The Wounded (The Woodlands Series)

by Taylor, Lauren Nicolle

  “You were always so beautiful when you were sleeping,” Pelo said behind me. “All that energy, that pent-up frustration, disappeared from you face, and you became what I always knew you were—an angel.”

  I didn’t look up at him, just continued to stare at my own angel in my arms. “And now what am I?” I asked

  Pelo moved in next to me, his thin legs clad in mission-ready cargos and the classic Survivor sneakers. “Now, my darling girl… now you are a savior.”

  My breath caught in my chest. I was not as big as that. That word was huge. Savior.

  Joseph’s hand clapped around my shoulder and planted me firmly back on the ground. “C’mon, Supergirl.” I raised an eyebrow at him questioningly. “We need to get this one to bed.”

  “What’s a supergirl?”

  He chuckled at my ignorance. “I really need to show you some of the reading material available to us.”

  I kissed Pelo lightly on the cheek, and stood, handing Orry back to Joseph so he could carry him back to the top of this dark amphitheater. As we climbed, my father’s thin frame sunk behind the smoke of the dying fire. He was smiling, his hands clasped in front of him, looking to the sky through meters of rock.

  *****

  Joseph laid Orry gently down in our bed and tucked him in tightly. I reached down to smooth his hair from his face.

  “Once there was a way to get back homeward…” I sung the Beatles song Addy had taught me quietly, like a rough whisper. “Once there was a way to get back home. Sleep pretty darling, do not cry,” my hand shook a little, “and I will sing a lullaby.” Joseph’s arms curled around my shoulder. “Golden slumbers fill your eyes. Smiles await you when you rise. Sleep pretty darling, do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby.” I wiped the tear before it even had a chance to creep out of the corner of my eye.

  We both stared down at him as the candle flickered, casting our wobbly shadows on the inky walls. Any minute now, he’d disappear like a puff of smoke.

  This was too hard.

  Joseph mirrored my thoughts, standing back and running both hands through his hair, and keeping them clasped behind his neck. He turned to me, and his eyes were half-dark, half-desire.

  Sadness pulled you in different directions. Love pulled you straight into another. For me, desire was pulling all those strands together and tying them in a knot, holding me together. Even if it was temporary.

  But everything felt like a last…

  Joseph pulling me along a tunnel, his hand clutching mine so tight my bones were mashing together.

  The atmosphere opening up like a hole-ridden blanket had been tossed across the sky, pricks of light drilling holes into the ground as we ran into the trees.

  The slip of fabric running over my arms and losing its hold on me, slow as it danced to ground, crisscrossing shadows sitting on top of it like a weight.

  The cold as the air hit my skin.

  The warm as his skin met mine.

  The feeling of being lifted, wet leaves pressing into my back as I reached up to meet him.

  We were together.

  Everything was cold until every part of me was warm and shaking. Winter being pulled back, with the retreating mist at our bare feet.

  We woke drowsy. Sleep didn’t find us until early morning, and it still clung to the sides of my eyes like the sheet that was glued to my damp face. Joseph’s lips met mine and the sun rose in my chest. But then Orry kicked me in the back.

  “Mama,” he said, impatiently pulling my hair.

  Lasts.

  I tried unsuccessfully to push down the grief that scraped its way up through my body. Joseph’s hand clamped around my stick-like arm, and I could feel the unhappiness running like a current from him to me and back again.

  “Right, breakfast,” I said, going about the normal things.

  A tail curled and snapped under the heavy blanket strung up in the entrance to our hovel. “Munk ee,” Orry shouted excitedly, like he had the hiccups.

  “Clever boy,” Joseph said, swinging him into his arms for a hug. Our eyes connected. We both looked like we’d choke if we tried to speak, so we averted our gaze from each other.

  We fed Orry his breakfast, and I was reminded why we were doing this. Somewhere, another child was eating something that may have only contained the tiniest traces of fava beans, and that child would probably die. I closed my eyes but my eyelids flashed with visions of Orry seizing, and I clutched my chest, reminding my heart to beat.

