“Oh, this isn’t fair! Why are these havens so small?!”
Toward the rear of the room, she wandered between tall aisles full of ruptured bags. A heavy stink of not-quite-food permeated the air, and the ground came alive with thousands of black-and-tan beetles, some reaching four inches in length.
“Roaches!” Wisp squealed in glee.
She ran back to the first room to grab her rifle, and used it to break apart a big wood-framed enclosure filled with small skeletons. The sign called them ‘guinea pigs,’ but they looked nothing like boars. The wood, plus some kindling from her pack, made for a reasonable fire a little while later. She’d found a huge metal bowl on a shelf that she used for a fire pit, and grabbed a smaller one to contain a bunch of cockroaches. Since she couldn’t really tell where the roaches’ heads began, she decided to cook them extra well instead of decapitating them and pulling the guts out.
They scrambled about the bowl-turned-pot, hissing and jumping when she put them over the flame, but eventually, they stopped moving and became dinner along with one of the dumplings. The roasted roach tasted somewhat like the bird meat, though greasier.
None of the havens in this place reassured her, but she missed being locked in at night so much she almost suffered the discomfort of cramming herself back in the one marked ‘Labrador.’ Those havens not having locks made her decision to look elsewhere for a bed possible, since the Tree Walkers could simply open it and grab her.
Wisp sat by her fire bowl until the flames died off. She stood, gathered all her stuff back into place, and sighed at the darkness, afraid of going outside at night. Still worried about the lack of a functional haven, she retreated deeper into the room, toward where the roaches scurried around the aisles. She placed her feet between them, careful not to crush any as they rushed about. A few ran over her toes or climbed her leg, though she brushed them away while approaching a wooden door labeled ‘employees only.’
Only a little moonlight came in from the broken ceiling, illuminating enough to make out a short corridor lined with empty shelves. A weak sigh of disappointment leaked from her nose at not finding a haven. She felt her way along to a room with a table, four chairs, and some big metal cabinets. Those got her hopes up. She bumped into a cable dangling from the ceiling, and grabbed it. A white foam square broke in half when it fell on her head. She cringed and peered up past a metal grid that had a few more tiles clinging to it. Dust particles glimmered in crisscrossing shafts of moonlight overhead. A network of massive broken holes allowed her to see straight up for at least twelve floors.
Wisp crept up to the closer steel cabinet, big enough for Dad to stand inside of, and grabbed the door handles. Her smile died when she couldn’t figure out how to make the handles lock, and also that the cabinets contained shelves. Not havens… just places to keep stuff. She wandered deeper into the room, grabbing at more hanging cables and wires. The soft click of falling stones reawakened her worry that the whole place might fall down on her even though it had remained standing for so many years already. Besides, Mother would protect her.
She shuffled across the space, pushing wires and dangling foam tiles out of her way, eventually reaching a cushioned sofa. The material gave when she pressed down on it, appearing comfortable despite a thick layer of dust. Being exposed, however, it would offer no protection against anything trying to take her in the night.
I slept out in the open, and the Tree Walkers didn’t find me. And it’s dark in here.
Wisp unburdened herself of everything but her shirt, skirt, and handgun, stacking it all on the floor by where she would sleep. She curled up on the soft cushions, covered completely with the blanket, and hoped danger wouldn’t be able to see her.
The Many Havens
-24-
Wisp finished the second dumpling and two Twinkies for breakfast, then spent a while roasting up a bunch of roaches to bring with her. The Mother Twig led her to the edge of the ruined city not long after she resumed walking, where broken skyscrapers gave way once more to a debris field that went on for a mile or so. The ghosts of paved roads, half-buried chunks of broken blacktop, traced a bit deeper into the scrubland before disappearing beneath the shifting sand.
The sunbaked sand almost burned her feet, though she much preferred it to the scorching patches of blacktop. Each step made her miss the moist earth around her home more. She trudged for a few minutes with her eyes closed, trying to remember the cool breeze of the forest. A few sips of water got her thinking about Zen’s place again. The canteen in her left belt pouch probably had about a quarter of its capacity left, leaving her one full. Ahead, the scrublands stretched on until they touched the sky.
