CHAPTER 15
Several of the men exchanged looks, their expressions unreadable.
“What?” I asked. Wendy was studying me with a strange expression, almost pitying.
“What’s your name again?” Mat said.
“Nik.”
“Nik.” Mat let out a breath. “Look. There’s no Bug. It’s gone.”
“No, it’s not.” I tried to keep the tremor I felt in my chest out of my voice. “It’s not.”
“Yes, it is,” Wendy said. She crouched again and started working on my injured arm. “You saw that we don’t have those festering Papas. No Papas, no knockouts. Nobody out here dies of the Bug and we don’t care about our heart rate.”
“Forget it,” Dolfo rasped. “Tell us why you’re here.”
I leveled a glare at him. The Bug had to still be in the air. Why else would Bren have died?
“Nik,” the short man said. “We need to know what brought you out here. It’s a dangerous thing to trust people here in the wilderness.”
He talked funny. He didn’t sound natural, more like the way a programmed bot would speak if the programmer wanted to make it sound human.
The leader crouched next to Wendy, using a penetrating gaze to try to get my attention. My teachers had been trying to do that for years; it didn’t work. I didn’t mind telling these people my story, but this guy kind of got on my nerves.
“My name is Gabe,” he said. “I’m the leader of this triune. It’s my job to keep everyone here safe. I want to help you, but these people,” he stood again and gestured at the campsite, “are my family. They come first.”
I nodded. “It’s okay. I’ll tell you what happened.”
As I spoke, Wendy continued working on my arm. She stopped for a moment, giving my leg a squeeze as I related what had happened to Bren. I tried to keep that part brief, but I still had trouble getting through it.
Within a few minutes, more of the people had come, some of them bringing extra chairs. Everyone was sitting by the time I got to breaking into the Enjineering Dome. A few children played near a big tent. One of them glanced at me with the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. I looked back at my audience again. I decided to leave out specific mentions of the CyJet. I wanted to trust these people, and most of them seemed nice and even normal, but Gabe made me nervous. He’d even said that trust was dangerous. Having the CyJet as my secret backup felt like the smart move.
“So I found another way out and ran for it. I got on my cycle,” the lie hurt a bit, but there was no other way to explain how I’d come so far. I talked about finding a place to hide and taking out the tracker and the knockout from my Papa.
“Why didn’t you just take the whole thing off and toss it?” Stan asked. “Easier that way.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, thinking fast. “But I thought they might take a while looking for the tracker, since it’s so small, before they realized they weren’t following me anymore.” I stopped. That made sense, right? It only took me a few more minutes to tell the rest of the story. “I rode fast the entire night. I haven’t slept or eaten. My cycle died a ways back.”
I hoped they wouldn’t ask too many questions.
By the time I was done, my right arm was wrapped tightly in a bandage that seemed to be hardening by the minute into a light cast. The cast went all the way up past my elbow, locking my arm into a bent position. Wendy had also tied a sling around my neck to hold the arm up.
“You rode nearly a hundred kilometers in one night?” Gabe’s voice dripped with doubt.
I looked at my Papa. “A night and half a day, yeah. I didn’t want to be caught.” I swallowed, taking a slow breath to calm my pounding heart. “I still don’t.”
“With a broken arm?” Dolfo smirked.
I glared at him. “I don’t pedal with my arms.”
A moment of silence lengthened into a minute. Some of the men glanced at each other, but everyone waited, clearly deferring to Gabe.
He finally sighed. “And why did you come south?”
“Anjeltown. I thought I could figure out if I was actually immune there, where nobody knows me.” It was nice to tell a simple truth. I was glad I hadn’t lied much and wondered again if I should have lied at all.
Gabe just gave me a bad feeling.
“And you just happened to find us?”
“I saw the smoke. It wasn’t hard. I was at the stream over there,” I pointed with my chin back toward the road. “If you don’t want people to find you, maybe you shouldn’t have a fire.”