  I could see Matthew’s pacing feet brushing the sides of the curtain. The standard white sneakers draped to the ankles with rough cargo pants.

  “You can come in, Matthew,” I said.

  He seemed flustered, but then we were all a bit unnerved. “We need to leave soon. Everyone is ready to go.”

  “Okay.” I waved him off.

  I looked to Joseph. “Do we say something to Orry?” I asked, unsure.

  He shrugged but held Orry so they were facing each other. “Your parents are going away for a while. Pietre, Careen, and Alexei will look after you while we’re gone. And you’ll have Hessa to play with.” Joseph swiped his hand across his eyes. “Damn it.”

  I kneeled down and looked into Orry’s eyes, my eyes. So strange, but so beautiful framed by his blond curls and sloping nose. “I love you,” I said. “Don’t miss me.” I pushed my finger lightly into his belly, and he giggled. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Orry leaned in and planted a sloppy kiss on my eyebrow. I felt like the ground might swallow me, like the whole earth was angry with me and might trap me beneath the real world forever.

  I looked up at the ceiling, fighting with myself. Don’t let this be the last time I see my son.

  I lifted him to my hip. Joseph carried our small backpacks over one shoulder. We were quiet as we fell into line with the others. Thousands of people poured like lava, up into the light, away from this place. Into a fight.

  *****

  I hugged and kissed him a thousand times, as he sat clinging to Careen’s waist like a bear in a tree.

  “Promise me you’ll keep him safe,” I said, gripping her shoulders kind of desperately.

  She grimaced from the pressure my fingers were putting on her collarbone, but tipped her delicate chin. “Listen to me, I will keep him safe. I promise. Just promise you’ll do the same.” She flicked her hair and blinked. “You know, for yourself that is. Keep yourself safe.”

  I laughed nervously. “Okay.”

  There were eighteen of us leaving in cars. Some I knew, some I didn’t, but as we climbed into the four cars, we held the possibility of a different future for everyone. This could change everything.

  I jumped into the driver’s seat and Rash, Gus, and Pelo slid into the backseat, throwing their packs and equipment over the top of the sloshing fuel cans in the boot. I wound down the window and shut the door, feeling my heart and my body tearing open like flimsy fabric. I was nothing but a tattered scrap in the wind. I don’t know how to leave him.

  Joseph’s hand slid over mine as it paused on the handbrake. He clicked it in and eased it down. He lifted my hand to the gear stick, keeping it steady as I changed gears.

  I let the tears fall freely, my mouth set hard. My eyes on the road ahead. The car shuddered to life, and we rolled forward.

  “Well, that was intense,” Rash exclaimed, while I glared at his flash-white grin and inappropriate expression in the rearview mirror.

  “Shut up, Rash!” Pelo snapped uncharacteristically.

  Gus grunted.

  Joseph brought his handheld to his face, ignoring the men in the backseat. “Turn left here,” he said. I slammed on the brakes and turned the corner hard, watching the men’s shoulders bash in to each other like toppling tenpins, shutting them all up.

  My lap handheld glowed in my lap like my own heart-aching sun, splitting and guiding me at the same time. Its screen showed a different destination. A blinking red light we were getting further and further away from. Orry.
>
  We were to follow the M53, an old highway used back when there were cars everywhere, hugging bumper to bumper, and polluting the earth. I shook my head sharply at the old Class words remerging in my head like a poisoned lecture.

  Rash played with one of the retrieved projection discs from the Woodlands and banged the side of his head on the window like a child. “I miss Essie,” he moaned.

  “We’ve only been driving for ten minutes! Get over yourself, Rash!” I snapped, darting around a bicycle planted right in the middle of the road.

  He fluttered his lips like a horse and stared out the window. I should have been nicer, but there was little left in me other than to drive and try not to turn around and return to my son. This was hard on Rash too. I swallowed some of my anger and tried to replace it with understanding. It bobbed in my throat like an anchored cork, not quite ready to surface.

