The Dream Widow

by Stephen Colegrove

  “All right. Just keep him away from Hausen. Him and tribals don’t get along.”

  Night approached. As light faded from the sky the flurries became a storm of ice. The pass transformed into a slippery mess of frozen mud, blood, and exhausted men. The Circle no longer broke cover but from the occasional shot from Robb on the cliffs, everyone knew they were still around.

  Mast squatted next to Tran and Alfie at the boulder in the tight curve.

  “Anything, boys?”

  Alfie shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “No signals from Nelson on the north trail, so they haven’t tried to cross that way,” said Mast. “Hausen’s also sent scouts to the ridges to see if they’re trying to climb over.”

  A series of rifle shots came from Robb’s perch up above. Mast heard a crunch and peered cautiously around the side of the boulder. Half covered in mud, a square brown bag made a clacking sound.

  Mast pushed Alfie away. “Get back!”

  A boom shook the ground like the angry fist of God and threw rocks, mud, and villagers into the air.

  Mast opened his eyes on a bald patch of earth. He watched the snowflakes land silently on grass crushed by thousands of footsteps. In a detached frame of mind, he wondered how long it would take for the grass to bounce back.

  Bullets sparked noiselessly on the rock walls of the pass. Circle troops in mottled brown and green appeared and threw green canisters farther up the pass and out of Mast’s field of vision. The ground shook again, several times.

  A heavy weight lay on his legs. Mast shook Tran’s limp body and pushed him off. A nearby Circle trooper noticed the movement, and in what felt like slow motion swung the muzzle of his black carbine toward Mast.

  Mast breathed a chant and leaped from the ground. He smashed the soldier in the face with a left hook and ripped the strange carbine out of his hands. The snowflakes dangled in place as Mast shot the soldier in the chest. He held down the trigger and shot a stream of bullets through a group of five Circle troopers nearby.

  The firing pin clicked on an empty chamber and the snowflakes began to fall again, slowly at first. Mast ran a few steps up the pass but stumbled over something soft in the mud. He fell to his hands and knees, overcome with nausea.

  The low-pitched snap of Circle carbines filled the air as more soldiers ran up the pass. Mast thought he heard the sound of dogs barking. Hands grabbed him under the shoulders and dragged him away, faster than a normal man could run. He watched the mud and snow zip beneath him and passed out.

  THE ROBOTIC ARMS HUNG from the cavern ceiling like dead silver vines. Light-panels along the walls of Reed’s chamber had flickered to life, and the white glow mixed with the sparkling blue from his glass dome.

  “Father Reed?”

  Wilson’s voice echoed on the black, rectangular slabs around the room.

  “Maybe he’s asleep,” said Badger.

  “That’s what the controllers were for. Any problem should wake him up.”

  “I think he’s the problem this time,” said Badger.

  Wilson walked a circle around the sparkling dome that held Reed’s body. He sighed and tapped on the glass.

  Badger shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Maybe it’ll annoy him enough to wake up.”

  Badger opened the door to the medical area. “Keep that thought. I need to find a bathroom.”

  Wilson opened a panel at the base of Reed’s dome.

  “Reed was working with something down here ...” he said to himself.

  He reached through a tangle of multicolored wiring and pulled out a flat rectangle no bigger than his palm. Tiny lines of data flowed across the gray screen. Wilson recognized blood pressure, heart rate, glucose level, and oxygen saturation, but much of the information had opaque, three-letter codes such as “MEP”, “FIP”, and “IWS.”

  Wilson flipped through a cascade of menus. A triangular symbol with exclamation point flashed over one page. He swiped it and the speakers around the cavern crackled with static.

  “... wrong with the interface ... link ... the systems. My fault for overloading my ... needed to help you fight ... reset power ... doesn’t work, try the CEE headset. I know you ... were always the ...”

  The static and Reed’s voice stopped. Wilson set down the tiny screen and searched the wiring inside the panel. He found a thick red cable labeled “CEE.” The end was flat with five circular ports ringed in gold.

