by Susan Kim
It was, after all, his idea that guards be posted that morning, alone, and without any kind of training or backup. In retrospect, even he had to admit that perhaps it was a bad impulse. He had acted rashly, without a real plan. Without weapons, real weapons from the Source that idiot Sarah had promised then failed to deliver, what other choice did he have?
Now Trey’s partner stopped as she headed indoors to tend to the boy. In front of Rafe, her eyes blazing, Aima spoke in a low, accusatory voice.
“Trey never fought those mutants and you know it,” she said. “He’s too gentle. And you sent him there alone. You sent him out there and now he’s—” A sudden spasm of anger contorted her face and she pushed past him to get inside.
Rattled, Rafe cleared his throat, hoping no one else had heard. He was now aware that the stranger was speaking.
“—wonder if you could give me some information,” Caleb was saying. “I have some private business to look into.”
“Of course, of course,” said Rafe, with a wave of his hand. He was not listening; too busy worrying what the townspeople were thinking of him, he had already dismissed the stranger to the realm of the unimportant.
But at that moment, there was a new commotion.
A small boy and even smaller girl had just arrived, and they were both talking to whoever would listen. They were breathless and shrill, words tumbling over one another in their haste to speak.
“We seen it—” said the boy.
“We was hiding,” said the girl. “We heard a noise so we hid. Then we seen it—”
“There was five of them. He was shooting rocks, like this, one after another—”
“They had Trey tied to a rope. He looked bad, he wasn’t moving—”
“—and he beat four. The last one tried to get away… but he chased him, too—”
“—five against one. He beat them all. And we seen it—”
“Five against one.”
The townspeople murmured, trying to understand. Bewildered, Rafe stepped forward and leaned down to address the two, with a feeling of dread.
“Who beat the mutants?” he said.
At this, the two stopped talking, self-conscious at being the center of attention. But then, they both noticed Caleb, standing to one side. The girl’s face flushed and the boy broke into a smile as he raised his finger, pointing through the crowd.
“Him. Him over there. He’s who done it.”
SIX
THE CELEBRATION LASTED ALL AFTERNOON.
Rafe had sent out orders, allowing everyone in Prin to take the rest of the day off from work. This was to guarantee maximum attendance—ostensibly, to pay homage and show gratitude to Prin’s new hero.
The real reason was that Rafe wanted to ensure the entire town gave him credit for this turn of events.
As a result, the aisles of what had once been a supermarket were crowded. Even Sarah was there, whom Rafe had invited despite his lingering anger, as well as her misfit younger sister, Esther.
The stranger sat next to him, of course, in the seat of honor at the single table in the front of the store.
At first, Caleb was so silent and awkward, Rafe wondered if the reports of his astonishing heroism were true. For a moment, he even considered that he might be simple in the head. But when food and water were placed in front of Caleb—only he was served, as befitted the guest of honor—he started to eat voraciously. Soon, Rafe figured, he was bound to open up. And then they could get down to the real business at hand.
“We wanted to show our appreciation to you,” Rafe said after Caleb slowed down. “For once, somebody not only agrees with me about the mutants… he ain’t scared to follow through.”
Caleb cleared his throat. Then he spoke so softly, even Rafe had to cock his head to make out what he was saying.
“Nobody wants to take the fight to the mutants more than me,” he said. When his words were conveyed through the room, there was a murmur of approval.
“But this dinner ain’t just about appreciation,” continued Rafe. “I’d like to make you a proposition.” As usual, he, too, lowered his voice, so people leaned forward. “I’d like you to stay on awhile. How about you teach us what you know about fighting and such?”
For the first time, Caleb turned to his host and Rafe was startled by the intensity of his gaze.
“Do you have any real weapons?” Caleb asked in his soft voice. “Any hunting knives? Shotguns?”
Rafe flushed.
“No,” he said pointedly. He hoped Sarah was listening. “I’m afraid we got to take on the mutants without those. But I should add—in exchange, we’re willing to put you up and feed you. How does that sound?”
Rafe was smiling, a bit desperately now. Caleb appeared to be thinking. After what seemed an eternity, he gave a slight nod. At this, the room began to buzz with excitement.
“But I have conditions,” he said, and everyone fell silent.
This time, he looked up, addressing the entire room. “If any mutants come near town, we will attack them, and attack them hard. Any survivors will be imprisoned. There can be no contact of any kind between townspeople and mutants; if anyone is caught socializing with a mutant, they will also be imprisoned.”
Now the silence was broken. Slowly, a hum of excitement in the room built to a ragged crescendo of approval. One by one, the people of Prin started to cheer, thump the floor, and bang on the metal shelves, whistling loudly. After a while, the place was utter bedlam.
Uneasily, Rafe watched this. He stood and quickly put his arm around Caleb, making sure to share in the applause.
Only one guest was not celebrating.
The person had been standing alone by the front door and now, quietly, slipped outside into the early evening while no one else was paying any attention.
It was late when Caleb staggered out onto the main street. He was full to bursting, more sated than he had been in years.
