The Dream Widow

by Stephen Colegrove

  “Don’t talk like that. We’re still trying to protect knowledge for the future. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Ha! The future.” She moved her empty gaze from the wall to Wilson. “Was your father happy? Out in the wilderness with those ... people?”

  “He saved lives. He knew how to avoid some of the diseases in the tribes and cure others. He helped to build a safe village for a tribe, the people at David. Of course I asked him why–”

  His mother bit her lip. “Don’t say he wished he’d never left. Don’t tell me about a good man who left his wife and son. Don’t tell me he died helping you. Don’t tell these things to me. Not now and maybe not ever.”

  THREE

  Hausen spread his hands wide on the meeting room table. “Impossible. You can’t expect us to survive the winter without heat and a supply of water. The old fool under the mountain doesn’t understand that.”

  “Jack’s giving us time to prepare, he’s not abandoning us,” said Father Reed. “There’s no time to debate what he does or doesn’t understand. The part of him that’s still human won’t live forever. That is a singular, impossible outcome.”

  “Why not wait until the spring thaw?”

  Wilson cleared his throat. “If the reactor fails, we won’t have time to escape. Not five hundred people with everything they need to survive. The radiation––the ‘ghost-sickness’––will cover the valley and everything in it. It won’t leave for generations.”

  “It sounds to me that an orderly shutdown of the reactor will let us stay here,” said a tall, gray-haired hunter. “We’ll have to think about water supplies and wood stoves, but we’ll be safe.”

  “Simpson is right,” said Hausen. “The living areas are below the frost line and will stay warm.”

  Wilson sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. “You’re asking Jack to kill himself.”

  “Hundreds of young and old will die in the wastes if we leave,” said Simpson. “He’s just one man.”

  “Who’s kept us alive for hundreds of years,” said Wilson. “He’s been buried in the Tombs since the days of the Founders. Alone. His family dead. Any given morning he could have decided our lives weren’t worth saving. And you know what? On that morning none of us would wake up.”

  “You’re too close to him,” said Hausen. “I’ve spent my life in the workshop keeping all of us stocked with crossbows and knives that don’t snap. I’ve spent my life protecting the valley too. I’m not going to throw that away!”

  Father Reed stood from the meeting table. “Stop it, Dan! No one’s asking you to.”

  “We’re here to talk about options,” said Wilson.

  Hausen shook his head. “Run away from everything and suddenly everyone thinks you’re a hero. Well, you’re not. You want to look into the eyes my wife and children and tell them we have to leave? Abandon everything and scrounge for food like the vultures outside this valley? You’re a child with dreams in his eyes.”

  Wilson stood up, a hand on his knife. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  Reed cracked his cane on the table. “Stop it, both of you. When the Circle gets here you’ll have more than enough chances to prove who’s a man.”

  “The Circle, this group you’ve talked about,” said Hausen. “They destroyed one village––David, where the refugees came from. They don’t sound dangerous to me but let’s say they are. That’s another reason to stay in the valley. We’ll never find another place this well-defended.”

  “A falling tree kills the unwary,” said Yishai.

  “Or the stupid,” said Wilson. “Winter is approaching and they won’t march before spring. Even after the snow melts they may not come this far west.”

  “It’s possible,” said Yishai. “Much depends on who leads the army. I’ve fought the Circle a few times over the years. Among them are a handful of shrewd fighters who strike fast and when you do not expect it.”

  “Then we must prepare,” said Father Reed. “Hausen, work on a defense plan for the perimeter as far as two kilometers out. You’ve got your men plus Simpson and his hunters.”

  “Got it,” said Hausen.

  “Chefa Yishai, I want your men to build defenses in the valley proper and up to the pass. I want a plan by tomorrow. If the Circle enters the valley we can’t just give up.”

  The large man nodded.

  “Wilson has been training a group in the implant techniques and I want him to continue. Garcia will be coordinating supplies. See him for any requests apart from manpower needs, which will go through Zhang. Any questions?”