  *****

  The cars were supposed to be quicker than walking, but I wasn’t so sure. Every few kilometers, we had to stop and remove an obstacle or several. I began to get frustrated at our pace and drove over the top of a disintegrating pram. It got caught under the wheels, which meant more time wasted. We needed to drive about six hundred kilometers northwest before we would abandon the cars and trek into the wilderness towards the Woodlands. It should have been a day’s drive, but it had already taken us two hours simply to pass the city limits.

  Joseph had all his notes from Salim about the Superiors’ compound sitting in his lap, studying them intensely. No one wanted to talk. There was nothing to do but drive, stop, move obstacle, drive, stop, move obstacle. Each kilometer we gained was like a bead on a guilty thread. The longer it got, the worse we felt.

  We finally moved past the city and onto the M53.

  I stopped dead, four cars idling behind me. A long horn beep sounded out, bouncing and dashing over the cracked bitumen. But I wasn’t sure where to go.

  In front of us was a horror in standstill. Cars spilled over the edges of what was left of the road. Doors were left open, hanging off rusty hinges, falling slowly down to the ground. I looked to my left and saw one machine crouching in the high grass, far away from the others, but not far enough to escape the destruction.

  Everything was touched and owned by the fire. Burned out and charcoaled. I gripped the steering wheel and inched forward, following the double yellow line in the center of the road. The road ran like a grey ribbon on the earth, but it was dirty and frayed, cut in at all angles because we were driving through thousands of peoples’ last desperate moments.

  The car crept forward. Sometimes I had to move off the road and over to the grass, the stalks grazing the underbelly of the metal beast, making papery noises. I know it was hundreds of years ago, but I swear I could smell the smoke and almost hear the voices. Joseph’s eyes were scraping the horizon instead of looking at papers now. Everyone was pensively staring out their windows as we wound in and out of different families’ horror stories.

  After about fifty kilometers, the burnt-out cars started to fall away. There was more space to wind through. A lot of them, very suddenly, seemed to have veered to the left and right like an invisible obstacle stood right in the center, leaving the road itself clear. I shuddered as I pictured the people scattering as planes dropped bombs on them like giant black balloons, their only promise… an end.

  I pushed down on the accelerator, putting as much distance between us and that moment in time as I could, feeling the car rumble beneath me like an animal approaching its prey.

  *****

  Rash broke the silence with, “I need to take a piss, like now!”

  And as soon as he said it, the rest of us needed to go as well.

  I pulled to the side, the tires grazing the gravelly edge of the road. The other three cars parked behind me.

  Rash sprung from the car like he was on fire and sprinted off into the high grass. “Be careful…” I shouted after him, but he was just a flash of black hair hovering above the greenery that grazed my shoulders and rose to Joseph’s chest. I watched him zig and zag until he stopped near a rusted truck. I could only see his face, but he seemed relieved. I turned away, smirking at his ridiculous behavior. Joseph headed into the grass towards where Rash stood. All the men decided that was the place to go. The women, Olga and me, chose a cluster of trees and bushes for privacy. We moved through the grass, instantly enveloped by it. Olga completely disappeared from view. The only way I knew she was there was by the huffing and puffing as she waddled her awkward body like a bulldozer through the shrubs. It made me smile.

  When I got back to the car, Joseph was leaning against the door with his arms folded neatly across his chest. “Where’s Rash?” I asked.

  Joseph stared down at me with an amused expression and tipped his head east. I followed his gaze, but I couldn’t see much. Joseph grabbed my waist, lifted me onto the hood of the car, and then followed me. I scanned the grasslands and saw a dark head walking or almost creeping towards a group of deer. There was one male with short, twisted antlers and about thirty females. I focused on it more carefully, picking out the details that didn’t quite fit. The paler hide, almost the same color as some of the drying patches of grass, the thin, less muscular body. Its skin was thick but loose around its gut, like a skinnier creature had stepped into this hide. It wasn’t a deer. I didn’t know what it was. Its snout looked like the end of faucet. Its giant, black eyes suddenly pricked at Rash’s presence.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked no one in particular.