Gabe’s eyes widened. Then he smiled, although the smile got nowhere near his eyes. “It’s certainly true that our fire was not up to our normal standards earlier.” He gave a boy a couple years younger than me a pointed look. “Not everyone has mastered the art of the smokeless fire yet.”
Now that the story was over, people had started filtering off. Soon only Gabe, Dolfo, Mat, Stan, and Wendy remained.
“Well, Nik,” Gabe reached for and grabbed Stan’s arm and nodded at the bearded man. Stan walked toward one of the five or six tents. “We have no reason to disbelieve your story.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. “Uh, good?”
“You must be hungry,” Gabe said. “Mat, Dolfo, would you please get Nik some lunch?”
Mat gave Gabe a quizzical look but obeyed. He and Dolfo made their way to the fire.
“Thanks,” I said.
“How is his arm?” Gabe turned his strangely insincere gaze on Wendy.
“It’s not a bad break, but it will take a while to heal all the way. The cast should stay on for a couple of weeks. He had a pretty bad gash on the elbow, but that’s clean and closed now.” Wendy walked slowly around me. “He’s covered in all kinds of bruises, a few from rubber bullets, others from who knows what. A couple shallow cuts from what I guess were bullets. The real thing. Nothing to be done for those, and they’ll heal soon enough.”
Gabe extended his arm expansively. “Welcome to the Wanderers. We are the Hawk triune.”
“Triune?” My legs were beginning to cramp up, so I extended them, needing to adjust my balance so the small chair didn’t fall over.
“That’s right,” Gabe said. “Wendy, thank you. If you would help break camp.” Wendy took her satchel and headed off, giving me an encouraging smile as she went. Gabe turned back to me. “Triunes are how the Wanderers organize themselves. Triune means three in one. We are three families who have come together to live our lives with one purpose: to live our way, free of the oppression of the New Chapter.”
It sounded like paradise. As Gabe continued, I watched as everyone pitched in to break the camp. They must move their campsite every day. The tents were incredible. They were all the same, and each one stood at least two meters tall. At their base, they had to be at least six meters on each side. They looked like the back of a creature we’d studied called an armadillo, with long, curving, articulated panels extending from the ground on one side of the tent to the ground on the other side. The pieces gave the tent a domed appearance, which must have been great against rain.
It looked like one tent had been completely emptied because as I half-listened to Gabe go on about the freedom of the wilderness, I saw a woman step on a small, hand-sized pad attached to the front of a tent. Before doing so, she had closed the front of the tent so that it was all smooth, curving pieces of some kind. It wasn’t just fabric; it had to be some kind of synthetic material that could stiffen up somehow. When the woman stepped on the pad, the tent shook a couple of times. The articulated panels seemed to loosen, and then the bottom-most front panel slid up into the next one. Then those panels, which now looked like one panel, slid up into the next one. And so on, until the entire tent had collapsed steadily into one thicker panel that sat on the ground.
Then the last, much thicker, panel folded in on itself twice. All that was left was a rectangle the size of a cycle wheel and a ground cloth. The woman seemed to have no trouble lifting the tent rectangle, and she stowed
it in a nearby pack.
“What all of this means,” Gabe said. He wasn’t even looking at me. “Is that Wanderers are very protective of their freedom. We get together once every year to counsel, and sometimes we cross paths with other triunes, but usually we are on our own. Which is how we like it. And we stay under the radar of Enforsers and Ranjers.”
“What’s a Ranjer?” I wanted one of those tents. Maybe I could start a family and become part of a triune. I couldn’t imagine a better life. No blaring Speekers, no Admins. No boring classes.
“An Enforser whose job is specifically to patrol the wilderness, looking for Wanderers and escapees from their cities.” Gabe’s expression said a lot.
Escapees like me. There were more like me.
Dolfo showed up then with a lightweight plate filled with some kind of glistening, dark material, what looked like tomatoes, and what I guessed was cheese. A fork and knife were stuck in the dark material. Dolfo handed the plate to me with a smirk, lifted his eyebrows at me, and then departed again.
“Please,” Gabe said. “Enjoy your lunch. We will be leaving shortly.” He wandered away.
