by J. Thorn
He gazed one last time at his house in the middle of the village, nestled in the valley. Jonah savored the scene as if he knew he would never do so again.
Chapter 24
Jonah led them along the well-worn path, the one that branched to the lake and the spur that would take them north if they chose, the one most likely traveled by Gaston. They walked past the old orchards, where they had stripped the apples from the few trees left that produced fruit. The small, hard, green balls would become edible in a few weeks, but just barely. By that time, the clan would be happy for any sustenance to fuel them on The Walk.
He knew the first ten miles well, as most villagers did. Almost all of them had been born here and played along this road as children. Several, like Seren, lived out here, on the outskirts of the village. Jonah passed familiar trees and ruins he’d been through dozens of times. This was the part of The Walk he hated the most, because it felt easy, comforting. It lulled them into a sense of optimism that would most certainly cost some their lives.
The strangest part of the beginning of the journey, Jonah thought, was that those first ten miles were over so quickly, and the camping spot that had always been used on the first night of the trek to Eliz even overlooked the village in the distance.
It was a warm up, Judas had always said. To get the muscles of those unused to travelling working once more. The clan hunters would range out farther than the first night’s camping spot in a day sometimes, and were used to travelling, but many in the clan needed their walking legs wearing in.
Jonah thought back to his tenth journey, when he was still a child. An entire family had been slaughtered near the first camp spot. It had been the first time Jonah witnessed his father’s savage power. Thieves from the northern clans, those who knew of their annual pilgrimage, arrived several weeks ahead of time. They camped in the woods bordering the road, waiting for the clan to pass. Knowing the chief would be leading them, the bandits attacked the caravan toward the middle. Seven or eight of them came running, knives and clubs raised. They stabbed three women before Judas could reach the fight. Jonah’s father bludgeoned two to death, strangled the life from another, and scared the rest back into the forest. Judas chased them, along with Nera and a few other men. The chief and Nera returned with blood on their hands and victory in their eyes. Judas never said a word. He took his place at the front of the caravan and they continued.
Jonah looked over a shoulder. Two hundred or so, he thought. How many will return?
The villagers knew the odds. They recorded the journey in the chief’s book. Some years they would return with nineteen in twenty and other years much less; as few as seventeen in twenty lived to return from Eliz. Either way, Jonah knew some of the people he saw talking, laughing and strolling along would never return home. Again, his eyes locked on Gaston. The stranger walked alone, nothing in his arms or on his back, as if vital supplies would somehow appear on the road.
“We should make camp before sundown,” Jonah said. He nodded at his wife as she walked on his left, matching his stride.
“The day is warm and the road is dry,” Sasha said. “Once we crest the next hill, the path levels out and we should have no problem making it into camp. We might even be able to put up the tents in daylight.” She slid her hand into his and looked up at him with her dark brown eyes from under dark brown hair. Jonah saw a few slivers of grey at her temples and wanted nothing more than to run his hands through it, feeling the heat of her skin on his. He remembered back to this season, before they had children, when they would find a secluded pond and an afternoon of privacy.
“The first night is the safest. Relatively speaking. The kids are old enough to share a tent.”
Sasha winked at Jonah and gently squeezed his hand in hers. “You are chief now. You will need to call the men together, brief them on their shifts.”
“Yes, but I will not have to stand guard on one.” He smiled and squeezed her hand back.
“We are too old for more children,” she said.
“But not too old to be man and wife.”
Jonah and Sasha walked hand in hand for the next two hours while the clan followed. A baby cried and children laughed, but otherwise the clan remained quiet. Those who had been on The Walk before knew to expect anything at any time, and yet at the same time, did not wish to alarm the children. The carts banged and clanged as they travelled farther south, down the old road, onto stretches less travelled and barely passable.
Jonah looked over his shoulder and saw Gaston walking with a young couple, the third such conversation he’d noticed since they set out in the morning.
At this rate, he thought, by the time we even reach Wytheville, the stranger will no longer be a stranger.
Chapter 25
Attack the corners.
As Gaston stared into the weak flames of his fire, he remembered the saying from an acquaintance he met on the road. They spoke around a campfire for three nights, on the outskirts of Cygoa, where the land edged away from the Eternal Lake and toward the vast expanse of the Plain. Gaston had enjoyed the conversation because the man spoke of the legends of the past, the time before The Event, which became hazier in people’s memories as the years bled away. The man’s name was John, a moniker from antiquity, yet easy to remember.
“Nobody could remember when it began. Or how. Or why.”
Gaston nodded, feeling as though John had memorized his lines.
“I found scraps of history, papers of all sorts. But trying to piece it all together was something I would never be able to do. I knew that.”
“So why do you try?” Gaston asked.
“What else is there to do? We can’t lie down and die. We can’t ignore our ancestors.”
“Why not? Look what they’ve left us.”
John shook his head and tossed a dry twig into the fire. It snapped and sent a burst of sparks into the air with a whiff of pine. The night sky devoured the light.