He was also exhausted, with a heavy bone-weariness. After months of hard travel, he had reached his destination, and he had been welcomed. A good night’s sleep under a roof would prepare him for what he had to do.
Caleb turned onto the deserted street where he had left his bicycle, chained to a rusted parking meter. Then he froze.
Somebody was kneeling next to his bike.
Even from the back, Caleb could tell it was a young boy, small and slight, wearing a red sweatshirt with the hood drawn around his head. Gloves on his hands, he was slashing at the back tire with some instrument.
Caleb tackled the boy from behind. Putting him in a chokehold, he dragged him away from the bike. The vandal was struggling, flailing with his free hand—he was striking out with his weapon, an ugly piece of broken glass—but Caleb was able to shake it loose, then kick it away with his boot.
The two struggled in near silence—Caleb trying to subdue the boy, who continued to fight wildly, despite the obvious difference in size and strength. Finally, the smaller one managed to twist his head into the crook of Caleb’s arm while seizing his thumb and yanking backward; with a cry of pain, Caleb loosened his grip and the other slithered out of his grasp, his hood ripping. The two faced each other, the boy still choking for breath, massaging his throat.
Only it wasn’t a boy. It was a girl.
The girl who had been spying on him near the hoop on the pole, behind the building.
And she looked furious.
In truth, Esther was angriest with herself: annoyed that she was inattentive enough to get caught before she could even begin her task, much less finish it. She cursed herself and shot a quick glance at the piece of glass, lying a few feet away. However, the stranger caught her look and made it there first. He brought his heel down on it, smashing it with a dull crunch.
He had been staring at Esther the whole time with an unreadable expression. This, more than the fact that he had nearly strangled her, made her deeply uncomfortable.
“I seen you before,” he said. “Behind that building on the edge
of town?”
She returned the stare; then nodded defiantly.
“What were you doing?” he asked, indicating his bicycle.
“What do you think?” Her tone was derisive.
The stranger nodded, as if in agreement. “Why?”
He didn’t sound angry or sarcastic. He asked as if he was curious about her reasons.
Esther started to reply, then stopped, confused. She had never been asked to explain herself before and now found it difficult to find the exact words.
“To stop you,” was all she could say.
The stranger was kneeling, inspecting his tires for any damage. At the sight, Esther flushed with a familiar surge of resentment. Like her sister, like most of the others in town, he was ignoring her, she assumed, because she was too childish and emotional to be worthy of his attention.
But she was wrong.
“So you heard what I said in there?” He did not look at her, but seemed as if he was addressing the bicycle.
As Esther hesitated, he glanced up. She nodded.
“And I take it you didn’t like any of it?”
Her face flushed with anger.
“The variants got enough troubles without you giving them more,” she muttered.
The rays of the setting sun hit his face, throwing its angles into deep relief and turning his eyes into live coals. In an instant, he looked older than anyone on earth, older than anyone could possibly grow to be.
“Variants,” he said.
He nearly spit the word, and Esther was unnerved by the depth of loathing that lay beneath it.
“Why do you hate them so much?” she asked. It was an honest question, more bewildered than angry. “My best friend is one and she’s a good person. How can you hate someone you don’t even know?”
The boy seemed taken aback by her question. Had anyone ever asked him before? Esther wondered. Then he spoke as openly as she had.
“I had a partner and baby son,” he said. “In a town a ways from here. One morning, I was out foraging for supplies. Mutants broke in. They killed my partner, Miri, cut her up so bad I couldn’t recognize her. They burned our place to the ground. And they took our son. Kai.”
Protests bubbled up in Esther’s throat. Before she could speak, he continued.
“One got left behind,” he said. “He was badly burned, and the others just ran away. I beat him but he couldn’t tell me much. I found an empty can of accelerant, the stuff that makes a fire burn faster. Able Accelerant, that was the name. The mutant said they got it around these parts, that’s all he knew. That was the last thing he said.”
The last rays of sun had turned the sky as red as blood.
“That’s why it’s no good trying to stop me,” he said. He spoke as if he had no choice. And yet, he seemed to hesitate, as if waiting for a response.
Did he want her to stop him? Esther wondered. To talk him out of it? For a moment she thought she had a glimpse of who he really was beneath his hatred and anger. In his own way, maybe he was as hurt and isolated as she was.
Before she could reply, the stranger mounted his bicycle and disappeared into the night.
Watching him go, Esther felt torn. His story must be true. The ghastly murder of his partner and the abduction of his child: it would be impossible to invent such horror. His pain and grief were as searing as a fresh wound, and part of her wanted to run after him, to reach out to him somehow, and comfort him.
At the same time, she believed he must have been mistaken. Obviously someone else had destroyed his family and stolen his son; some unknown variety of human monster and not the variants. The variants had no reason to kill and destroy. They may have faced difficulties and hardships, but they were better than the others because they did not covet. They did not need anything from anyone. It couldn’t have been them.
Yet why would the stranger lie? His words had stirred confusion that she found hard to admit, even to herself. He had made her face the one question she had never asked herself, despite the mounting violence…
Why were the variants attacking Prin?
