by James Axler
Jak looked at J.B. and cut once more with the scythe. “No break,” he said.
Stepping closer, J.B. spoke to Jak in a low voice, watching the other farmhands working the soil. “Look, Jak, I’m worried about some stuff I see here. I wanted to discuss things, make sure you’re all right. Think you can take five minutes out for an old friend?”
Jak looked at him, his eyes narrowed. “Worried?”
“Yeah.” J.B. nodded. “Five minutes, what do you say?”
Jak called over to his fellow workers and explained in his curt manner that he was taking his break early. The others okayed that, but told him not to stray far.
“What happen?” Jak asked as he and the Armorer walked close to the tree line.
“Nothing’s happened,” J.B. said. “Not yet anyway. Doc said you’d disappeared off the map and we were wondering where you got to. We haven’t seen you around.”
“New bed,” Jak said, smiling.
“New bedmate?” J.B. asked. “Not that it’s any of my business.”
Jak shrugged. It didn’t matter to him who knew his business. “Girl. Melissa. Name Charm. Nice to me.”
“That’s fine,” J.B. said. “You want to tell me where you’re staying in case we need you?”
Jak explained the location of Charm’s lodge. It was over in the east of the settlement, on the other side to where J.B., Ryan and Doc had their cabins. J.B. figured he could find it if it came to it.
“Worried?” Jak prompted as they peered at the massing green at the edge of the fields.
J.B. nodded. “We’re splitting up. We mebbe don’t mean to, but it’s happening all the same. And every time we got split apart before it led to bad things happening. To you most of all.”
“Safe here,” Jak told him, and he meant it.
“Yeah, that’s what everyone tells me,” J.B. said. “Safe, just like a prison cell.”
Jak shook J.B.’s hand, reminding him that they were still friends, no matter what was happening here. Then he went back to the field, where he would put in another three hours of backbreaking work before sundown. J.B. watched him go before turning back to the wilderness and trekking some way into the strip of forest.
The trees were dense, and there were a few critters living here, little mammals, the kind that he and the companions had lived on before now, when food had been scarce. That was one change that he appreciated here: food was plentiful.
The ground began to slope upward and before long J.B. was having to use the tree limbs to help steady himself and literally pull himself up. After a while he gave up. It was just as he had thought—the mountains were too steep to climb without gear, which meant no one was coming down, either. Secure. But as he had told Jak, that sec reminded him of a prison.
J.B. turned back and made his way across the settlement in the opposite direction until he came to a similar line of wilderness that stretched up into the mountains. He tried again to climb, but found it was almost as steep as the westerly edge, leaving him boxed in on two sides.
The south side was less overgrown, but a small fence had been erected there that marked the end of Heaven Falls. The fence was constructed of wooden slats and stood a little more than waist height. It took little effort for J.B. to scramble over it and drop down on the other side. Beyond was a border of scrubby grass and a few bushes, and twenty feet beyond that was a crack in the earth that was wide enough to drive a wag through. The far side of the crack was a lot lower, the depth of a couple of the shacks that J.B. had been building, stacked floor to roof. The gap looked natural and it ran the whole way around the ville until it met with the steep mountain slopes. J.B. didn’t know if it had always been there or was something recent, something caused perhaps by an earth-shaker missile dropped here during the nukecaust. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that here was another escape route blocked off, leaving only the front gates as a viable path from the ville, or perhaps that tough climb to the east.
“Come on, Doc,” J.B. muttered as he made his way back to the low fence. “I’m relying on you here.”
Doc was his out, his chance to take another look at the redoubt. Other options were dwindling as he investigated them, and J.B.’s mental checklist was getting shorter and shorter.
Chapter Eighteen
Charm had prepared the evening meal. Jak liked that. He could pull his weight, knew how to skin a rabbit and how to cook one, but he liked that she took care of him and had a meal ready when he came in from the field. The smell of herbs mixing in the pot was enough to make him smile as he walked into the shack they now shared.
Charm had not been working this day. The Melissas were rotated three days on and one day off, and this was her day off, though she cooked for him other times, too. He found her sitting on the back porch with the kitchen door open so she could hear if anything boiled over. The porch looked out over fields and the side of a mountain. It was a simple view, nothing special about it, but it looked good in the sunset.
“Missed you,” Jak said as he walked through the house, through the kitchen and out to the back door.
Charm looked up. She was wearing a light dress colored the same yellow found at the center of a dandelion. It came down to her knees, leaving the bottoms of her legs and feet uncovered. She wore no shoes, and her honey-colored hair was loose. “Missed you, too,” she said, smiling with her eyes.
Jak looked down at her, leaned in to kiss her. Expressions of closeness didn’t always come easily to him; he had spent too long on the road, too long hiding and fighting for his survival. All this was new, or new enough after what had happened with Christina.
“Eat soon?” Jak asked after they had kissed.
“Yeah, not long,” Charm told him, gazing out at the fields again. There was a low drone from the fields, and dark specks could be seen rushing in zigzags in the air as the last of the insects hurried to gather pollen before the sun disappeared.
“You okay?” Jak asked, watching the field.
