by C. A. Gray
I smiled. “Don’t be embarrassed, I hate false modesty. If you’re good, own it!”
She shrugged, still blushing. “I just meant, I remember the feeling you’re talking about—being swept up into the song, like my fingers were playing on auto-pilot and I wasn’t doing anything to direct them. But as soon as I’d stop and think, ‘how am I doing this?’ that’s when I’d mess up.”
I didn’t reply right away, and she turned around to catch me watching her.
“What?” she asked.
I shook my head., smiling. “Nothing, just had to update my mental image of you to accommodate that new information.”
She seemed pleased by this. She relaxed for a moment, and wiped her brow. “Now that I think about it, piano might be the only part of who I was that was real, post-brainwashing. I just… came alive when I was playing.”
She turned back to the poster, firing again—this time right between the Tribunal member’s eyes.
“You’re ready to move on,” I told her. “Normally if you’re shooting clay pigeons, you’ll use a rifle, but I won’t be throwing these too far out in front of you, so the pistol will do. And keep in mind, this is really hard, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t get it today. Shooting big game is a lot easier than this, because it’s bigger and usually not moving as fast.”
She nodded, eyes wide and eager. I grabbed the cans and jogged about fifty yards ahead and to the side of her.
“When I release, don’t look at me—if you do, you’ll miss it every time. Choose someplace to the right of me and up in the air, and keep your focus there, waiting for the can to come into your field of view. Same stance as before. As soon as the can enters your focus point, follow its trajectory with your gun barrel, pivoting your whole body to trace it. Fire when you think you have it in your sights, but make sure after you fire that you continue to follow through with the trajectory of the barrel.”
“Got it!” she called.
She missed the first two, then three, then four. Her enthusiasm waned, and I could see frustration mounting.
“You can close your non-dominant eye too, that’ll help you focus,” I called, jogging over to the other side of the field where all the cans had landed. “Remember, this isn’t easy.”
“I know, but I don’t—” she stopped herself abruptly. I watched her, waiting to see if she’d complete the thought. She didn’t. I threw up a fifth can, and she hit it.
“Nice!” I cried. “Again!”
We went on like that for another half hour or so, until Kate was hitting about every other can.
“Time to go get some dinner,” I said, gesturing to the forest.
She fell into step beside me, and I cast a sidelong glance at her. She was biting her lip, suppressing a smile. I smiled too.
“You’re really good at this,” I told her.
“You think so?”
“For a newbie, amazing.” I paused, adding pointedly, “I hope you never need to use it except to hunt, though.”
She didn’t reply.
I was just on the point of asking, Anything you want to tell me? But I glanced at her again; she’d locked her jaw, an expression that indicated she’d already shut me out.
Just as we entered the outskirts of the forest, Kate said, “So when are you guys going back on the grid? You and Will and the others?”
So she’ll be going while we’re gone. Of course. That was the part I hadn’t known. It would make things harder for me, though.
“In the morning,” I said. Then I added as casually as I could, trying to make it sound like I was changing the subject, “So what part of the Republic did you say your family lived in? Same part as you?”
She shook her head. “No, they were about an hour inland from me by bullet train.”
“Your parents, you mean?”
“And my brother. He lived right down the street from them.” She shook her head and muttered to herself, “Lives, I mean. No reason to think he’s dead or anything.”
I nodded. So far she’d still given me no specifics. I tried to figure out how to get her to tell me where that was in relation to Beckenshire.
But Kate volunteered, “Beckenshire is the extreme edge of the Republic—from here on out there’s nothing but wasteland.” She gestured west. “Will said you guys are going to Friedrichsburg?”
“Yeah.” I paused. “Do the bullet trains reach all the way out to Friedrichsburg?”
Kate nodded. “They’re all over the Republic, in every city.” There was a distant rustle, and Kate stopped talking abruptly, looking around. “Is something nearby?”
I raised my eyebrows, impressed. “Yes, very good. Which way?”
Kate closed her eyes, and pointed northeast. “There? No. There?” She swiveled her arm around so that she was pointing northwest. Then she sighed, and pointed to the entire north side of her body. “Somewhere over there.”
I chuckled softly. “Yeah, it’s in that hemisphere. Let’s stay quiet. I’ll follow you. Just course-correct as you get closer.”
Kate moved north, very slowly. I followed behind her, and was just about to nudge her to her left, when she began to move that way herself.
“Step on earth only when you can, not fallen leaves or branches,” I whispered. “Earth will absorb your footsteps best.”
She stopped, saw the doe, and pointed at it excitedly, looking back at me. I nodded, amused by her enthusiasm.
“Just like with the posters,” I breathed, leaning in. “She’s not moving yet; you’re not going to get a clearer shot than that. Aim between your front sight and your target—”
“I got it, I got it,” she waved me off, positioning herself perfectly. She closed her left eye, and said to herself, “Right between the eyes.” She hesitated for a moment, but then she fired. The doe just started to move before she did, so Kate caught her in the chest, but it was enough. She fell hard.
“Nice shot!” I raised my hand to high-five her. Kate grinned and slapped her palm against mine, though I could see she was trembling. I tilted my head to the side. “You okay?”
