The Dead Lands

by Benjamin Percy

  Gawea doesn’t know why she’s being so generous. Maybe it’s the enormity of the night, the way it seems to crush them together, make them one instead of many. She says, “You’ve heard the saying? We’re all made of stardust? We’re all made of stardust. We’re all made of the same thing.”

  A few of them look up, as if to consult the sky for an answer, but the night and the clouds muddle whatever they might hope to find.

  “In a way it’s true,” Lewis says. “And once Gawea helped me recognize that, to see how everything is connected, it was a little like growing another eye. Or another hand, another nose. Another level of sense. And with that sense comes the ability to manipulate.”

  Gawea can’t help it. She likes it—she does—when he talks about her admiringly. It makes her feel like she matters inside of someone instead of outside, more than a mere guide leading them through a maze.

  For a while there is only the fire snapping; then York says, “I hear you, but it’s just a bunch of words.”

  Everyone is staring at the skeleton weed, now unfurling into a purple bloom, a small shoot of life in the season of dying. The wind is ceaseless, whistling around the edges of the hill and whipping up snow. The fire bends and flattens, struggling to right itself against the gusts.

  It is then that the body falls.

  There is a crack—as the logs break beneath its weight—followed by a concussion of air filled with embers that sting their exposed faces. They cry out and roll away and try to calm their minds, not knowing at first what has happened, not even knowing where they are, still caught up in the unreality of Lewis’s demonstration.

  It is a deer, they discover. A buck with a sizable rack of antlers. At first they think it might have, in confusion, in the whirling snow, wandered off the edge of the ledge. Then they hold a flaming log closer and examine its body and see its throat torn away.

  There was a time, not so long ago, when Gawea wished them all dead, considered them an annoyance, an impediment. Now she is the first one to reach for a gun, eager to defend them. She remembers what Burr said about how she might discover camaraderie, something to fight her perpetual loneliness, and how resistant she was to that suggestion. They need her—that is clear—but now she feels, with some reluctance, she might need them too. Could she call them friends? Was that the right word? It implied a valued closeness at odds with where and why she led them. If only they could remain everlastingly in motion, if only their journey would never end. Because when it ended, this would end, the fond nervous connection she feels to a huddle of bodies shivering in the night.

  She does not sleep and nothing comes out of the snowy dark. But she knows the danger is out there. And she knows if it does not find them, she will eventually lead them to it.

  Chapter 32

  REED’S EYES FOCUS on nothing. He won’t speak unless pressed, responding yes or no with the barest whisper. He whimpers when dreaming. He waves people away when they come near. His eyes, when closed, look as black as shadows, as if two holes have been bored into his head—and when open they are no less disturbing, threaded with capillaries. His skin is pale, so sunken and drawn against his skull it appears to have given way to bone. He often reaches a hand into his pack to fondle the tiny coffin he keeps nested there.

  One day they find him with a knife in one hand and his braid in the other, the long black coil of it sawed roughly from his head, twined around his knuckles. Clark says, “Why would you do that?” and shakes her head sadly.

  She must feel some sympathy for him. Every now and then she places a hand on his shoulder, reminds him to drink, to eat. But a part of her—he can feel it—wishes he would die. He is an emotional liability, a smear of human waste. He should die. But really, they should all die. They’re going to die. He can taste it like ashes on his tongue.

  * * *

  The treetops—some pine, mostly ash and oak—cut through the low-sailing clouds. The air is so cold it hurts to breathe, as if their lungs are crystallizing and might shatter. Their faces and hands are a raw red, windburned. Their lips crack. So do their knuckles. They can never get warm, not fully, as if their very marrow has hardened into a chalky freeze. “Are you sure this is the way?” they ask Gawea, and she says, “This is the way.”

  They allow Colter to walk and to sleep without restraints. The world is his prison. He will die if he departs them, and he will die if he attacks them, and everyone seems resigned to this. He stops trying to convince them he’s on their side, understanding they need time. He plods along with his head down, occasionally reaching for the place where his arm used to be as if to scratch it.

  Whatever hurled the deer on their fire, whatever steals the food from their traps, is following them. In a shed Clark discovers an old trap, big enough to look like the jaws of some mechanical beast. One day, when they have settled on a place to camp, she heats the trap in the coals of the fire and limbers the gears, works free the rust. Then she hikes into the woods and buries it in the snow a few feet from a wire trap, in the open space between two trees, the most likely hallway in this tangle of bushes. She drives the spike deep into the ground.

  That night, they add more and more wood to the fire, building up the flames to their standing height, and they turn their backs to it to preserve their vision and face the forest. The heat thrown by the fire is so tremendous that sometimes their skin feels as though it might split and peel, but they dare take only so many steps away from it, the black perimeter of the night as solid and forbidding as a wall.

  Colter asks for a rifle, and they give him a club. They keep their hands out of gloves, despite the cold, so that their fingers might be free to pull the trigger, snatch a knife. Their breath ghosts from them. They see eyes glowing like twin candle flames. They see shapes, sometimes low to the ground, sometimes standing upright. They hear broken branches, crunching footsteps, growling and huffing. And, at one point late in the night, a high-pitched cry—an animal unmistakably in pain.