Stan was right behind Dolfo with a cup in his hand. “Here you go.” His voice was soft, as if it had to fight through his thick beard.
I sipped the drink. It was sweet and tart. And really good. I took a few gulps and had to fight the urge to slurp it all down. I set the cup on a flat rock near me and gobbled the tomatoes and cheese. The tomatoes were strong and so full of tomato water that some dribbled down my chin. I’d only seen cheese in pictures, so I was surprised by how thick the flavor was. It had looked like a basic protein paste block. I poked at the dark stuff. It was rectangular and firm, but also kind of soft. It looked like it had been cooked over a fire. I stabbed it with the fork again and pale red juice dribbled out the holes left behind.
Awkwardly using my left hand, I cut the thing with the sharp knife. I blinked drowsily. I needed more sleep. Spearing the chunk I’d cut off the weird stuff, I popped it in my mouth with a little fear. Kind of salty; firm, yet easily chewed. I’d never had anything like it.
“What is this?” I asked nobody in particular, since everyone in the camp was occupied with other tasks.
A little girl who was passing by just then glanced at me. “Deer, duh.” She laughed. “Didn’t you ever eat deer before?”
So surprised that I almost choked, I coughed. “Deer?” I knew what a deer was; we’d learned in Ekology.
“Sure! It’s too salty today, but that’s ‘cause Ana made it, and she cooks bad.”
I was eating deer meat. It was good. I took another bite. This was nothing like the protein pastes we got in New Frisko. I hoped I could stay awake long enough to finish it.
The little girl dashed away. I swigged more of the drink and cut the deer meat into a few more chunks.
Why was I suddenly so sleepy? Must have been because of last night’s insanity. The last morsel of deer meat was just as delicious as the first.
When I woke up maybe an hour later, I found the last bite still in my mouth.
CHAPTER 16
I blinked heavily, tasting a strange combination of sweetness and deer meat. Turning my head, I spat out the chunk of meat, confused. I didn’t know how I could have been tired enough to fall asleep on that uncomfortable chair, especially while I was eating.
Ridiculous.
And how had I gotten on my back? I blinked again, cool awareness somewhat dissipating the fog in my head. Trees stretched tall and intertwined many meters above me. Beyond them, the sky glowed the blue of late afternoon. The pain in my right arm had returned somewhat, but it was more of an insistent throb than the stabbing agony of before. All I heard was birds singing and an unidentifiable creaking and whispering. The leaves overhead shook back and forth in the breeze. That had to be the whispering.
I pushed myself up, having to roll a bit to the side in order to do so with one hand. New confusion arrived, bringing sudden fear. I was alone. All I could see were countless trees, brush and saplings, forest flowers, and small, rocky hills. I saw no sign of the Wanderers and no sign of their camp.
Gaining my feet, I looked closer. They may have carried me off somewhere away from their camp, hoping I couldn’t find my way back. I took a somewhat shaky step, kicking something. I bent to investigate, shaking my head to finish clearing it. A pile consisting of my zip and a small pouch. I looked around again.
As I turned in place, I felt an eerie sense of familiarity. That rocky mound and that particularly fat pine tree—I’d seen them before. Grabbing my zip and the pouch, I hurriedly walked to the other side of the mound and stepped back from it a few paces. Yes. That was the pile of rocks we’d come around on our final approach to the Hawk triune’s campsite. I headed back to where I’d woken up. This was the campsite. Right here.
But the Wanderers were gone. I walked in a slow circle where I was sure the campsite had been. Fear that I’d dreamt the entire encounter and confusion welled up in me. The cast on my arm proved they had been real. Wendy had really been there. Mat, too, along with the others.
Now there was no sign of them. The campsite had been fairly big, and there had been at least five of those amazing tents. And a fire pit. All that I saw now was a clearing populated by moss-covered rocks, small brush, and one or two saplings as tall as me. Old, brown and yellow leaves, from the previous fall, I guessed, littered the ground haphazardly along with dry twigs here and there.