She nodded, too vigorously. “Yeah! I just…” she shrugged. “It’s a big creature to kill. That’s all.”
I nodded. “And it’s good that you take that seriously. Kill only when you absolutely have to.” I moved toward the doe, and Kate followed. “Come on, I’ll show you how to clean it again.”
“I think I remember from the bear,” she said. “You make a long cut up the belly, but not too deep. Sever the diaphragm, and cut the ribs apart. Open the chest cavity, and make sure you remove the intestines and the bladder intact… then remove the rest of the organs. Right”
I raised my eyebrows, pulling out the knife I used for the purposes she described and handing it to her, handle first. “You want to do it and I’ll just direct you?”
I saw the hesitation flick across her face, and she might have gagged a little. But she swallowed it down and gave me a brave smile, taking the knife. “Sure.”
I laughed. “I’ll do it if you want.”
“No, no, I have to learn this. See one, do one, teach one, right?”
“Right, although I’m not sure who else in our company that isn’t already a hunter might want to learn… ah, Nelson might. Brenda might too,” I amended. “They’re both pretty tough.”
She took a ragged breath, kneeling beside the doe’s abdomen and positioning the knife for the first incision. “Am I tough?” she asked without looking at me.
I folded my arms across my chest, watching as she sliced the belly open in short shallow strokes, her nose wrinkled.
“I’m amending my assessment of that all the time.”
She looked away from the gore for a moment to catch her breath, and then resumed her task. More than once I thought she might be sick, but she trudged on.
“You want to use this to separate the rib cage and the pelvis,” I told her, handing her a hatchet I’d brought wi
th me. “Let me show you.”
“No no, I’ve got it.” She reached for the hatchet.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “There’s no shame in accepting a little help, you know.” I was referring to more than the doe.
She looked at me for a long moment, and for a second I thought she might cry. But the expression vanished, and she nodded without a word, moving aside to allow me to do the job.
Okay, I thought, reviewing what I knew. She’s going to Friedrichsburg tomorrow to catch the bullet train. I’d have no trouble following her that far. But in case I lost her, I still needed to know where she was headed after that.
“So… how far inland were you and Will living from here, when you were still in the Republic?” I asked, keeping my tone light.
Kate thought for a moment. “We were…” she drew in the loose earth with her bloody finger. “So Beckenshire is here.” She drew an X. “Friedrichsburg is probably around twenty miles in, here.” She drew another X, northeast of us. “The caves were… I don’t even know, what have we gone, a hundred and fifty miles on foot by now? Over here somewhere.” She drew another X, quite a ways east of either of the others. “Will and I lived in Dawvish, and when I fled, I caught the bullet train there on one of the main loops, all the way to Jarrow. That dumped me out here, on the southern border of the Republic.” She drew an X not far from the X that represented the caves. “I wandered on foot into the forest around there, and happened to be close enough that Nick found me and took me to the caves.”
I nodded. “So your family you said was an hour inland from you… what, up this way?” I drew with my finger directly north of the X that represented Dawvish.
Finally Kate sat back on her heels and stared at me, hard. “Why so interested in my family’s location?”
I shrugged. “Just trying to get an idea of the general layout of the Republic.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Truth or a lie, Jackson?”
I laughed. “My, how the tables have turned!” I leaned back over the doe with the hatchet to open the ribcage next, but Kate scooted back forward and reached for it.
“I can do that part.”
I surrendered the hatchet to her, watching as she blew her hair out of her eyes while she worked, and wiped her brow with the back of her arm. Finally I asked, “Are you trying to prove your toughness to me, or to Will, or to yourself? Because something tells me you’re not actually this kind of girl.”
She glanced up at me, then back down at the doe, and she winced as she split open the ribcage.
“I’m not,” she admitted. “I—don’t like killing things,” she emphasized don’t with a downward stroke, “and I—hate being dirty, and I’m—grossed out by innards, and I—like being taken care of. But that doesn’t serve me or anybody else in this world, does it?” She sat up, panting, her hands covered with gore. “What I like doesn’t matter in survival mode. I’m not gonna be Violet or Rachel.”
“No. You never would be.” We just watched each other for a moment, like a staring contest. Finally I added, “And for whatever it’s worth, I’m a lot more impressed that you’re doing it for that reason, rather than pretending to be something you’re not. It shows character.”
She blinked at me, like she didn’t know what to say to that, and looked away.
Okay, I thought. She’d probably follow us at a safe distance tomorrow morning… or maybe she’d head to Friedrichsburg before we left, I didn’t know for sure. I’d probably have to sleep near enough to Kate tonight that I could see when she got up. From Friedrichsburg, she’d catch a bullet train in the general direction of Dawvish, and I should be able to track her from there. Maybe by then I’d just make my presence known to her, since she’d be stuck with me after that anyway.
Aloud, I said, “Nice job on the cleaning. Let’s cut up just a portion of the meat for dinner and drag the rest back—I’m sure everybody’s hungry.”