As much as she wanted to find Dad, she had to admit that continuing into such nothingness with only one full canteen was something only a stupid person would do. Dad would not want her to wind up going to the Other Place in such a silly, avoidable manner.
She let out a long sigh and sank to a squat, grabbing her head in both hands. She wanted to cry, but held it in. Tears could wait until she had plenty of water to spare. “I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t know what to do now. Mother, please help me. I don’t know where to go.”
For a few minutes, she listened to the gentle lament of the wind, straining to hear Mother’s reply. Light scratching directed her gaze to the barrel of the rifle, low enough to the ground that one of those pincer bugs had attacked it. She stood with a gasp, scrambling away from the tiny horror. The creature dangled from the weapon by one claw, refusing to let go. It whacked at the barrel with its tail a few times before she swung the rifle to the side hard enough to fling the bug back to the dirt. It flipped onto its legs and charged straight at her.
Wisp let off a clipped high-pitched scream and ran until it gave up chasing her.
Did Mother send that bug? She blinked and stared down at the rifle.
In one last, desperate attempt to resist defeat, Wisp raised the weapon to her shoulder and sighted through the scope, panning back and forth across the distance. A flash of white led her to hone in on a small adobe cabin with a covered well nearby. She lowered the rifle and squinted at the haze of heat blur, but couldn’t see the cabin. Again, she checked the scope, and the cabin returned. It looked far enough away to be a gamble. If the well turned out to be dry, she might be in trouble. Unable to decide, she twisted back and forth, staring at the ruined city behind her, then the desert before her. Well beyond the city to the rear, the shadow of mountains, and the Endless Forest, beckoned with a painful pang of homesickness. She stared at her far-distant home for a moment while the breeze tossed her hair around.
“I guess it’s not really endless, is it?”
Mother wanted me look through the rifle. I have to try. I won’t drink until I know if the well has water.
She sent one last longing gaze back at the forest before marching toward the little cabin out amid the wavering heat. Dust caked on her legs and the taste of sand coated her lips. Her target solidified out of the shimmering blur about fifteen minutes later, still painfully far away. Here and there, she thought she saw patches of water, but they always disappeared before she got close.
“I wish it would rain.”
A daydream of being home again, dancing about in the rain, made the journey pass faster than she expected. Out in the middle of nowhere, stood a pale adobe building, roughly equal in size to three of her cabins next to each other. Ignoring it for the time being, she bee-lined to the well. Rather than a bucket on a rope, it had a pipe going down the inside of a shaft connected to a mechanical hand pump with a crank.
She found a metal pail on the ground on the far side of the well. Sand poured out when she picked it up, so she tapped the bottom to chase the last few granules away. The pump had a hook upon which she hung the pail before grabbing the crank in both hands.
“Please work.”
At first, the ease with which the crank spun made her worry it wouldn’t do anything, but she kept working it around and around. Soon, s
puttering noises belched from the opening. Hopeful, she cranked faster, rising up onto her toes each time the handle went around the top of the wheel. Huffing and gasping, like a person about to throw up, got louder.
A blast of water erupted from the opening into the pail.
Wisp cheered and continued spinning the crank around. Another burst of water came forth, followed by a steady pour. She stopped cranking when the pail had filled, but water kept coming up, dribbling over the sides of the bucket. With an “Eep,” she fumbled her almost-empty canteen from its pouch, uncapped it, and held it in the stream until it trickled off to nothing, the canteen half-full.
After a brief cheer, she tilted it back and drank the whole thing. The cold water gave her a mild headache, but she didn’t care. She stood there, dripping and trying to catch her breath for a little while before leaning over the pail and slurping up more water so it stopped spilling over the side.
Soon, she’d refilled her canteens and devoured another pair of Twinkies. Unloading everything from her backpack allowed her to rearrange her stuff to make better use of the space, and she managed to get the two extra canteens she’d taken from the marauders in as well as the remaining Twinkies, so she no longer had a plastic bag bumping into her leg.