This was completely impossible. There had to be a sign of them somewhere.
I estimated where the fire had been, cleared the ground of leaves, and then dug somewhat with my heel. Just dry dirt with moist, dark earth under it. I dropped to my knees and grabbed a thick nearby twig. Using the twig, I dug a few inches deep. Nothing.
I moved a few feet to the left and did the same thing, desperation filling me. How could they have left me? How could they have gone without leaving any sign of their presence and without taking me with them? Why would they do that?
This time I found it. About ten centimeters down, the twig cut through a layer of gray stuff. I brought the twig up to eye level. Ash. I wasn’t going crazy. I dropped the twig and filled in the small hole, standing quickly. I grabbed the nearest sapling and tugged hard with my left arm. This sent twinges of pain from my right arm into my neck, so I stopped. But the small tree hadn’t budged.
I remembered Gabe saying that they made sure they never left any evidence of where they’d been or were going since the Ranjers could follow even the smallest of trails. I hadn’t imagined that they could completely eradicate all signs of their existence, disappearing like fog in the hot sun. And I hadn’t expected to be the one they were hiding from.
Bitter anger, tasting of the sweet drink I’d been given, tied my stomach into a knot. They’d said they would help me.
It didn’t matter. I was alone again. If the Wanderers were so good that Ranjers, who sounded somehow meaner than Enforsers, couldn’t find them, there was no way I would, either. The briefly glimpsed life of freedom had disappeared. Just great. Now I had nowhere to go. They’d said the Bug was gone, and I had to believe them. None of them wore a Papa. They wore brown and green clothes, whatever they wanted, I guessed, ate whatever they wanted, and did anything they liked. They ate real meat, lived free of the constant monitoring of the New Chapter, and—
I dropped to the ground, my chest tight. And they hadn’t wanted me along. They had left me even though they knew I needed help. When Wendy had been so kind, and Mat as well, I’d thought it was over. For a few minutes, I’d thought I was done, that I’d found a new home. I knew my parents might have missed me, but living as a Wanderer would have been better than going back to New Frisko and letting them kill me.
The Bug was definitely gone. Or it was somehow just in the air around the New Chapter cities.
That was dumb. It had to be gone. That made sense, but the only problem was Bren.
I forced myself to run through what had happened
—yes, that was only last night. I’d lived, proving the Bug was gone. The Pushers had left, and then Bren had pushed and seemed okay. But the Bug got him.
The Bug got him. It got my best friend, but not me.
Tears blurred my vision, my chest squeezing tight so I had trouble breathing.
And now I was alone. Again. I’d somehow killed my friend, and now I was in the middle of nowhere with a broken arm.
The forest said nothing as the guilt swept over me. I’d never see him again. The storm that had threatened every time I thought of Bren’s last moments finally broke. I cried. I felt the tears run down my cheeks, hot like the molten grief inside. I’d done it. It was my fault. His family would blame me. And they should. I wanted to break something, break myself. Go back and tell yesterday’s me not to do it. Not to Push.
I bent forward and clenched the side of my head with my good hand. They should blame me. It was my fault.
A few minutes later, I sat up and scrubbed my cheeks, grateful for the solitude. I was such a baby. Fifteen years old and crying in the middle of the forest. I sucked in a slow breath, held it for a moment, and then let it go. My chest cavity felt carved, cleaned out. Scraped raw. But cleaned out.
Bren had died of the Bug. It was my fault, but it couldn’t be entirely my fault. Because the Bug was gone. The Papa-less Wanderers were proof of that. I had to figure out what had happened. I needed to know why my friend had died when both the Wanderers and I were still alive.
I had to go back to New Frisko.
But for a moment, I wanted to sit in the stillness, letting the peaceful noises of the forest wash over me. Some kind of tapping or knocking sounded from high above and some distance away. I wondered briefly what made that noise.
I sat up straight, straining my ears. This new noise sounded different, had a different pitch to it. Man-made. I pushed to my feet. It was like the sound of propulsion units, but muffled.
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