Charm nodded. “Look at them go,” she said, indicating the bees. “It must be frantic, being an insect, not really knowing how much time you have left before the sun sets and you’re on your own. They always find their way home, though, don’t they?”
Jak nodded, moving to sit beside her on the stoop. Charm moved over, letting him squeeze on, his arm around her.
“We’re different from them,” Charm told him. “We’re not stunted by the sunset the way that they are. We’re not scared by the dark.”
“Not always,” Jak said. His eyes moved from the field to look at Charm’s legs, the way they stretched out in front of her. The right had been scratched by the bear but the wound had healed. She had not been to the medical faculty; she had just let it heal its own way. The cut had been deep but the skin looked unmarked now. If he hadn’t seen the wound, Jak wouldn’t know it had ever been there. What had it been? Two days? Two and a half? She was strong; he liked that.
“I should get serving dinner,” Charm said suddenly, “or we won’t eat.”
Jak held her gently, pulling her close. “Can wait,” he said.
Looking up, Charm kissed him on the mouth. Together they made love there on the stoop, the last rays of the sun warming their bodies as it set.
* * *
RYAN AND KRYSTY meanwhile found themselves in the strange position of visiting friends for dinner. Ryan had switched from house building to farming after four days, and he wasn’t sure which discipline he was better suited to. In essence, his strength was an asset wherever he was assigned, and so he had agreed to help out on a day-by-day basis wherever he was needed. It was his foreman at the farm project—a lettuce-and-tomato growing operation—who had suggested dinner.
“My lady insists we meet new people,” Terrence told Ryan. “Make you feel welcome and us a little less boring, I guess.”
So a little after sunset, Ryan and Krysty strolled arm in arm from their cabin to the little hillside shack that Terrence shared with his wife and two kids. Krysty was as surprised by the offer as could be—she thought of Ryan as something of, if not a loner, then an individual. This was a glance into the life he had led before then, when he had been a baron’s son in a privileged social world.
“We’ll have to have these people over, you know,” she told Ryan as they walked up to Terrence’s door. “To return the favor.”
Ryan looked at her and smiled. “I’m okay with that.”
Krysty looked good to Ryan’s eye, with her hair freshly washed in clean water and her clothes washed and mended where they’d needed to be.
The door opened and Terrence and his wife, a short woman called Bernadette—“Bernie, I insist”—stood there, welcoming Ryan and Krysty inside. Their two children were laying out the plates at the simple dinner table, and the youngest smiled broadly when she saw Krysty. It was one of Krysty’s charges from the kindergarten.
“Auntie Kryssie,” the girl said, hurrying over to meet her, a wooden plate still clutched forgotten in her hand.
“Hello, Jessie,” Krysty said, leaning down to the girl’s level. “Are you helping Mommy and Daddy with the cooking?”
“Yes,” Jessie replied, and the adults chuckled behind Krysty. “This is my brother, Daniel. He’s at school class. He’s six.”
So Krysty was introduced to six-year-old Daniel who was at “school class,” and she and Ryan were made welcome with mugs of warm mead while Bernie served the food.
“You’re new to Heaven Falls,” Terrence said amiably. “You come far?”
“I’m from...er, nearby,” Ryan said evasively. “Just the far side of the mountains really, but we took the long way getting here.”
“That’ll make you appreciate it more,” Terrence told them both, and Ryan agreed that it had.
Before long, Krysty was called upon to help Jessie go to bed, which left the men alone together. The topic of conversation turned to children and what Ryan and Krysty might be doing in the longer term.
“I don’t like to make plans,” Ryan explained, “in case they don’t work out.”
“Don’t need to make a big plan,” Terrence told him. “You’ve got a roof over your head, food on the table. That’s all you need.”
“I guess it is,” Ryan mused. “I never saw myself as a farmer, though.”
“You should,” Terrence told him. “You’re good at it. Natural. Strong. And you don’t slack off. I’ve watched you. You keep up like that and the Regina will give you my job.”
“And where would that leave you, Terrence?” Ryan asked before taking a swig of mead.
“Bitter at you,” Terrence said with a laugh in his voice. “Seriously, we need good men to keep this place running. We’ve made a lot of progress, but there’s always space for another good man.”
When Bernie and Krysty returned from settling the kids to bed, they found the two men sitting in silence.
“Terry, what did you go and say to our guest?” Bernie asked.
Ryan shook his head before Terrence could answer. “He didn’t say anything he shouldn’t have. Just got me thinking.”
Krysty shot Ryan a look, recognizing the wistful tone of voice he had used. “Something on your mind?”
“Something to think about, mebbe,” Ryan replied easily.
* * *
ON THE WALK home, one too many mugs of mead rushing in their veins, Krysty asked Ryan about what he and Terrence had discussed.
“Terrence figures I have a life here, if I want it,” Ryan told her.
“That’s good,” Krysty said. “Do you want it?”
“Do you?”
Krysty stopped on the path through the fields and looked at Ryan in the moonlight. “Lover, I want us to be happy. I think that mebbe this place is that happiness.”
“Do you think this is the place?” Ryan asked.