  The door to medical hissed open and he heard the soft tap of Badger’s feet.

  “Find anything?” she asked.

  “A message from Reed,” said Wilson, standing up from the floor. “I think he broke something in the system when he used the flying machine.”

  “Is he still alive? Why isn’t he talking?”

  “His vital signs are good, so I don’t know why he’s not responding. I found a voice recording and he said to use something called a ‘CEE headset.’”

  A search of the boxes and debris that lined the cavern walls turned up nothing. They split up, Badger searching the medical area and Wilson the mess inside the support tunnel. He sifted through dust-covered boxes and strange machinery but found nothing like a headset or labeled “CEE.”

  A yell came from the cavern and Wilson ran through the corridor. Badger stood at one side of the cavern holding a hinged glass cube. Inside lay a metal circlet. A red wire led from the side to a square, five-pronged plug. The side of the clear box was labeled “CEE” in blocky yellow letters.

  Badger handed the cube to Wilson and covered her mouth as she sneezed. “That better be it. There’s enough dust on that thing to choke a cat.”

  Wilson set the cube next to Reed’s dome and opened the hinged lid. The circlet was almost weightless, and similar to the metal bands the medical analyzer used back at Station. Wilson squatted next to the panel and checked the alignment of the plugs.

  Badger folded her arms. “You better not be thinking what I know you’re thinking.”

  “What?”

  She knelt down close to him. “Jack is dead. Reed took a swim in that fishbowl and now he’s probably dead too. Don’t get it in your head that you’re following that idiot. I won’t let you.”

  “But–”

  “We’ll just break the glass and see if he wakes up.”

  “I know how you’re feeling dear, but cracking him out of the dome won’t fix anything. That body inside could just be an empty shell,” said Wilson. “So breaking it won’t help. You know that Jack and Reed talked on another level through the system. Reed said to use this specific headset if we need to talk to him, and I think that’s our only option.”

  “Listen to yourself,” said Badger. “Did you forget how he lied about your father? Not days, not months, but years. Remember how Reed hid the truth about my seizures? You don’t owe this man anything.”

  “Maybe I don’t, but I owe it to my friends in Station to fix the reactor and right now that means find out what’s wrong with Reed. Our people don’t deserve to leave the valley, and if we can’t get control of the reactor that’s going to happen. I owe it to them and to the refugees from David. Don’t forget that it was my fault the Circle burned their village to the ground.”

  “You’re blaming yourself for that?”

  Wilson turned back to the panel and nodded.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Badger. “Because I don’t want you to risk it.”

  “Everything’s a risk. If we fight, if we run away, whatever we do.”

  “I know that. But I love you–”

  Wilson stood up and held Badger’s hand. “I love you too.”

  “So there you go. Don’t end up like Reed.”

  “I won’t. I just want to talk to him.”

  Badger shook her head. She turned and walked away.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, hugging her from behind. “I’ll leave it alone.”

  Badger sighed. “Good.”

  They kissed.

  “That’s better,”
he said. “Can you do me a favor? My arm is really hurting now. Can you bring me one or two packets of painkiller from the rectory?”

  “Let’s go together.”

  “I need to search the rooms for any useful equipment,” said Wilson.

  “You won’t try anything stupid?”

  He laughed. “No. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  “All right. But if there was a rope lying around I’d tie you up, you silly goat.”

  Wilson kissed her on the cheek and she left.

  He rubbed the delicate lines on his wedding bracelet and listened to the soft sound of her footsteps in the stairwell. When he heard a faint grind from the upper hatch, he sat next to Reed’s dome and put the silver circlet over his head.

  NINE

  Hausen and a handful of men ran through the storm, feet crunching on the dead hemp stalks. Behind them, Circle troops rushed out of the pass.

  A line of villagers fired from the trenches and the air filled with pungent smoke. Hausen slid over the lip of the first trench, followed by Alfie and another boy pulling Mast by the arms.

  Yishai squished through the mud of the trench to Hausen.

  “What happened?”

