by Joel Ohman
Hank knew it. They all knew it. They all knew Orson was right.
“Over here, Charley!” Sven called out from the other side of the crackling campfire, a false note of enthusiasm in his voice. “I’ve got some durkey for you—nice and fresh!”
Charley reached out to his diminutive friend gratefully and accepted a leg of juicy meat bubbling with grease. “Thanks, Sven.”
“Have a seat.” Sven patted the log next to himself, while handing a portion to Sandy.
“Mmmph.” Charley mumbled his appreciation between bites of piping-hot durkey. Sandy was right, it was delicious, much better than the tough-as-tree-bark durkey jerky Grigor had made to make the meat last as long as possible without spoiling.
“Thanks, Grigor—it tastes great!” Sandy exclaimed, her lips slick with grease.
Grigor’s broad face, worn and wearied, creased into a smile, “You are welcome.” Grigor turned toward Charley. “So, Charley—no luck? You didn’t see anything on your hunt?”
“Well.” Charley paused. He took his time swallowing to allow a moment to think. “I saw an enormous llamabill, and tracked it for most of the day. I took a shot, and missed.” Charley looked down and quickly took another bite.
“Hmm, a llamabill—those are impressive creatures. That would have made for a nice kill.” Grigor scratched the side of his bearded face. “It’s strange that it didn’t aggressively turn on you, after you shot at it and missed. It had to have seen you take the shot, right?”
Charley gulped down a hot bite of durkey. “Yeah, it saw me and went after me, but I got away.”
Hank leaned over from the next log over and interjected. “Ah, that is why you came back empty-handed. You are out there running away from the combos, instead of chasing after them. It all makes sense now.” He bit down on the end of a bone and chewed, sucking out the marrow noisily. “Great strategy.”
Grigor spoke up in Charley’s defense. “Llamabills are peculiar-looking, but they are a very daunting adversary. One has to be quite brave just to get close enough to get a good shot.” Charley saw Orson roll his eyes behind Grigor and wave his hand dismissively.
“But he missed,” Hank said.
“Yes, he did,” Grigor admitted. “It’s a shame Charley didn’t find an opportunity for another shot—llamabills are just too nimble to take down with one shot.” Grigor poked a stick in the fire, scattering bright coals that sparked red flecks skyward. “Llamabills are special animals, though; one can almost forget they are a product of man’s devious pre-Event tinkerings.”
“Yes, this llamabill was amazing,” Charley piped up, immediately regretting his outburst. Charley felt Sandy’s eyes on him; she knew him better than the others. He quickly spoke again. “I mean, this durkey is delicious, but what makes it right to kill durkey for food, without even a second thought? Yet it’s maybe a little harder to kill a rotthog, which is part-dog, for food—”
Hank chortled. “Not for me! They are part-hog, too. And dog bacon is delicious!”
Sandy groaned. “Ugh, don’t remind me.”
“Right, I mean rotthogs are part-hog, so I guess it’s fine, but we would balk at just outright killing a regular dog for food, wouldn’t we?” Charley asked. “I mean, I know that some cultures are different, but everything I’ve ever read always points to regular dogs as special creatures: ‘Man’s Best Friend’ even.”
“A regular dog?” Sven asked. “Since when do we see a regular anything? All we see are those weird mutant animal combinations. I mean, we learned about so-called regular animals in school at Meritropolis, but come on.”
“Well, yeah, but—” Charley paused, looking into the flickering flames and picturing the llamabill’s fiery eyes. “But the llamabill, for instance, it really is a magnificent creature. What makes it right for us to decide that we should just go out there after it, and—and just kill it? Just because we want to eat it.”
“Not because we want to, because we need to,” Grigor explained, looking at Charley carefully. “We have enough durkey for a day or two, but they are the only game we have been able to find in this area, and even they are in scarce supply. It’s not really sustainable to have to send out hunting parties so far away to try to find food each day. We need to keep moving on to an area with some larger game soon or we will be in a certain amount of trouble.”
Charley saw Orson listening in with an amused look on his face. He caught Charley’s eye, raised a smug curl of his lip, and then tapped his eyebrow again slowly.
Sandy, noticing Orson’s mocking gestures at Charley, spoke up. “What kind of trouble?”