“I think this is the place. Chased by muties. Potentially raped by barons. Mebbe eaten by cannies. Hounded by wolves.” Krysty reeled them off on her fingers. “Do you think I’d miss all that? Really? Ryan, we’re happy here.”
Ryan scratched at his nose thoughtfully. “There was something I was supposed to... I forget.”
“You’re drunk,” Krysty told him, smiling her wonderful smile.
Yeah, he was. But it wasn’t that. Ryan knew there had been something, something about an explosion. And he had meant to learn more but somehow he had got sidetracked, put it to one side. And now he couldn’t remember if the darn thing was important, which probably meant it wasn’t.
Ryan laughed, shaking his head and willing the thought away. “I love you,” he told Krysty. “If you’re happy, then I’m happy.”
“I’m happy, lover,” Krysty told him, wrapping her arm in his. “I’m so happy.”
* * *
DOC CONTENTED HIMSELF to taking long walks—or constitutionals, as he called them—across the open fields when he wasn’t beekeeping. The mountain air was fresh and the scenery was bewitching. It was hard to find fault with Heaven Falls.
* * *
WHEN RICKY WAS let out of the medical faculty on the morning of the sixth day, he came back with Mildred to the shack she shared with J.B. The Armorer was out helping erect another house, which left Ricky home alone with nothing much to do.
“Just rest up, and I’ll be back soon as I can,” Mildred told him.
“I’ve done plenty of resting up already,” Ricky told her. “I need to get out there, see everyone again. Where are they anyway?”
Mildred didn’t know what to say. It would have been nice if Ryan and the others had been here to meet Ricky, but the reality was that they had all become a little distant over the six days since they’d arrived here, and she hadn’t even thought to tell everyone that Ricky was coming “home,” whatever it was that home meant.
“There’s food in the pantry and J.B. usually clocks off an hour before sundown,” Mildred explained. “I need to get back to the hospi—the faculty. If you need anything else, pop your head outside and ask around. Everyone’s friendly here, they’ll help you.”
With that, Mildred left, and Ricky found himself alone in a strange building in a strange ville with no idea where anything or anybody was.
Chapter Nineteen
The sixth night was a lot like the companions’ first in Heaven Falls. Word went out that a rally was to be held in the center of town and that everyone was expected to attend.
“The Regina calls these things every few days,” Terrence told Ryan as they packed up their tools for the day. “Plenty of good grub and drink. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Who says I’m worried?” Ryan countered with an easy smile.
The field workers and house builders were let home early, and the nursery where Krysty worked saw its charges collected by their parents an hour or so earlier than usual, which allowed her and her colleagues to leave early, too. The only people still working were the army of cooks, ten in all, who catered to all major events held in Heaven Falls and had been instructed to have fresh food ready the moment the speech ended.
The rally was held in the courtyard outside the Regina’s tower. It was a wide-open space lit by flaming bowls that had been arranged at its edges. The burning material had been treated by a chemical additive that colored the flames like a rainbow, turning them a dark red and a rich, leafy green. The flames colored the white towers in flickering new shades and made the whole plaza both eerie and beautiful all at once.
Ryan and Krysty arrived just as things were setting up. They had not called for Mildred, Doc or the others; people were living their own l
ives here and it didn’t make sense to intrude.
Krysty loved the way that the flames illuminated the towers as they walked toward them. “They look like flowers, like red poppy petals amid the leaves.”
Ryan placed his arm around Krysty’s shoulders and stroked the top of her arm. “This place is all right,” he said.
Other people were arriving in twos and threes, parents with kids, friends from neighboring cabins. People began to mingle and gossip while the servers set up the long tables of food.
Doc arrived with Ricky and Mildred. Ricky had never seen anything like this and it came as a wonderful surprise. “Is this place always like this?” he asked.
“Not so far,” Mildred told him. She was searching the crowd for J.B. He hadn’t been home, and she was wondering where he could have gone to so late in the day.
Jak arrived shortly after that, arm in arm with Charm. Charm had put up her hair in an elaborate design that added five inches to her height. She wore an unadorned, cream-colored dress that hugged her curves tightly and shimmered like silk in the multicolored firelight.
Doc tipped his hand to his brow when he saw Charm and Jak. The albino nodded in reply, his mouth a solemn, fixed line. If there was something between them, it was hard to define.
J.B., the last of the companions to arrive, was still trekking up the dirt path that led into town when the Regina took the stage. She had dressed in a gold-and-black ankle-length dress that rested against the tops of her breasts, revealing her bare shoulders. The top of the dress went down in a point at her navel, leaving her tanned skin exposed. The dress’s design featured a black swirl on front and back that seemed almost to rotate amid the gold. Long black gloves finished the ensemble, cinched tightly to her slender arms, up almost to the shoulders.
Most people stood, while a few had taken up sitting positions on the scythe-shaped benches that lined the plaza. The crowd hushed as the Regina stepped onto a raised platform erected outside her tower. Then she raised her arms and began to speak in a loud, clear voice.
“People of the Trai,” the Regina began with a smile, “it brings us all great pleasure to come together like this.