  “Explosives,” yelled Hausen, holding his shoulder. “They got too close.”

  Yishai rubbed his long brown beard. He watched Hausen flinch as bullets whizzed overhead.

  “They can’t touch us as long as we keep the trenches,” yelled Hausen.

  Yishai frowned and led him away from the noise. He stopped in a fortified corner with a log roof between the first and second trenches.

  “What did you say?” asked Yishai.

  “I said we’ll be fine if we keep the trenches manned.”

  Yishai shook his head. “We’re running out of reloads.”

  “What about the reserve? That’s at least two hundred rounds.”

  “We sent that to the pass only ten minutes ago.”

  Hausen closed his eyes and leaned back against the earth wall. An out-of-breath boy with a blue strip of cloth on his arm ran through the trench. He saw Yishai and slipped in the mud.

  “Chefa!”

  “Calm down, son,” said Yishai, and helped the boy to his feet.

  “Sorry ... Circle coming over ... the trail ... east.”

  Yishai gripped the boy’s shoulder. “Find Simpson and tell him now.”

  “We’re going to be flanked,” said Hausen. “We need to pull back.”

  “You just said we’ll be fine here. We’ve got enough men.”

  Hausen grimaced. “Without bullets it won’t matter. They’ll attack at night and we’ll be cut to pieces. We need to organize things before this turns into a rout. Move the women and children into the Tombs and pull back to the blockhouse.”

  Yishai spread his arms. “You’re making the same mistakes we did. You need to stand here and fight instead of running away!”

  Hausen opened his eyes wide. He leaned within inches of the taller man’s face. “Don’t tell me what to do, you–”

  Badger ducked into the shelter. “What’s going on?”

  “We lost the pass.” Hausen backed up and slumped against a dirt wall. “They had explosives.”

  Yishai stared at Badger’s ripped clothing and the bandage on her arm. “What happened to you, Kira?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Where’s Mast and Robb?”

  “The Circle were everywhere,” said Hausen. “I don’t know if they made it.”

  Badger clenched her fists and ducked out of the shelter. Farther down the trench she found Alfie and another boy shaking Mast by the arms.

  She leaned close to Alfie’s ear and yelled over the noise of gunfire. “Where’s Robb?”

  “Only five of us made it out,” shouted Alfie. A gash across his palm dripped blood on Mast’s leg. His face was covered in dirt and thick soot.

  Badger grabbed his shoulder and yelled louder. “Where’s Robb?”

  Alfie shook his head.

  EACH SHOT counted.

  Robb lay in a cocoon of snow-covered bearskin. A lip of granite had protected him from the brunt of the explosions, but he wished it could have blocked the sight of his friends flying through the air. His friends twisting on the ground. His friends being kicked and stabbed by those animals.

  That’s why each shot counted.

  A line of green and brown soldiers jogged through the snowstorm below, and Robb gave this one or that one a lead present to the vital organs. One of the bastards finally took the initiative and climbed along the narrow footpath that led to Robb’s perch. Robb shot that one and a half-dozen others as they tried to sneak along the vertical rock face. His bullets didn’t kill, only flicked the soldiers off the ledge into the rocks far below.

  His last shell spent, Robb lay down the smoking barrel of his rifle and threw off the bearskin. He looked up and down at the sheer granite around him. Thinking fast, he turned on his side and stretched his hands around the rifle, away from the trigger.

  After a few minutes he heard a scrape of leather on the narrow ledge and breathed the chant for Pravega, the speed-trick. A snowflake froze above his hand and he scrambled up. A pair of Circle troops clung to the narrow lip of rock, awkwardly holding the strange black rifles in with one hand.

  He stabbed the first in the chest. As he grabbed the rifle out of the soldier’s hands a round exploded from the muzzle. Robb kicked the soldier into empty space. He took what looked like a reload magazine from the second man’s belt and shoved him off the narrow lip. For good measure he fired a round into each of the slowly tumbling bodies.

  Snow began to unfreeze from tiny points in the air and Robb crawled under the bearskin again. He meditated to control his nausea from the Pravega trick as the pair of Circle thumped into the ground far below.