Esther heard a sound behind her and turned to see that the last of the townspeople were leaving the supermarket. Compared to the heavy spirits earlier in the afternoon, the mood now seemed lighthearted, even festive. Looking at the smiling, chattering faces of her neighbors, Esther felt sick. She realized with a fresh shock what impact the stranger’s words would have on life in Prin.
All mutants will be attacked on sight, and attacked hard.
Any survivors will be imprisoned.
Anyone caught socializing with mutants will also be imprisoned.
For a moment, Esther felt dizzy. Then she gathered herself and made up her mind. No matter what doubts the stranger had instilled in her, there were more pressing matters at hand. She must warn Skar, before she came to town as usual. She had to save her friend.
But how?
It was late at night. What was more, the variants lived many miles away to the north, in the mountainous region. Esther owned no bicycle and to walk there would take more than a day.
She wheeled around, desperate.
Several people were walking toward her, indistinguishable in their white robes. Yet she recognized one of the voices.
“Where are you going?” Eli called. He sounded so jovial.
She couldn’t respond. Even if she could trust him, which she couldn’t, she had no way to put into words how she felt. But it did not matter, for he was not really waiting for her reply.
“Were you at the meeting?” He was as excited as a little boy. Caleb’s words had given him hope and now, grotesquely, he wanted to share that hope with her.
In an instant, Esther realized what she must do. It would again require manipulating Eli, playing off his interest in her. She had done so before, when she had appealed to him wordlessly and he had understood, leading the rest of the Harvesting team away. She felt a twinge of guilt and also wondered, fleetingly, when she would have to repay the growing list of favors he had done for her.
She would worry about all that later.
“Can I borrow your bicycle?” she asked. “Please?”
Esther leaned over the handlebars, riding swiftly.
On the outskirts of Prin, she passed mountains of rubble that had once been restaurants, a shopping center, a block of offices. Behind her, the floodlights of the Source emitted a soft glow that lingered for what seemed like miles. But soon it was dark, and then darker still. Esther had only the moon and stars to light her way.
She rode along what had once been another highway, steering around abandoned cars and trucks, sodden piles of leaves and old clothing, crumpled road signs that dangled overhead from bent steel poles. Several times, she was forced to dismount and walk her bicycle around gaping crevices where the road had sheared away. Occasionally, she heard the mysterious cries of unseen animals and noticed flittering shapes that darted through the inky air. Once, a hulking form lumbered across the road ahead of her. But they did not slow her down.
Esther’s mind was whirling.
She had to warn Skar. She would need to warn all of the variants of the stranger’s arrival and the harsh new laws now in effect. For their safety, they all needed to steer clear of Prin.
But would they believe her? They might accuse her of being a spy, or being deliberately sent with false rumors.
After several hours, Esther paused by the side of the road to get her bearings. To one side, visible through the trees, glittered the shoreline of what used to be a vast lake. A good portion of it had dried up, exposing the parched land underneath, the skeletons of fish and birds it had digested, the occasional fiberglass cooler or hamper, destroyed. The rest of the lake was covered with a black, oozing substance as thick as a tarp and as shiny as glass. In the distance she saw a cluster of foothills surrounding a single tall peak. This was her destination.
It was nearly dawn.
Esther had been traveling for hours now and each downward stroke of
the pedal was agony; her entire body trembled with exhaustion. Yet she was encouraged by the fact that although the hardest terrain was ahead, she was nearly there.
Esther glided up the exit ramp off the highway to a lesser road, and then another after that. She had only been this way once before, and that was several years ago. As a result, she made a few wrong turns.
Eventually, however, she found what she was looking for. Esther turned off the paved surface and onto a rough dirt trail that cut through the densely forested mountainside. It was steep and rocky; after several minutes, she was forced to dismount and proceed on foot, pushing the bicycle by its handlebars. She reached a withered tree with a white mark upon it. There she turned. The trail wound a bit more until it ended at a clearing, carved out of a plateau.
This was where the variants lived.
Esther had not planned to arrive at dawn, but she realized it was a fortunate coincidence. Early day was hunting time for the tribe, and the camp seemed deserted. If Skar was around, they would be able to talk in private.
From her hiding place, she softly gave their secret whistle and waited. Within moments, someone emerged from one of the many shacks grouped across the clearing. It was Skar, who glanced around, clearly puzzled. Then she noticed Esther.
Surprised yet delighted to see her, Skar ran to her friend and gave her a hug. She smiled, her parted lips revealing her little teeth.
“Esther!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe it’s you! Why are you here?”
But in her haste to warn her friend and tell her all she knew, Esther had paid scant attention to her surroundings. Now, she was aware that something had changed. She stopped talking and stood still, gazing around.
When she was here before, it had only been a brief visit. At the time, she was met with suspicion by the few variants Skar introduced her to, and so she didn’t stay long. Yet she remembered what it looked like. There were makeshift shacks made of animal skins, salvaged planks, and saplings. In the center of the clearing were smoking vestiges of stick fires. Bones and other uneaten bits of animals had been strewn about, no longer recognizable.
But now, while the shacks were still there, there were no fires. Instead, Esther noticed what had taken their place.