  “Yes,” said Simpson. “Why are only youngsters getting trained in the new tricks?”

  “Teenagers learn the fastest,” said Wilson. “Their brains are more receptive to the implant connections. Adults don’t learn as quickly, and the documents I have don’t say why. My best guess is that the implants have only been in the body of a teenager for a few years––since Passing at age twelve––so the nerve receptors are still growing.”

  “I see.”

  Father Reed lifted his hand. “If that’s everything, gentlemen ...”

  “But we haven’t resolved the main problem,” said Wilson. “Jack.”

  “That’s my responsibility,” said Reed.

  “God save us if we have to leave Station,” said Simpson.

  Reed grimaced and stared at each face around the table. “Whether He saves us or not, we plan for everything. Including failure.”

  WILSON LEFT the rectory. As he climbed the steps to the surface he heard voices from the plaza. Probably finishing the wedding clean-up, he thought.

  A red-haired teenager stumbled into Wilson and almost knocked him down the rectory steps.

  “Watch it, Robb!”

  The teenager grabbed Wilson’s sleeve. “Come on! There’s been a fight.”

  He ran across the plaza at a breakneck pace. Wilson followed him down the steps of the Office living quarters and through the metal doors of the airlock. Robb turned left and right as he ran through the dim hallways.

  His mother’s rooms were in this section. Robb ran past her door and Wilson decided to breath again.

  Around a corner stood a cluster of villagers, and Wilson pushed into the center. On the floor lay a pale teenage boy in a fringed buckskin jacket. At his side, the chestnut-braided Kaya pressed her bloody hands on a dark red patch spreading across the young man’s midsection.

  “It’s Flora’s son Delmar,” said Robb. “Took a knife to the belly.”

  Wilson touched the boy’s forehead and looked for other injuries. On the floor he noticed a short kitchen knife smeared with blood.

  “You pulled it out?”

  “Don’t jump down my throat! That was on the floor when I got here,” said Robb.

  “Cat’s teeth,” said Wilson. “You, you, and you. Pick him up by the arms and legs. Kaya, hold down on that cloth and don’t let go. Robb, run and tell Father Reed.”

  Wilson took a leg and three boys took the other limbs. They carried the limp Delmar at a running pace through the dark corridors and bright afternoon sunshine to the rectory.

  Father Reed had just entered the treatment room. The lighted wall panels popped alive as Wilson and the others laid the boy on a black slab in the middle of the room.

  “What happened?”

  “Stab wound to the abdomen,” said Wilson. “Going into shock.”

  “Wash up. Prepare two sterilizers,” said Reed.

  He wrapped diagnostic bands around Delmar’s arm and forehead then inserted a large-bore catheter into the boy’s left arm. Fluid pumped into the needle from a clear tube connected to the slab.

  Kaya still pushed on the bloody cloth over Delmar’s midsection. Her face was streaked with tears.

  “Out of the way,” said Reed.

  He held a cabled spatula over the injury and watched a black and white display.

  “Some internal laceration, hard to tell without an implant. Sedate him now and prepare for surgery.”


  Wilson pressed a few lines on the display, adding a sedative to the fluid in the tube, and Delmar’s head rolled to the side. He handed silver tools to Reed as the priest opened the wound and patched the damaged tissue with transparent thread. He had almost finished when the entrance door squealed.

  “Keep whoever that is out of here for a few minutes,” said Reed.

  Wilson stepped into the corridor and sealed the door after him. An older woman stepped out of the entrance: tall, grey-haired, and wearing a red tribal jacket and skirt. She sneered at Wilson like a cat backed into a corner.

  “He’s doing fine, Flora. You don’t have to worry,” said Wilson in the tribal dialect.

  Flora waved at the door of the treatment room. “Don’t tell me when to worry! You’re trying to kill him. You and everyone else!”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Flora squatted against the concrete wall of the corridor.

  “Ever since we came here, it’s been like this. Hate. Venom in the words. But now–”

  “Who hates you? Not anyone I know.”

