A New America Trilogy (Book 1): The Human Wilderness

by S. H. Livernois

  He'd failed the girls. He tried not to imagine the fate he'd left them to.

  Minutes or hours passed. The landscape blurred into a wash of blue and brown and gray until a ribbon of white sliced across the drab color, breaking Eli's trance.

  White smoke, drifting in wispy clouds over the land.

  Eli rose to his feet and stumbled from the woods into sunlight and a bare stretch of granite open to the sky. A cold wind, tinged with the scent of smoke, ruffled his hair. His stomach hollowed at the sight below him — it was the first time he'd seen so much of the world since the Fall.

  Below the mountain, flat, empty land stretched to the horizon. The silver ribbon of a river snaked across the brown land below and disappeared into a green forest. Broad lakes dotted the patchwork in glistening blue puddles. Beneath a craggy furrow of blue mountains to his left, sunlight caught the edge of distant steel walls. On the edge of a blue lake to his right, he spied the same hint of life — gray, straight, and poking through the trees. And just beyond the lip of the granite summit, the walls of Grant's Hill cut into the landscape.

  The smoke puffed out from inside the haven, the only sign that life was inside and a kingdom had fallen. Eli imagined Olive's hunched corpse gazing upon her charred home with unseeing eyes for months, until her bones collapsed onto the ground.

  He imagined Jane peering over her shoulder before she slipped outside with Quinn.

  I'm coming, Jane.

  "You must be Eli," said a small voice to his left.

  Eli turned to find a small girl sitting on the summit near a knot of scrubby trees, her knees drawn up to her chest, white dress billowing in the cold wind. She was staring at Grant's Hill and its plume of smoke with a smile on her face.

  "I am," he said.

  The girl looked fifteen years old, her every limb twig-like and delicate and lanky. Her white dress was stained with dirt, her long brown hair dull and frizzy, every inch of her pale skin sprayed with dark freckles.

  "What's your name?"

  "Chloe."

  Eli walked across the summit and sat beside her. Chloe breathed deeply, turned her small face to the sun and closed her eyes.

  "You're one of the ones who tried to save us?" Her voice chimed like birdsong.

  "Yeah."

  "Thank you."

  Eli smiled. For the moment, one girl was enough.

  "Where's your home?" he said.

  "It's called Redway." Chloe opened her eyes, followed the smoke as it was carried by the wind. "Can't see it from here. A woman took us, me and a friend, at the beginning of the summer. Abigail died on the way."

  "I'm sorry." Eli remembered his promise back at the guest house. "I'll take you home."

  "Don't bother. It wasn't a nice place." Chloe shrugged her pointy, freckled shoulders and settled into a peaceful quiet, her large chocolate eyes studying the landscape in awe.

  "You hungry?" Eli said after a while.

  She nodded.

  "Well, come on, then."

  Simon was still where Eli had left him, sitting in the mud at the mouth of the cave. When he spotted Eli and Chloe, his head sprung up. His somber face brightened with shock.

  "This is Chloe," Eli said.

  Simon clambered to his feet. "What happened to the others?"

  "He found us." She scrunched her nose, pursed her lips. "And they went back to him."

  Simon sighed deeply and glanced at Eli. "One in fifty."

  Eli glanced up at the sky and the arc of the rapidly sinking sun, then down at Chloe.

  "I'm sure Simon has a feast in there. Steak and potatoes, a sticky chocolate cake," Eli said, squeezing Chloe's fingers. She giggled. "Right, Simon?"

  Simon snapped awake and strolled mechanically to his supplies; he rummaged through the boxes and sacks. Eli motioned Chloe to sit on a rock, then left to find firewood. When he returned, the girl was wrapped in a blanket and munching on a fistful of jerky; a pot had been filled with water. Simon handed him flint and steel then sat on his own rock to stare at nothing. Minutes later, Eli sparked a fire to life.

  He sat on the cold ground next to Chloe, just inside the mouth of the cave. Damp air wafted from the depths of the earth and she shivered. They ate jerky and passed around the boiled water as the sun made its way west, plunging the group into cool shadow. Wells grew beneath their eyes, deep lines drooped the corners of their mouths. Exhaustion seeped into Eli's bones and he felt heavy, like the world had dropped on top of him.

  Then he remembered the sharp prick of Quinn's knife, pressed inches from his heart. Olive sitting in her yard, dead or catatonic. Girls in white gathered like frightened animals in the dark, racing to a freedom they'd never know. Jane's husky voice rasping in his ear.

  You're not getting off that easy.

  He peeled his eyes from the fire and for a moment, he couldn't see. The dim world beyond the flames emerged: the gray woods beyond the cave, Simon slumped on the ground, and Chloe, her brown hair sparkling copper in the firelight. She pulled her blanket in closer.

  "Why did they go back to him?"

