at him, then decides he's telling the truth.

  "Fire's easy," she finally says. "Now that I have my knapsack." She walks to the bag and grabs a small looking glass which she brings up to eye level. She grins
at him as he understands what she means to do.

  "Where did you find that thing?" he asks.

  She doesn't want to tell him that she's a gatherer, that she sometimes takes things and keeps them in her bag, even if they don't belong to her. Nayne had told her that's not a good thing to do. So she just says, "I found it. Finders keepers, right?"

  She doesn't say that she'd found it in one of the drawers in the twins' mansion—somewhere that she knew she wasn't supposed to snoop, but snoop she did anyway.

  Henry grins back at her. "Right," he says as he watches her stare into the air, then pile just the right amount of kindling together. Then she places the glass over a tiny bit of straw, angling it in such a way that it catches the sun's rays. A thread of smoke rises into the air, then she angles it a couple of different ways until more smoke rises. She places the glass on the ground beside her knee and leans in to blow at the smoke until, before long, they have a small fire on which they throw more kindling, branches, dried leaves.

  "How old are you, kid?" Henry says. His eyes stay on her for the most part as he speaks but from time to time, they land on Petra again, that questioning look in his eyes.

  "I'm ten," Sidney says, "ten and a quarter." She's always had it down to the month. Nayne had told her to stop trying to grow up too fast, but grow up, she's doing. "And stop calling me kid. I can take care of myself."

  Henry puts both hands up in the air as if in surrender, and he chortles. "Sorry, ki—I mean, sorry Sidney. Of course you can take care of yourself. Of that, I have no doubt!"

  She narrows her eyes at him, gauging if he's teasing her. Then, understanding that he isn't, she relaxes momentarily.

  Remembering how he fought hard, despite all his injuries, she wants to ask him what's his story. Her nayne had always said everyone has a story. "It's just up to you to decide if it's worth listening to." She didn't really understand what Nayne said at the time.

  But right now, she is curious about this raider that they'd saved, that now seems to want to travel with them...but why?

  "How could you be a raider?" Sidney finally says.

  She knows them to be awful. Not good people. She's heard enough stories about them to know that. Yet he didn’t accept the other one’s bribery of medicine.

  When he nods and stares at the fire, she's relieved that at least he's not about to lie that he's not a raider. Something tells her that's at least a good thing—that he'd admit to being one.

  "It's difficult to explain," he says and she huffs again. If he's about to censor himself just because she's a "kid," she's not interested in hearing more.

  "I’ll try to though," he says, “because this is the reality of the world we live in.”

  She remains silent because it sounds like he's about to offer her his story. So she listens.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Henry

  "I'd always been part of a community," he says. He keeps his eyes on the fire. The sun's starting to head down so he knows whatever charging Petra's done won't be nearly enough for her to be back up again until tomorrow morning.

  "My family was large." He thinks of his parents, his eleven brothers and sisters, a family that was unusually big for Allendians.

  Where most families consisted of only the mom and dad—or two moms or two dads, and maybe one kid or two, his family just kept growing. "Just in case," his parents always said as they laughed about it.

  "I was twelfth in a line of twelve kids."

  Sidney's eyebrows shoot up and he laughs. "Yeah. I know."

  "Where did you all live?" she asks.

  Allendian homes are all efficient, all square shaped with up to three bedrooms. Allendian laws didn't allow for bigger than that, which is why the twins' mansion in the forest was unheard of.

  "We lived in our home in the eastern grid," he remembers fondly. "You'd be amazed how little space each of us took up there. We all shared. Everything."

  "Wow," she says, nodding her head, though he can see she still can't quite grab the concept of it all.

  "Was it illegal?" she whispers. "Did you all get in trouble?"

  "There was no law against it, but we did get charged extra for energy costs. It was only fair. There were so many of us! Until the—"

  He doesn't have to say more, though Sidney nods in understanding.

  "I was still little when it all happened," he says. "Everyone around me started getting sick. Then they were dying. I was taken away before it got really bad."

  "You're supposed to be frozen, aren't you?" Sidney says.

  Henry nods his head. He was to be taken to another dome, placed in cryogenics like the rest of them until the flu was taken care of, until it was time for the re-emergence. He must have been one of the last ones.

  "I can't really remember what happened," he admits. "But I didn't make it there. Then, when I was a teen, the raiders found me. Took me in."

  He stays quiet for a moment, remembering the raiders—their own set of barbaric rules and their dedication to finding survivors. His eyes shift back to Petra again, then to the girl. He knows the last thing he'd want is for either of them to land in their hands, but it's inevitable. This much he knows more than anything.