  Flora shook her head. “The lost children of David. Not all of them. Not all, but enough.”

  “I don’t see why. You and your sons have more in common with them than with us.”

  “The hateful ones blame me for the loss of their home. My tribe was part of the Circle and ordered to attack David. But you know the story, Wilson-from-the-West. I refused and paid for that good deed, paid with everything but two sons. And now ...”

  “Reed is doing his best.”

  “You say that but the priest doesn’t trust us. His eyes betray his mind.”

  “Flora, I know that Reed’s made horrible decisions before, but trust me––he’s a good doctor and knows what to do.”

  The outer airlock door rumbled and Wilson helped the old woman stand up. Hausen and a group of tribal men entered. The tribals pulled a young man forward, his hands tied in front with a belt. He wore the clothes of a David refugee and his face was purple with bruises.

  “Who’s this?” asked Wilson.

  Hausen pointed at the boy. “The one that stabbed Delmar.”

  The prisoner was locked in an empty room with a guard outside. Wilson and Hausen stood among the book-lined shelves of Reed’s office. The priest was at his desk, hands behind his head and staring at the ceiling. He mumbled a few phrases to himself. At last Reed leaned forward and turned the next page of an open engineering manual.

  “With the Circle approaching and Jack’s situation I have a thousand demands upon my time,” he said. “The two of you handle it.”

  BADGER POKED HIM in the arm. “Well? What did you do?”

  The walls of their room were covered with tiny paintings of deer, rabbits, and flowers. The decorations were a present from the girls who had survived the journey from David, along with a pair of striped, woven blankets.

  Wilson shrugged. “Tribal justice. That was okay with Hausen, too.”

  “Another knife fight?”

  “Don’t be silly. Delmar’s laid out and needs three months to recover. No, the boy who stabbed him has to serve as Flora’s son during that time. He’ll live in their quarters, gather medicine, and help with the weaving.”

  “But who’s this attacker and how did Hausen find him?”

  “He’s called Tran, and a refugee from David. A pair of boys saw it happen. Kaya was talking with Delmar when Tran jumped out of the dark and stabbed him.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No, there’s more to the story and Kaya’s in the middle of it. We asked Yishai, since he knows all three of them. He said that Kaya and Tran were promised to be married, but the Circle turned the village to ashes. Now both their families are dead.”

  “I get it,” said Badger. “She’s moved on, but the boy hasn’t.”

  Wilson sat on the edge of their narrow bed. “We might have to sleep head-to-toe tonight.”

  “But your feet are like the breath of Satan.”

  “You’ve smelled worse.”

  Badger pinched his arm. “That doesn’t mean I like it.”

  Wilson smiled, then turned away with a distant sadness in his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There was something else. Tran didn’t say much, but after I left the room I heard him and Hausen screaming curses at each other. I don’t think there’s any love lost between those two.”

  “Welcome to the club. Hausen’s got a temper.”

  “Still ... Hausen smacked the boy around more than I expected. I don’t think he understands anything about tribal people.”

  “Or people in general.”

  “Right.”

  “Take off that sad face, Will. I hope my next husband is happier on his wedding night.”

  “Oh really?”

  He wrestled her onto the bed and kissed her.

  “If this were a tribal wedding night I’d have to tie you hand-and-foot and carry you into my tent.”

  Badger laughed. “That’s not true and you know it.”

  “What did you think of the wedding?”

  Badger giggled. “You looked at me like I’d turned into a wolf.”

  “Sure, I was scared. But as long as you have a nice and shiny coat, I’ll be happy.”

  She slapped him on the arm.

  “Have you ever seen a tribal wedding?” Wilson asked.

  Badger leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a long moment.