  After the nausea passed Robb crept along the lip and searched for a crevice or ledge to escape upward. At last he found a chimney crack wider than his fist and began to climb with his hands and feet. Halfway up, shots cracked on the rock around him and he lost his grip. Robb slid down the chimney using his boots and knees as brakes until his feet hit the ground.

  Robb turned around slowly. A dozen Circle soldiers aimed down the sights of their rifles and watched the red-haired teenager hold up his hands.

  TRAN STOPPED FIGHTING when he realized the men in brown and green were trying to save his life. Three soldiers stopped the bleeding from his chest and carried him to the Circle camp at the other end of the pass. Wounded men shivered outside one tent and the more seriously injured groaned on the floor inside.

  A blood-spattered doctor glanced at Tran and turned back to his work. “I’m not treating that,” he said in the tribal dialect. “Leave it in the snow.”

  “Honorable Sir,” said one of the men with Tran. “This is the one Senator Darius told us to find. He’s thin and brown-haired.”

  The surgeon looked Tran up and down. “What’s your name, boy?”

  Tran inhaled air thick with the fruit-acid stench of blood and vomit.

  “Wilson.”

  “Clear this table and lay him down,” said the doctor.

  The soldiers moved a comatose trooper into one corner and lifted Tran onto the table. He watched the flat, sad face of the surgeon and felt a sharp jab on the inside of his elbow. Clear fluid moved through a tube into Tran’s arm and he quickly felt numb.

  He was awake as the surgeon removed shrapnel from his chest and legs, but time seemed to pass by in bursts and jerks. After the sutures were sewn he was bandaged and carried by two soldiers to a bed in a smaller tent. The soldiers tied Tran by the wrists and ankles to the bed frame and stood at attention.

  Snowflakes swirled into the tent. A man curved his neck inside like a white crane searching for frogs. Dressed all in black, he was too thin and shallow-cheeked to be a soldier. Like the doctor, his face was missing the normal black tattoo of thorns. When he saw Tran, his expression changed from gleeful excitement to boredom.

  “You’re not h
im,” he said, and turned to leave.

  “Wait! I know where he is.”

  The man stepped back inside and squatted beside the bed close to Tran’s face. Tran caught the faint scent of roasted meat.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tran.”

  The pale man stuck out the tip of his tongue and licked his lips. “Listen to me carefully, Tran. My name is Darius. If you lie or betray my people, I won’t kill you. I’ll keep you alive for months in a state of such extreme pain that you’ll wish you were dead. That won’t happen until I’ve skinned you and sliced you to bits. Do you understand?”

  Tran nodded.

  “Good. I can see a few ways you could be useful. The problem is one of trust. No matter what evil threats I make, as soon as I turn you loose that tiny brain of yours will forget any promises we’ve made. And looking at it from your point of view, even if you deliver the moon to us I’m just an evil stranger who might kill you anyway. So let’s stop wasting time and forget all of this.”

  “I’m not from the valley,” said Tran. “It’s not my home and I don’t care if it burns.”

  Darius sighed. “I’ve got things to do ...”

  “The blood oath. I’ll swear the blood oath,” said Tran. “In my people this can’t be broken.”

  Darius pursed his lips and stared at Tran for a long moment. “Fine,” he said. “A blood oath it is.” He pulled a short blade from his belt.

  “A blood oath is a trade between two people,” said Tran. “You haven’t asked what I want in return.”

  “Your life? The lives of your family?”

  Tran stared at him blankly. “Killed when you attacked David.”

  “I’m sorry, honestly sorry. I was only after Wilson and that demon girl. I never meant to hurt the people in your village.”

  “Whether that’s true or not, I will honor the oath,” said Tran. “I’ll find Wilson and Badger and bring them to you alive.”

  “Badger? What a droll, backwards name she has.”

  Tran coughed and winced at the pain in his chest. “For my trade I want two lives: mine and a girl.”

  “You’ll have them,” said Darius.