A faint buzzing arose in the distance. Wisp ignored the insect until the noise got louder and closer.
That’s a buggy!
She hurried the backpack on, grabbed the rifle, and ran from the well to the cabin. The doorway had no door in it, only a brick-red cloth curtain. She barged past it into a one-room space with a small bed, table, chairs, fireplace, and a bunch of shelves full of random junk. A body lay half on the bed, legs draped on the floor, lifeless eyes gazing at the ceiling. He appeared in much the same condition as Mother, with dry, grey skin and talons for fingernails. Only, this man didn’t have a nose, and a large swath of missing cheek exposed the skull.
The buzzing grew louder, coming from a small window along the back wall.
Wisp dashed across the room and climbed onto one of the chairs to get her head up to the window. A long trail of dust in the distance billowed out from behind a black dagger-shaped machine with fat wheels in back and smaller ones in front. It veered left, turning to face the cabin. She held her breath, eyes widening with a mixture of fear and hope. If she could follow that buggy, it would take her to Dad. Mother had been right to send her here!
A marauder’s head and shoulders poked up from the middle of the buggy, the rest of him sunken within a hollow. Panels of random, rusting scrap metal flapped and clattered on its sides. Buzzing fell to a low rumbling as the buggy lost speed. She ran from the chair, jumping up to stand on the bed by the wall to her right. As her feet hit the mattress, the dead man bounced up and slid to the floor, exposing a dark stain beneath where he’d been. Wisp peered out a smaller window on the side of the cabin, watching the buggy roll by not much faster than a person could walk. Once it drove out of sight past the end of the cabin, she rushed to the curtained doorway, crouching on one knee and peering out at the buggy, which came to a stop by the well.
Its back end held a tall leather tent, tied to a triangular frame of metal tubes as tall as a man. A mess of plastic gallon bottles hung on both angled sides, affixed by twine to hooks on the pipes. The driver occupied a sunken chamber in the middle of the buggy, only his shoulders and head visible over the side. A few seconds after the buzzing stopped, he grabbed the sides and pushed himself up and out of the single seat. She cringed back, hiding in the doorjamb behind the tattered curtain, only peeking with one eye. Fortunately, the marauder didn’t notice her.
He walked around to the rear end and undid a buckled strap holding the tent closed. Two large leather flaps opened to reveal a small storage space, from which he grabbed a metal funnel. He untied all the plastic bottles, eight in total, and carried them over to the well.
“Huh what?” The marauder looked at the water on the ground. “Someone here?”
Wisp didn’t move.
“Dern. Gonna haveta put a guard here. Someone dumb ’nuff take our water.” Shaking his head, the man removed the bucket from the hook and dropped it.
He mounted the funnel below the pump and proceeded to fill the old plastic bottles, carrying each one to the buggy and rehanging it. While he worked to pump water into the eighth bottle, Wisp pushed the scope into its retracted position, and lifted the rifle until the iron sights lined up with the marauder’s head.
I’m not even going to talk to them.
She moved her finger to the trigger, listening to the repetitive squeaking of the pump crank. In the distance beyond the man, dusty sand blew in clouds across the desert. Wait. She let off the trigger. The tire tracks disappear in the wind… I should follow him. The trail he made coming here might already be gone.
Slow and quiet, Wisp lowered the rifle and leaned back into hiding behind the doorjamb. Her plan came with a serious issue, however. That buggy appeared to be going much faster than she could run. Maybe she should shoot him and take the buggy? I don’t know how to work it and I don’t know where to go. She stuck her tongue out at herself.
For obvious reasons, she couldn’t walk out there and simply allow the man to take her like they took Dad. Maybe if she started running right away, she would be able to follow the trail before it blew away? But he’d probably see her chasing him, since open sand didn’t offer any cover to hide behind.