Chapter 17: Kate
I didn’t sleep much that night. Will and I weren’t sleeping beside one another ever since I’d told him we needed to “slow things down,” but last night I’d positioned myself near enough to him to notice when he left in the morning. I jarred myself awake every few minutes, just to make sure he was still there.
It wasn’t that I needed to follow the hunters to find my way to Friedrichsburg; I was pretty good at directions, actually. The Potentate mandated that teachers drill the geography of the Republic into their pupils, so I could still probably draw a fairly in-depth map of the entire country by heart. I just wanted to time my departure well: I had to be far enough behind the hunters that Jackson wouldn’t notice, but early enough that the others back at camp wouldn’t be awake to ask questions about where I was going.
At last, I heard Nick’s footsteps on the concrete nearby. He passed right by me on his way to shake Will awake. I opened one eye, watching.
“Time to go,” Nick whispered.
“Ugh,” Will groaned. He glanced up at the moon, and so did I. It was still high in the night sky. “You’ve gotta be kidding me! Now?”
“Now,” was Nick’s reply. “We’ve got a long way to go.”
Will shifted beneath his blankets for a resistant moment I knew well, but finally I heard him get up and follow Nick. They made their way over to where Jean slept to wake her, and then over to Alec. I never saw where Jackson had settled for the night, but presumably he was already awake somewhere, waiting for them.
I waited about ten minutes after their footsteps had receded, assuming by then that they were safely gone. Then I opened my eyes, and crept out of bed too, tiptoeing over to where Nelson slept. I knew from overhearing him talk to Brenda that he still had the government ID card among his belongings that he’d gotten from Kenny on the hunters’ first raid. He slept beside a satchel of his personal affects, and I found the ID card easily in a pocket on the inside. Nelson snorted once, and I froze—but he didn’t move again. I pocketed the ID.
My plan was to take the bullet trains once I got to Friedrichsburg, since Will had apparently deemed that safe (at least until the Potentate updated the databases of government personnel)… especially with a jammer, which should block my brainwaves from detection. But I still needed an ID card to get on.
Molly and a few of the others had found a bunch of camping gear in one of the houses—that was how she’d set up the oatmeal over the open flame yesterday. Among the camping gear I thought I’d seen a few iodine tablets… yes, I thought to myself as I found them. I’d have to take some water with me in a canteen, but it wouldn’t be enough for the day and a night’s journey I had to Friedrichsburg. I knew there were streams in the forest like the one where Jackson and I had caught the fish a few days before, but I was pretty sure the reason I’d gotten so sick the first time I’d fled the Republic was because I drank contaminated water. I wanted to make sure I didn’t repeat that mistake.
Next, I raided the food stash, since I had no idea how long I’d be gone. I felt a slight twinge of guilt when I took the last of the berries that Rachel had gathered with Brenda the day before—but, I reasoned, they would be here all day and able to gather more. My need was greater than theirs. I stuffed the extra food into a satchel I’d taken from one of the houses earlier in the day. It had straps so I could carry it on my back. That was nice.
Then I raided the stash of weapons. The hunters had taken quite a few with them, but I saw to my surprise that the gun Jackson had taught me to shoot with the day before rested right on top, along with the box of ammunition it needed.
Strange, I thought. That was the one he’d said was the best compromise between accuracy and ease of concealment for transport. Why would they leave it behind?
But I strapped the weapon to my waist, grateful it was there, regardless of the reason. Then I pocketed the ammo too.
When I got into the thickest part of the forest, I had to fight my fear.
It was pitch dark.
Nobody knew where I was.
There were bears in here. Jackson and I had found that out.
All I had was a general direction, but how did I know for sure that I wasn’t turned around, getting more and more lost all the time?
What am I doing? I thought, trying not to hyperventilate. Panic wouldn’t help anything, but I still felt my breath coming in short, shallow gasps, and my fingers began to go numb. I’m going to die out here. I’m going to starve to death or get eaten or get another infection, but there will be no one to find me this time…
Stop, Jackson’s voice commanded me. I obeyed: instead of taking another step, I crouched down to a squat, hugging my knees to my chest as if this might protect me. Breathe.
I tried to remember what Jackson had said to me the first time we’d really talked, when he had brought me a breakfast of root vegetables in the caves. He’d said something about how even when emotions are reasonable, they’re not always beneficial… what was it?
Emotions that are healthy are those that help you see something that’s real and react to it accordingly. That’s what he’d said. Then he’d told me about his capture when he’d first arrived in the Republic; how he’d fought the first time and been overpowered.
“When I woke up, I was angry,” he’d said.
“Seems reasonable to me.”
“Sure, the emotion was, but not what it made me want to do,” Jackson said. “Anger is an aggressive emotion. It makes me want to fight. I did fight at first, but I lost—that’s how I ended up in the chair in the first place. I could have fought them all off again when I woke up, but I had to stop and ask myself, was that course of action in line with my ultimate goal of escape? No. The odds were too stacked against me. So in that case, my emotions prompted me to take an action that was inconsistent with my reality. Once I recognized this, I had to master it instead.”
Okay. Okay, I thought. I’m afraid. Maybe I have good reason to be, but the emotion makes me want to panic. Is panic consistent with my ultimate goal of getting to Friedrichsburg?