“You mustn't place blame. The world. It moves on, and sometimes things are just how they always were.”
Gaston scoffed. John heard it and continued.
“The creatures here,” he said, spreading his arms out to the copse of trees sheltering them from the winds and the prying eyes of bandits on the road. “They come and go over eons. We are but one.”
“Tell me what you know,” Gaston said. He had no interest in the man’s philosophical interpretation of The Event. Gaston wanted to know what happened.
“Yes. We always want the why, don’t we? You assume because I read, because I find value in the past, that I know what happened. Sometimes things happen and nobody knows why. Or nobody cares to remember.”
“I care. I want to know.”
John sighed and dropped his head to his chest. Gaston waited, fearing the man may have died or passed out. After several seconds, John lifted his head. His deep blue eyes stared at Gaston from beneath a mangy mess of white hair and a dirt-encrusted face.
“Most believe it was a disease. Natural? Man-made? I have not found enough evidence to support either. What I have found is stories of panic, fear and chaos. The governments fell first, and when they did, they dragged the infrastructure down with them.”
Gaston turned his head sideways and squinted.
“Infrastructure. It means the system. The same one that left all the ruins. Though, it was more than I can describe. The closest thing the clans have is their beliefs and their stubbornness.”
Gaston thought about the motorized carts littering Cygoa like the shells left by the seven-year locust. Nature had reclaimed most, ivy strangling what was left of the metallic beasts. Over the years, people had scavenged what they could, using pieces to craft carts, armor, weapons and tools. But even those pieces deteriorated and now the remains were nothing but a reminder of a lost age.
“Go on,” he said to John.
“The destruction caused by human hands would be most familiar to you. Rape, murder, thievery. Was no different than now, except on
scale. Some believe the Blight came from this, but again, I have no evidence to such. The systems failed. Not a catastrophic event but more like a withering. The clans who had some knowledge of the earth ran to the hinterlands, set up camps and eventually became our ancestors. Those who did not perished with the old world they had created.”
“The Event?” Gaston asked.
“Just a demarcation in our shattered history. I don’t believe a single occurrence brought us to this. I think it is the name of the time when we changed. A label, as much.”
Gaston nodded, his head filling with more questions than John could or would answer. He began to think of other conversations he had on the road and the oral tradition emerged. Nobody really knew. And they probably never would. The pursuit of such knowledge was for ghosts of the past. His efforts would need to be on the future, in finding a way to settle and survive. Gaston knew life on the road was not a life anyone would choose. He also knew that Cygoa was not a permanent settlement. Even now, hundreds of years later, the crumbling ruins oozed liquids like blood and it killed men. Even the Eternal Lake provided nothing but a few shriveled, deformed fish. Corruption and control of the few remaining resources attracted only the most evil of men and they had even turned on each other like parasites in a dying host.
“I have found something. Another way.”
Gaston looked up at John, wondering if the old man possessed a mental sight, something that allowed him to read thoughts.
“It is in this book,” John said, holding up a leather bound tome.
Gaston couldn’t remember seeing him move. He thought the old man could be a wizard, conjuring items from thin air.
“What is it called?” Gaston asked.
“It is not called anything,” John said. He gave Gaston a smile reserved for naïve children. “It is a book. People began writing in it shortly after The Event, and it has survived. I have spent the last thirty years adding to the writing in the pages, but there are not many left.”
Gaston stared at the book, its magnetic force pulling him closer to the old man and the mystery of it.
“It describes a safe haven, what the Elders called a ‘Garden of Eden.’ It came from Cygoa, or from the villages nearby. I have travelled to several locations described in it, and they exist. The book is for real.”
“What have you added to it?” Gaston asked.
“Verification, mostly. I have drawn maps, described the ruins in fine detail. At least those I believe shall still be standing in a thousand years.”
Gaston placed his hand on his belt and felt for the handle of his knife. He licked his lips and smiled at John.
“But the most important part has yet to be written,” said John. His eyes moved from Gaston’s face to the bulge beneath his leather coat. “And only I know of it.”
“What part is that?” Gaston asked.
“White Citadel,” said John.
Gaston leaned back and took his hand off his knife. He grabbed a piece of dried squirrel and offered it to John. The old man shook his head and so Gaston tore at the meat with his back teeth.
“White Citadel is our chance to rebuild. Our opportunity to find safety in a place free of violence and poverty. I have heard the stories. I have read them in here.”
“So why haven’t you gone, old man? Why are you sitting here, telling me about it?”
John chuckled and Gaston wanted to plunge a blade into the man’s smug face.
“Because I cannot get there on my own. The road is too dangerous for any one man to travel all the way to White Citadel.”
“So you need me,” Gaston said.
“No. I need many of you.”
“Then why are you wasting time here, around a lonely fire with a single man?”
“Attack the corners. The obstacle is overwhelming when viewed as the whole. Imagine the man who would empty the Eternal Lake.”
“Impossible,” said Gaston.
“Possible,” John said. “The task appears to be impossible, but if one were to dip a cup at a time into the Eternal Lake, it would eventually empty. One must attack the corners.”