The marauder finished filling the last bottle and re-hung it on the triangular pipe frame. He tossed the funnel in the back, secured the leather flaps, and walked around the side. She tensed, preparing to jump up and run, but the man kept going past where he’d get into the machine, and came to a halt about ten paces farther away.
He fussed with the front of his pants, and a few seconds later, a stream of bad water came out of him.
She stared at the buggy, shaking with anticipation. Come on. Come on… Her eyes widened when another idea hit her. Wait… That’s so scary, but… As quiet as she could make herself be, Wisp stood, slung the rifle over her shoulder, and snuck up behind the buggy. Shaking from nerves, she slipped under the leather flap and crammed herself into the storage space. It took a little finesse to get the rifle in there, but she managed it.
A metal plate separated the storage area from a complicated-looking machine she figured to be the engine. Above it, an open space crisscrossed with thin metal bars let her peek out at the driver’s seat and the desert beyond the buggy’s nose. Hopefully, the relative darkness of the back would prevent the man from seeing her. She leaned up to check out the tiny steering wheel and a pair of pedals that reminded her of the SUV, but they didn’t have rubber pads. She ducked down when the marauder spun around, tucking herself as far to the left as the metal frame allowed.
The buggy rocked a few seconds later from the marauder climbing up, and bounced when he dropped into the seat. She peered out the hole again, and watched over his shoulder as he pushed a little black button next to the steering wheel. The engine, inches from her face, roared to life with a deafening rumble. Wisp let out a yelp of shock, but she couldn’t even hear herself over the noise. Fingers jammed in her ears, she cringed, wondering if her ‘great idea’ had really been a stupid one.
Hard acceleration flung her into the leather flaps. She braced her foot against one of the metal spars to hold herself steady, refusing to pull her fingers out of her ears. Her little chamber jostled about, sometimes tossing her up and dropping her hard on her butt whenever the buggy caught a few inches of air. Fortunately, the engine masked the rattling in her backpack, the rifle banging on the metal, or her occasional gasp of pain.
Wisp twisted forward, coughing on stinky air blowing out of the engine, and peeked up to watch the man. Turning the tiny wheel made the buggy veer left or right. His foot on the rightmost pedal made it go faster. He didn’t touch the other pedal, but she guessed that one would slow them down. She tried not to breathe the hot blast washing over her face, turning her head to put her mouth by
the opening in the flaps whenever she had to take a breath.
Roughly twenty minutes of head-pounding noise later, another section of ruined city came into view ahead. This one didn’t have skyscrapers, though the buildings were still massive, some six or seven stories tall. The marauder steered onto a road, which lessened the bouncing and shaking considerably. Within the ruin, he also slowed down quite a bit from the speed he’d been going out on the sand.
Sudden fear gripped her. This man might take her straight into a settlement full of marauders or something, and she’d either wind up trapped in the back end of the buggy with nowhere to go, or get caught. The marauders that tried to grab her wanted to tie her with ropes. She’d barely escaped from two of them, and there had to be lots of them up ahead. Her mind raced to come up with a way out, until her vacant stare sharpened onto the engine in front of her. Hoses and wires threaded up from below, wrapped over metal frame bars, and plugged in to various places. One plastic tube carried clear liquid, though she doubted it was water. Zen said they use alcohol. Four black hoses ended with clamps connected to little metal posts. No fluid passed through them, so they had to be wires.
She remembered one of the book characters ‘unplugging’ something called an alarm clock to make it stop working. If she could make this engine stop working before this guy took her into the settlement full of marauders, she would have a much better chance. Maybe if she unplugged it…
Grimacing at the noise, she removed her fingers from her ears and grabbed one of the wires, twisting the cap end back and forth. In a few seconds, it came free with a bright blue spark that zapped her fingertips. She stifled the yelp of pain, cradling her hand to her chest. As soon as the wire detached, the engine sputtered and wobbled side to side with enough strength to make the whole buggy shudder. Before the sting in her fingers faded, the deafening roar went silent with a fluttering gasp.
The Forest Beyond the Earth Page 21