  Still—

  When Sidney speaks again, he's reminded of the impossibility of their situation.

  "My nayne always said when worlds end, in the most violent ways, survivors don't tend to be nice. Or decent or innocent. They're just survivors."

  The words are true enough, Henry thinks. When the flu hit, violence was rampant, wasn't it? People were desperate in those days. Desperate to live, desperate to be cured. The normally civilized Allenda was far from it until there was nothing but silence and dust in the streets.

  Still, it doesn't seem right that a ten year old should know that truth.

  "Well I don't know about that," he lies. "I mean you seem—decent enough, I think."

  They watch each other over the flames. It's silent but for the occasional crackle and shift of a burning branch.

  "When did your nayne die?" he asks.

  "Over a year ago." She shifts her weight and leans back into a fallen log, stretching her skinny legs ahead of her. Her eyes stay on the fire but he sees them water. She doesn't wipe the tears as they flow freely over her cheeks.

  A part of him instinctively wants to comfort her. He was the youngest in his family, and every single one of them came running to him when he'd cried.

  But in the little time that Henry's known Sidney, he's come to understand that she's not the type who'd need someone to comfort her when she cries. In fact, he's certain she'd push him away if he tried. So he stays put. His eyes land on Petra again.

  "But why are you a raider?" Sidney asks.

  When his eyes draw back up to look at her, the tears are gone. Just left with a streak of brown on her cheek. Her other cheek is red from before, but she doesn’t seem to care.

  "I mean—you haven't tried to eat me—yet," she says. She glances at the eggs she'd placed on the ground. Neither one of them's eaten a thing. He can't even remember the last time he'd eaten.

  "I won't try to—eat you," he promises with a chuckle. "I'm not that type of raider."

  "Then what type are you?"

  He frowns and stares back at her. She'd already decided he's not a good person, though he thinks maybe a part of her trusts him because of their earlier scuffle. If he's being honest with himself, he knows he probably wasn’t a good person, once.

  Still, tough child or not, he's not about to get into any details with her.

  “I’m a survivor,” he offers, “but only because of you two. I owe you my life.”

  His eyes land on Petra again and he decides he's tired. It's a good time for a nap.

  "We're traveling far tomorrow, soon as she's done charging," he says, as he points at the bot. "We should sleep." He’ll talk them into traveling a different way. Out of the dome.

  At first, he thinks she's going to insist he elaborate. Then, she leans furth
er back into her little log too.

  He takes a look around and, finding no other suitable log around to lean on, lies on the ground and shuts his eyes, meaning to sleep everything off until the next day.

  * * *

  A couple of hours later though, he's woken by a shrill whistle from the middle of the wood. He shoots up to a sitting position and sees that Sidney's fast asleep across the way, a slight snore coming from her. Petra hasn't moved in all this time.

  Maybe it was a bird, he thinks. Still, he doesn't go back to sleep, unconvinced.

  When the whistle reaches his ears again, he looks behind him and sees a small light dot up the space in the forest.

  Oh no.

  The light diminishes, then comes back on again and he's up and running before he can talk himself out of it.

  He tries to stay stealth, he tries not to be too noisy to wake the sleeping child, but before he reaches the light someone rams into him, holding his arms behind his back, and another person slams a heavy object into the back of his head, over and over again, until he loses consciousness.

  Chapter Thirty

  Sidney

  Before she even opens her eyes, she stretches out all her limbs, basking in the warmth of the morning sun despite a slight chill in the air. She imagines herself a piece of elastic and keeps stretching until her muscles ache, then she finally opens her eyes. The left one is still sore but she can see through it just fine.

  Looking up, she sees Petra's still charging, but hopes it'll be done soon, since it's fully sunny now.

  The fires died down, leaving wisps of charred leaves here and there, though an ember still burns under all the gray.

  Her eyes search, but Henry's nowhere to be seen. Maybe off to "use the facilities," as Nayne woulda put it.

  All's quiet in their little setting but for the occasional chirp of a bird, then she remembers that neither she nor Henry were hungry enough to eat the eggs she'd found.

  So, she grabs the eggs and places them gingerly on the side of the ember—shouldn't heat too much too fast that they'll burst, like that one time she'd placed an egg straight on the fire. Even then, she still managed to save some of it to eat. "Good eats, barbecued eggs," she says, as she uses a skinny long branch to stoke and prod the eggs until they're in a spot she's confident will do.