  “When I was small there was one. My cousin married a son of the chief. I think her name was Lani. I don’t remember his. We prepared for weeks, sewing clothes and making garlands. It was the beginning of fall and the air was cool. Many of the friendly tribes came to offer gifts. My sisters and I played around the legs of the crowd and stuffed ourselves with food. My cousin wore a blood-red dress and scarlet ribbon in her braids. She was changed––strikingly beautiful and fierce. When I saw her it shocked me like a plunge in a winter lake. She and the chief’s son were happy and so full of life, like gods down from the high peaks. Perfect, black-haired gods.”

  Wilson kissed her neck. “It sounds like a happy time.”

  “Two weeks later the chief’s son was killed in a raid. My cousin jumped from a cliff. She did not survive.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Badger shook her head. “Every time I see a bare nose of granite high in the mountains, I think about her.”

  “Still–”

  She turned and hugged Wilson hard, then kissed him.

  “You’re like an old granny, talking about this on my wedding night. Take those clothes off and get in the shower.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  THE TIP OF THE ROD glowed orange on the inside of her upper thigh. First came heat then scorching pain. She knew he liked it when she screamed. She clenched the muscles in her jaw. She screamed anyway.

  The metal left a crimson, burning dot. He said it was important to pull away quickly. He didn’t want to burn the nerves in her skin––what would be the point of that?

  He talked up a storm, this one. The others were quiet. They grunted with effort as they tightened her wrists behind her head or the rope around her ankles. If she struggled the strap squeezed her neck and made it hard to breath.

  She wasn’t ashamed to be naked, to be spat upon, slapped, or burned. She was ashamed at the furious, red-hot pimple of anger inside her. Ashamed that she couldn’t control it. Ashamed of what would happen when it burst.

  The metal rod burned between her ribs. She screamed again––a hoarse, dehydrated yell.

  I’d be disappointed if you told me, said Darius. I wouldn’t have any reason to keep doing this. Maybe I could even let you go.

  The floorboards creaked as he paced in front of the drooping girl.

  Dear, sweet Kira, said Darius.

  Badger spat on the wood stained with sweat and blood. I never told you my name, she said.

  The rope that snaked around her arms and legs dissolved to smoke. She punched a hole in Darius a
nd pulled out his shivering, crimson heart.

  Badger opened her eyes in the darkness and gasped. Wilson murmured next to her, warm and sleepy. He’d rolled to the edge of the bed with the furs and blankets.

  Badger lay cold and naked. She kept her hands at her sides and tried not to touch the tiny circles on her skin.

  FATHER REED WRAPPED himself in a wool cloak and left the rectory. His boots crunched rust-brown leaves on the steps to the surface.

  A cool afternoon breeze carried a steady thrum of activity throughout the valley. Between the southern pass and the village a throng of men hammered wood beams into a series of shallow trenches, reinforcing the walls. Villagers took wicker baskets of dirt from sweating shovelmen and tamped them into zig-zag earthworks leading from the trenches to the village proper. The pine forest on the western side of the valley echoed with axes and the groan of falling trees. In a wide field of stumps men sawed the pale wood into sections. Others dragged these with a sledge to the trenches and strong points around the village. Each concrete bunker entrance around the circular plaza was protected by a waist-high rampart of logs with earth tamped in-between.

  Father Reed crossed the circular, central plaza and headed toward the corral at the north end of the valley. Near the entrance to the Tombs he passed a two-story blockhouse under construction. At the top Yishai yelled curses in his tribal dialect while directing the placement of roof beams. He waved his big hands at Father Reed.

  After a ten-minute walk through fields covered in the stubble of harvested corn and hemp, Reed came to an empty corral and barn. At this time of day the herd would be at one of the mountain pastures along with a village boy and Blackie, the collie.

  He passed the tiny shepherd’s hut and continued to a grassy field at the foot of White Peak. A group of three dozen young men and women sat in a half-circle facing Wilson and Badger. Wilson paced slowly in front of the line of sitting villagers.

  “––above all know your limits. You won’t be any use to anyone if you’re puking your guts on the ground. I’ve seen every single one of you do that in the past month. You know where that line is. You should know how to control it.”