  She sighed. "Right after we left, we got lost. We were fighting. Some of Quinn's men heard us. So did the creatures. They killed them and saved us. The other girls were afraid. I kept running."

  Simon woke from his stupor, his eyes searing through shadow. "They should be afraid of him, after what he's done."

  "What do you know?" Chloe cut in. "He kept us safe."

  "They're better off infected, or dead, or alone in the wilderness ..."

  Simon's voice died off and he clenched his hands into small fists. Hands that killed Lily. The sudden thought sparked a knot of anger in Eli's chest. It sputtered and died just as quickly.

  They were dead already.

  "Is that why you killed Lily? Mercy?"

  Simon's dark eyes caught his across the dark. He suddenly looked older than his years.

  "She didn't speak the whole trip. Just watched, listened ... Then one night, she asked me to let her go. Called me a nice man." He smiled weakly. "So I did. Didn't get five steps before one of those creatures got her."

  Simon shook his head, rocked slightly. Eli tried not wonder if Lily turned before she died, like Squirrel.

  "I had to, Eli." Simon stared at the flames. "At least she's not with him..."

  "I know."

  "I kidnapped fifteen girls, maybe more," Simon said frantically. "Didn't know until the last trip what I was bringing them to. Not really." Tears fell down his cheeks and were swallowed by his thick beard. "I mean, deep down, I knew. Still followed orders, though. I brought them to that doctor ..."

  The flames danced across Simon's somber face. Eli saw his own pain carved in its lines.

  "We're not ourselves when we're afraid," Eli said.

  Simon leaned his head back against the cave wall and a shuddering breath hissed from his lips. Chloe's eyes had drooped to slits and she rested her head on her knees. The flames grew brighter as the sun weakened. Together, they listened to the chorus of birds and insects, water dripping eternally from deep inside the cave, the crack of the fire.

  Eli closed his eyes. He worried about the girls and Jane. He thanked Jane for his life and loosened the knot of anger that had lived in his chest since Lily was kidnapped.

  He let her go, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes.

  "Quinn talked about building a new world." Eli's voice echoed off the distant walls; Simon jolted from his stupor and Chloe's head sprung up from her knees. "Is that the real mission?"

  "Part of it," Simon said.

  "Tell me the rest."

  Simon leaned forward into the firelight. "I heard the doctor preyed on the village girls before Quinn showed up at Olive's gate. She was going to have to banish him to keep the peace. A house full of girls no one cared about would keep the doctor happy, keep him by her side, treating all her imagined illnesses. That was the arrangement." A somber gravity fell across Simon's face. "Everyone thinks Quinn's baiting Parasites to kill them. That's wh
at Olive believed. But he's not killing them. He's building an army."

  "How do you know this?"

  "I saw them." Simon leaned back against the cave wall and spoke to the shadows deep inside. "Few months ago, I was at the asylum. Quinn called me there for some 'Conditioning,' as he calls it. Left me alone. I heard a noise, like wounded animals wailing. I followed it."

  Eli's skin flushed with gooseflesh and he was suddenly cold and sick.

  "And I found them." Simon squeezed his eyes shut. "Dozens of those creatures, cramped in glass rooms. Others banging on doors, crying out. They were starved, covered in cuts and bruises. No fingertips, no teeth. And when they looked at me ..." Simon peeled his eyes open. "He's doing something to them."

  "Experiments?"

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  "But how do you figure it's an army?"

  "Beth told me." A tear rolled down Simon's cheek at the sound of her name. "I made her. She called it the Savior's Army. Told me he'll use it to redeem the world."

  Eli had a thousand more questions. What would a Parasite army look like? How would it be controlled? How many Parasites did Quinn plan to weaponize? Chloe's voice rang through the cave before he could ask anything more.

  "That's not all." Dwindling firelight flickered in her black irises. "The girls are part of his army, too. Part of his cult."

  She spat the words out like they were poison in her mouth and she stood, dropping her blanket. Simon studied the ground.

  "Those girls you want to save think the Trapping is a sacred ritual, an honor. Martha drilled it into us every day, to brainwash us, make us better and more pure. She said our wombs are holy and will save humanity." She touched her stomach. "We're meant to repopulate this rotten earth with our perfect little babies. The girls won't give that up, not for anything."

  Eli's chest burned; he'd been holding his breath. "But what's the army for?"

  Simon kneaded his forehead with dirty fingers and raised his head. "To force everyone into his golden city. Quinn knows where every settlement is. He wants to conquer them all."

  With a stab to the heart, Eli pictured this army storming into Hope, dragging people from their homes. His neighbors in stockades, their naked bodies painted with their sins. But an undeniable truth hit him, too. This was the elusive answer to a question he'd asked himself a thousand times: How do we defeat the Parasites and save humanity?

  Simon searched Eli's face with a fear so palpable he could feel it pumping through his veins. Eli ignored it, knowing this was what Jane saved him for.