“You’re foolish and delusional,” Gaston said, his eyes locked on the book. “Tell me why I shouldn’t murder you right now and take your precious book. I’m strong. I can make it to White Citadel.”
“You know nothing of the rogue clans living south of the Plain. They would skin you and roast your flesh while you bled out.”
Gaston paused, and the image was one he could picture. He had seen it done and remembered the screams of the men on the spit. Gaston had narrowly escaped, and that was when he was much younger, stronger and faster.
“You said a part must still be written. What did you mean?”
“The path,” said John. “I know of the way to White Citadel but I have not written it in this book. Once I do so, I no longer serve a purpose to those nefarious predators on the road.”
Gaston felt his face flush, and he growled. “Yes, best be wary of the lone travelers on the road.”
The fire cracked and John put the book back into his rucksack. He pulled his knees up to his chest.
“The night grows long. Are you traveling with me tomorrow?”
Gaston knew the answer as surely as the old man knew it before he even asked the question. The path to White Citadel would be christened with John’s blood. Gaston would get there and he would escape this life of eternal fear and scarcity. Finding White Citadel seemed like an impossible feat, so Gaston decided he would need to be focused in his efforts. He would travel with the man at sunrise. He would attack the corners.
Chapter 26
Gaston took a deep breath and stared out into the darkness. Memories of the past were flooding back, and he sought the night sky and the forest to avoid those thoughts. When you were alone on the road, and stuck with just your own company, it was difficult to not dwell on things that had already come to pass. He was fascinated with anything related to The Event and the time before, when things were not as they were now, but it seemed, more often than not, that when he set his mind to ancient times, ghosts of his own past would creep in.
Ancient people had ridden in the rusted cars that now lay at the side of the road or acted as part of encampment wall defenses. Those things hadn’t always been crumbling husks, torn apart to make smaller carts for moving one’s possessions from place to place. Those bulky skeletons once had wheels, and they had rubber tires, like those that were popular for building defensive perimeter walls. The cars had been shiny and brightly colored, not brown and grey with rust, not dulled and crumbling. And the blacktop surfaces that now marked routes between the sparse human encampments across the land had once been perfectly flat, painted with markings to guide in some way.
Much of it was a mystery to him. How it had once been. Where people had gone and how they travelled. The buildings they erected, far larger and more intricate than anything folks were capable of anymore.
They had made buildings that were monumental, reaching to the skies, and he had seen them, or what remained of them, far in the distance, into the poisoned north and the tainted south and over towards The Wash. Vast skeletal remains reaching to the skies, still stood, far into the sickened lands that would kill him if his curiosity and urge to see them up close got the better of him.
They had built those things and then destroyed most of it.
It makes no sense, he thought.
Gaston went down on one knee and placed his palm on the broken surface that had once been a road for the bright cars, but he still looked into the darkness and the woods beyond, wary of what may lie there in wait. He picked up a small piece of the broken black material.
This, he thought. This was once here for the carts to ride along, not for us to walk on. There were no cracks with weeds pushing their way up, no fully grown trees in the middle of the endless stretch of ground that wound its way all across the known world.
“How far did you once lead us?” he asked under his breath, address
ing the crumbling roadway as though it had a spirit of its own, as though it were listening. Had it a soul?
He stood again and looked back along the road to where he had come, all the way from the north, following the remains of the blacktop, two hundred miles and more. He had seen the blacktop trailing endlessly into the distance in the north lands, the burned east and the barren west, where the ground was flatter, on and on to places where people must once have lived but were now inaccessible due to the tainted land, the poison, or impassable because of endless, scorched desert.
They once travelled across the whole world on these trails, he thought.
Gaston dropped the chunk of alien, black material to the ground.
And we still travel these paths, he thought. But no longer in shiny, fast moving carts. Now we walk everywhere. Even most of the horses are dead, eaten into extinction.
He watched the small piece of rock that was not rock tumble to the ground, bounce once, and then roll into the mud a few feet away, to settle next to and indent in the wet soil. He frowned, all thoughts of the old world quickly replaced with puzzlement, concern.
He knelt down once more, but this time he didn’t stare into the darkness. Now, he looked closely at the small impression forced into the mud, keeping his head to one side so the moonlight gave him enough light to see the print.
Not a footprint, though, too small. This was a paw print. And it wasn’t that of a fox or a deer. No, this was much larger, more elongated, and set deeper into the dirt. A heavier animal, and one moving fast—escaping or hiding.
A wolf.
And the print was fresh, maybe a day old at most, possibly less.
Wolves, Gaston thought, his gaze flittering across the weed-heavy ground beyond the edge of the road, seeing more prints, dozens of them.
Not even a lone wolf, he thought. No. a pack of them, maybe two dozen, maybe more.
He rose quickly and glanced toward the camp, his mind unsettled, undecided. Should he tell them? Should he warn them of his find? That, surely, would make them warm to him more. But it also would take away any advantage the knowledge may bring.