  They assign a watch in two-hour shifts—while the rest try to sleep, huddling together for warmth. Gawea cozies next to York and pulls his arms around her like a coat.

  The next morning Clark works her way through the woods, following her old footsteps between the ice-frosted trees. The sun is only a hazy light seen through the clouds, like a candle buried in cotton. She clicks off the safety on her rifle when she nears the trap.

  The wind rises and briefly lifts the branches like so many skeletal arms beckoning her forward. Through the bushes, she sees blood on snow and an uncertain shape caught in the trap. She picks it up. The chain rattles and clanks.

  It is two times the size of her hand—white furred and black padded and yellow clawed—severed at the joint, torn or chewed off.

  * * *

  Reed has no words for the others and they have few for him except to occasionally ask how is he feeling, how is he holding up? He does not respond except to stare back the way they came, at the long dark channel crushed into the snow, reaching off into the distance, his link to the Sanctuary.

  He longs for the time when he mattered, the place where he mattered. He cannot understand what compelled him to leave. There was his opposition to the mayor, his gnawing worry that his dalliance with Danica would be discovered, and his belief that they had to leave behind the Sanctuary to survive. But all those feelings have turned to dust. And all his memories seem like happy ones, lit with a sunset glow. He remembers the thousands of faces that cherished him. He remembers the wind lifting dust from the streets and rooftops like banners. He remembers the chiming progress of jingle carts dragged by tinkers and pharmacists. The laughter in the bars and the shouted parley at the bazaar. The wind turbines creaking and the electricity sizzling. The sun flashing off thousands of points of metal and glass. Swallows flying in dark murmurations that looked like clouds, the only thing marring the blindingly blue sky. He remembers people despairing their lives, sure, but isn’t that always the case, everyone wanting more than what they have, expecting
something better on the horizon? If this was it, then they could have it.

  So when Clark returns to camp, when she shows them the severed paw, Reed says, “I think we need to face the facts.”

  Clark throws the paw on the fire, where it spits and bubbles and blackens.

  “I think we need to turn back.”

  “Shut up, Reed,” she says.

  His voice was calm before, but now he hurries out his words. “This is suicide.”

  “We trust the girl. She said there was an end to the desert, and there was, and she says there is an end to the snow, and there is.”

  “There’s death. If we keep going, we have nothing to look forward to except death.”

  “What’s happened to you?”

  “What’s happened to me? What’s happened to you? You used to love me.”

  “I used to fuck you.”

  “There’s a difference, isn’t there?” He smiles terribly. “So now you hate me?”

  “I don’t know. I might. I don’t respect you; I know that.”

  “People change, you know? I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Lewis has changed. Everyone is changing and the change is not good. Not good at all.”

  She grabs him by the arm and tries to drag him away from the others. “We need to talk.”

  “No!” He jerks from her grip. “No. I know they feel the same. I know they do.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his arm. “How could you not? This is suicide. Am I right? This is suicide.”

  Their faces, wrapped against the cold, give nothing back.

  “You’re wrong,” Clark says. “They don’t. They believe that we’re going to get through this, like we’ve gotten through everything else, and our lives will be better for it.”

  His vision shakes. He can’t seem to settle his eyes on anyone or anything. “Let’s vote, then.”

  “Don’t be weak, Reed.”

  “Let’s put it to a vote.”

  Her hand tightens around his arm, as if it were a neck to strangle. “Shut up, Reed. Please, please, please shut up.”

  He reels against her and breaks her grip, but it turns out she was the only thing holding him up and he falls to the ground. “You talk about America. You talk about democracy.” He knows he sounds out of breath. “So let’s vote. We’ll vote. We keep going or we turn back.”

  Everyone is motionless, studying him. He knows how he must look. Like a crazy person. Kneeling on the ground. His arms outstretched, beseeching them. His hat has fallen off and his hair thorns from his head. He stands and brushes away the snow that clings to him. “Who thinks we should turn back? Who thinks that?” He holds a hand up, as high as it will reach. He tries to smile but can feel the smile failing. He studies each of them in turn. They all look away except for Lewis. “Not even you, freak show? No one?”

  “That’s right.” Clark crosses her arms. “No one. Now, pull yourself together.”

  The horizon is lit red by the oil fires. A black snow begins to fall and blur the air, filling up their tracks, the way home. He cannot do it alone. The distance traveled and the dangers faced already feel impossible. He will starve or he will freeze or he will bake. He will fall or something will fall on him, a boulder or branch. He will succumb to a snakebite and wander for hours in a fever while one of his limbs purples and swells. He will be torn to pieces, a feast for the beasts and birds and bugs. There will be no marker for his grave except a half-buried pile of sinewy bones riddled with tooth marks. And even if he made it, even if he somehow stumbled out of the desert and into St. Louis, toothless from scurvy, mad with loneliness, what then? Maybe he would knock on the gates and shout, “Let me in, I’m back, so sorry to have worried you, it was all a dreadful mistake!” Or maybe he would sneak in, wait outside the Dome until Danica emerged for a walk, then grab her by the wrist, say, “It’s me!” She would pull away from him, he felt sure. She wouldn’t recognize him, just as Clark didn’t recognize him. He didn’t recognize himself anymore. And then Thomas would lop off his head and hang it somewhere for everyone to admire. It is clear now: if he returns, he will fail, and if he keeps going, they will fail. He is a failure. Life is a failure.