  "So how do we stop him?"

  The day Eli killed Quinn's family, he ran from the asylum until he reached a wide, black river. Its scent still filled his nose, clean and metallic, like he imagined the depths of the Earth to smell like.

  He fell to his knees and crawled to the water, asking himself one question over and over again.

  What have I done? What have I done?

  He plunged his shaking hands into the river and the blood sloughed off in red ribbons. He splashed the water up his arms and on his face, cleansing himself of the blood. The entire river ran red with the blood of every man, woman, and child he'd killed in the past three years.

  How many had there been? Ten? A dozen? Two dozen?

  Eli washed himself until he was drenched and shivering. The cold water jolted him awake and the world around him cleared. He smelled the pine trees and the river and felt a presence behind him, sniffing and creeping from the bushes. A wild thing that saw him as prey.

  Eli turned around. A face flashed before him: yellow, leathery, with dead eyes. Skin and muscle and bone. It pinned Eli's shoulders hard to the ground, bony knees carving holes into his thighs. Ripe, metallic sweat twinged in his nose. Underneath the stench was an earthy musk.

  A thought came to him: this creature, like the river, was of the earth. Eli was merely an interloper.

  Arms pinned by his sides, Eli's fingertips brushed something he forgot he had — a knife, sheathed at his thigh. He stretched his fingers to their full length, those dead eyes gazing down at him with something like reverence and ecstasy.

  He clasped his fingers around the hilt and thrust the blade up hard. The blade sunk deep into the creature's guts and it wailed from the pain. Black eyes that were once sparking with desire now filled with tears. Hot blood oozed from the creature's wound, spilling over Eli's hand and down his wrist to soak his glove and sleeve.

  Eli yanked out the knife and kicked the body off of him. The creature's screams sputtered to weak groans, then quieted. Still laying on the river bank, Eli lifted the hand that held the knife. The glove was coated in the creature's blood.

  It took only thirty seconds. He stared at the sky and began to count.

  Three years later, he still remembered the sky's exact shade: a hazy cobalt, dotted with puffy clouds. He'd figured that would be the last thing he'd know as Eli Stentz. What he would become next, he didn't care. He wanted to leave Eli behind, everything he'd done, all the memories that plagued his mind, the faces and the screams and the blood.

  They said all that went away when you became a Parasite.

  Eli counted to 200 and still knew who he was, everything he'd done. He sat up and ripped off his glove to explore his hand, searching for wounds but found none, and was disappointed.

  So he lifted his hand to his face, opened his mouth, and was seconds away from licking his glove clean when a voice told him to stop.

  Eli still wondered where that voice came from. And he heard it again, three days after they fled Grant's Hill, as he stood on a slight ridge overlooking a valley blazing with autumn colors and searched the landscape below him.

  Was it God? Maybe it was Eli himself, screaming from the depths of his black soul to be heard.

  Don't give up. Fight. Fix what you broke.

  You're not getting off that easy.

  Simon pointed at the horizon as the sun set. "It's right there, just beneath the river."

  Eli finally saw it — the asylum, orange light from the setting sun glinting off its windows.

  "They've made it by now, I'm sure," Simon said.

  His voice was sad, defeated. Eli was trying to make sense of the sight: the tiny speck of the asylum, enormous and gray and peeking just above a wall, like everything else in the world. The building's details were clear in Eli's mind — every hallway, every room, every column and window.

  "I remember all their names, you know. The girls I took." Simon swallowed hard. Chloe looked up at him, took his hand, and squeezed his thick fingers with her thin ones. "How can I ever make up for this?"

  "You can't," Eli answered. "Just think about what's next."

  Simon nodded. He reached into his coat, pulled out a wrinkled sheaf of paper, and unfolded it delicately. A breeze ruffled its corners. Simon traced a road with his finger, mumbled something to himself, and stopped inside a red circle crossed out with a black X.

  "Grimsley is twenty miles south of here." Simon slipped the map back into his hidden pocket and thrust a thumb behind him. "Just over that mountain."

  Eli nodded, gazed behind him at the hump of the mountain, a green and brown patchwork medley of barren trees and tall conifers. "We'll start at first light. If we're lucky, we'll make it by nightfall."

  The trio left the ridge and crept into the woods, headed for the abandoned sprawl of an old motel that would be their camp for the night. Chloe disappeared inside one of the rooms while Simon collected firewood and Eli set snares. As shadows collected between the trees, signaling nightfall, the men met again to build a fire.

  "Think the people in Grimsley will listen to us?" Eli said.

  A spark lit a bundle of tinder in Simon's palm; he blew on it gently and it roared to life.

  "If they want to be free, they will," Simon said, nestling the bundle in a stack of logs.

  "It'll be tough, uniting everyone," Eli said.

  Simon nodded, fear and firelight gleaming in his pupils.

  All they could do was h
ope.

  Thanks For Reading

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