  Gus’s rough voice answered as he shook his head, a slight smile playing on the thin bit of lip I could see between his bristly beard. “Saiga. Good hide, good meat,” he said. I found myself wishing Alexei were here. He would have had something more for me than hide and meat. “But…” His chest vibrated with a small laugh.

  “But what?” I asked, standing up on the thin metal for a better view, the hood dimpling under my slight weight.

  “Just watch,” he said slyly.

  Rash crept closer, holding his hands up, and pointed at the saiga. Then he touched his nose, and laughed. I watched as the animals jolted to alertness, and the horned one’s snout wobbled and flared. Oh Rash, get out of there. But of course, he didn’t. He seemed completely unaware of the male’s show of aggression and continued closer. It was only when the male tilted his head downwards and stamped his foot that Rash seemed to understand something was up. It launched into a gallop with its head down, ready to butt Rash out of the field.

  Joseph shook his head, but he was smiling as we watched Rash sprinting through the grass with the odd-looking creature charging towards him. Rash was quick, but not quick enough to escape a horn to his back. I watched as it caught the back of his shirt and split it open, covering the creature’s face. It was enough to stop it as it shook furiously and confusedly, trying to dislodge the fabric from its eyes.

  I jumped from the hood and ran towards him. He stumbled out of the grass, his complexion a pale brown, sweat drops dotting his stupid, smiling face.

  He slung his arm around my shoulders. I put mine around his waist, pulling him to me. “Damn it, Rash, that was so stupid.”

  I patted his back gently, feeling the sweat. Wiping my hand on my pants in disgust, I noticed it was red. I spun him around to look at his back. He was grazed all over. Nothing too deep, but enough to scare me. I wanted it to scare him. He couldn’t behave like that when we reached the Rings. “You’re an idiot,” I snapped.

  “Aw, Soar, don’t be like that. It was funny, right?” he moaned.

  The other’s laughed, slapping their thighs, and wiping tears from their eyes. Olga bowed her head, but she was giggling. Even she found it funny.

  I let a smile peek in, but my meaning needed to be clear. “Funny but stupid, Rash. You can’t do stuff like that in the Rings. Funny gets you killed.”

  “Ooh, so serious,” he mocked.

  I slapped his back hard and watched as he bent over in pain. I stood over his folded body,
my hands on my hips. “Imagine that pain, times a thousand, and you might get close to what you’ll be feeling if they catch you.”

  “All right, all right,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “I get your point.”

  I offered my hand, and he took it. “Good.”

  We walked back to the car, the other men straightening and coughing as I passed them. I knew it was harsh, but I couldn’t lose him too. I needed him to understand what was at stake. This wasn’t some great adventure. We were about to start a war. I needed him to shake off some of his comedy and start thinking like a soldier, like a Survivor.

  I swung into the back of the car, Joseph on one side of me and Rash sliding in gingerly on the other, sitting forward like he couldn’t bear to lean back on the seat. Joseph leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Not that I didn’t enjoy seeing him suffer, but what was that all about?”

  I sat staring forward, too angry to whisper. “He needs to learn,” I snapped.

  “Right you are!” Pelo exclaimed from the front seat.

  And then I stared at my lap, refusing to talk to any of them. Because the truth was I really, really wished it wasn’t the case. I wished Rash could be Rash without consequences, and we could live freely. It was just another reminder of why this needed to happen.

  Things always get ruined. You think you’re in control and that you have your hands on the reins. But I’m starting to think either someone else is driving, or the reins are attached to nothing. Just flapping and snapping in the breeze. What could be simple, never is.

  We decided to stop for the night on the outskirts of what was left of a tiny town. It seemed so insignificant that it escaped the bombing. It was a husk. Dry and dull as the dust that clung to the simple brick buildings.

  We parked the cars behind a water tank. Gus untied the sorry saiga he’d shot from the front bar of the car and threw it over his shoulders. We walked into the first building we came across. A modest brick home, with out-of-place, aqua-painted window frames. The door crumbled as Matthew pushed it open. We stomped over the pile of rotting wood and threw our packs down in what must have been the lounge. The night air poured through the roofless building, like a bucket of cold water.