  “Fine.” Reed nods. “Okay. You’re right. I can see that you’re right.” He keeps nodding, even when he withdraws his revolver and puts the muzzle in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

  Chapter 33

  DANICA KEPT THE dagger. The one she found on Resurrection Day, in the stadium, when the girl was marched to the gallows, when her husband applauded, when she snuck away and Reed bent her over the table littered with weapons. He filled her, again and again, until she felt something unraveling inside her, as if every ligament and tendon and muscle fiber and nerve ending were loosening at once—and she reached for something, anything, to stabilize her, before she came undone. It was the dagger her hand curled around then. In a way she never let go.

  The blade is six inches long, the hilt four, the guard the same. It is flat, meant to be worn close to the skin. She spears cockroaches with it. She tosses it, end over end, into wood floors for the satisfying thunk it makes. When she holds it up to a band of sunlight or moonlight, it makes a shadow like a cross on the wall. When she draws it across the skin at the inside of her thighs, it traces a thin pink line that wells into red dots. She keeps it sheathed beneath her dresses. She sleeps with it beneath her pillow. There is something reassuring, boosting, about always having its sharpness nearby. Maybe that’s how men feel about their cocks.

  She had a blade when she was a girl. A belt knife. Her grandfather gave it to her, said it wasn’t a toy but a tool, said she should learn it like a limb. She carved her name into stucco, carved dwarves and goblins out of wood, carved up meat and cheese, carved off the ear of an older boy once when he tried to get between her legs.

  Her hand is on the dagger and she is awake the moment her door cracks and the boy steals his way into the room. She watches him with her eyes half-lidded. Watches him watch her. Then study his surroundings. He wears a backpack. No shoes. When he whispers toward the dresser, she expects him to reach for the jewelry box atop it, but he does not. He slides open one drawer, then another, her underwear drawer, and reaches in. He is a pervert, then.

  She could call out for help. But she has always preferred to take care of matters on her own. So she slides out of bed, slides across the floor, so quietly the air seemingly cannot grip her. She wears a silken slip that makes no noise.

  And then the knife bites the boy’s back, just above his pack, the place where his neck meets his shoulders.

  He spins around. He is such a little thing. Narrow headed and wide-eyed and slim limbed, like a skinned cat. He does not seem capable of lust. And when she takes in the sight of him, his hand gripping a bouquet of panties, she feels somewhere between amused and disgusted.

  “What is your name?”

  He says nothing until she leans the blade into his chest and then he says, with a whimper, “Simon.”

  “You’ve come here to steal my panties, Simon?”

  “No.”

  “That’s certainly what it looks like.”

  His eyes flash between her and his fistful of underwear. “I’ll admit, I was going to grab a pair.”

  “Good. It’s good to tell the truth.”

  “But that’s not why I came here.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Out with it, then. Before I open you up.”

  “I came to deliver a letter. He sent you a letter.”

  “Who did?”

  “Reed did. That’s who. Reed.”

  She takes two steps back and lowers her arm, nearly dropping the knife when it swings limply at her side. At first she cannot say anything, cannot make words, all of her attention on the flower of blood blooming at his breast where she nicked him. He reaches to touch it, as if bitten by a bug, and examines his red fingertips.

  Then she goes to the hallway and checks to make sure it is empty before closing the door and gatheri
ng her breath and saying, “Show me.”

  * * *

  Ella asked how long Simon would be, how long it would take him to break into the Dome, creep through its many rooms, find whatever it is Lewis meant for them to discover. You must expose what is hidden in the Dome, he wrote to them—and there the letter trailed off.

  Simon told her he might not find anything at all. And he didn’t know how long it would take. He would do his best and doing your best takes time. This sort of thing can’t be rushed. The necessary silence of his trade came with stillness, slowness. He might be two hours or he might be four hours.

  “Four hours, then,” she said. “I’ll start to worry after four hours.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t want you worrying and I don’t want to feel rushed.”

  “Four hours. It will be dawn in five, so you’ve got no choice but four.”

  She tries to sleep but can’t. Of course she wonders what he might find—locked away in some closet or hidden in a drawer—whatever secret might serve them. But that seems secondary to him coming home to her. Home—that’s how she thinks of the museum—as belonging to them both. They share a room—with beds opposite each other—just as they share meals and duties and conversation. She might bully him, but with tenderness, every rough shove another opportunity to touch, every hard word a breath between them shared.

  She waits in the kitchen—a long room crowded with cupboards and counters—where he will enter through a side door. She paces the floor and then collapses in a chair and rests her head in her hands. She imagines him whipped. She imagines him dead. She imagines him trapped somewhere, hiding beneath a bed or in a closet while people move all around him. She hates to admit it, but she cares about him, feels about him as she would a cherished possession, not wanting to let him out of her sight.