“Well …” Grigor moved a massive bear paw of a hand along his grizzled cheek, looked down, and met Sandy’s eye. “We will be hungry.” He paused, looked back to the fire, and stabbed into the coals. “Soon we will be very hungry.”
Charley shifted uncomfortably; he thought of the llamabill’s large and meaty haunches, then quickly expelled the thought and looked away from the others, as if they might be able to read his mind.
“So, we’ll starve,” Sven piped up, looking to Grigor. “That’s what you’re saying.”
Grigor started to speak, seemed to reconsider, and then shrugged. “It’s not an impossibility.”
Orson stood, crunched the last bit of gristle off a durkey bone and flicked the bone into the fire. His eyes glimmered in the dancing light of the flames. “It’s time we had some real talk. I’ve humored your pretensions at a utopia—” he looked at Charley meaningfully—“but if we want to actually survive this trek to my father, then it’s time to make some hard decisions. Decisions that, I will remind you, I’ve had to make every day while ruling Meritropolis.”
“You’re not ruling Meritropolis anymore,” Charley spat. He couldn’t help himself.
Orson stopped, his pupils seemed to contract and then expand, dilating in time to the hungry blaze below. “That is certainly true,” he admitted, his eyes never leaving Charley’s. “But, look around you.” He gestured around their fire, then to the camp behind. “Who’s around the fire right now even having this discussion?”
“What do you mean?” Sandy questioned.
“Except for Sven, Charley’s little friend, everyone here around the fire, discussing the fate of the camp, is a High Score.” At this, Sven’s face flushed and he looked at his feet. Before Charley could retort in defense of his friend, Orson directed the heat of his gaze at Charley. “You are no better than the System.”
Charley’s stomach turned: Orson had a point. The rest of the camp was left in the dark, literally and figuratively, while Charley and the other High Scores stayed up late into the night around the fire making decisions that would affect everyone.
“I’m trying to zero the System—I’m trying to protect them,” Charley said. It sounded weak even to his own ears.
“Sure, well, in the meantime, we need to eat.” Orson pointed at the durkey carcasses picked clean to the bone and now crackling in the fire. “No food equals no revolution. It’s as simple as that.” He snorted. “Welcome to adulthood and responsibility.”
The mood around the fire was growing somber. Charley knew Orson was right. It was one thing to complain about the System in Meritropolis while in a classroom, but he was fast learning the truth of all political dissidents: it’s easy to point out the problems of the other side; it’s much harder to find the solution. If there even is a solution, Charley thought to himself. What do you do when there isn’t an easy answer or maybe not even an answer at all?
Sven broke the silence. “We could always—” he paused, his voice growing softer and more hesitant—“we could always go into the Bramble.”
Hank kicked a clod of dirt into the fire. “Oh boy, here we go. The Bramble, he says. Great idea, Mr. Low Score. Why don’t you just go zero yourself in the Bramble?”
“Shut up, Hank!” Sandy exclaimed.
“Whatever, it’s fine—he doesn’t bother me. It’s just an idea,” Sven said, lowering his eyes.
“At this point, it’s actually an idea worth considering,” Grigor said, looking over at Orson for confirmation, who dipped his head noncommittally.
Sandy started to speak slowly. “As we’ve discussed, going through the Bramble would be a more direct route to where Orson’s father is most likely to be. We believe he’s in the next closest city: Meritorium. If we want to take down the System and any chance of it growing even more outside the walls of Meritropolis, then we need to take down Orson’s father. Meritorium is our best chance of finding him.”
“Yeah, that’s the pro; we all know that.” Hank paused, looking at Orson. “Well, at least according to Orson.”
Charley spoke up. “We’ve already discussed this. If Grigor believes him, then I do, too.”
Hank shrugged. “Okay. So if we take the direct route through the Bramble, it will save us time heading to Meritorium, but it’s kind of a huge con. Even Grigor doesn’t want to go in there. If Grigor thinks it’s too dangerous—”
“Everything is dangerous,” Charley said.
“Yes, but this is not just normal danger we are talking about. Grigor said no one goes through the Bramble and lives,” Hank retorted.
“Well,” Grigor intoned, “some have made it through the Bramble. It’s certainly not impossible, but it should be a last resort. Many an experienced woodsman has perished, even those more experienced than me.”
It was time for Charley to put on his big boy pants; time to become a responsible adult and show Orson that he could make the hard decisions. Charley stood up and brushed flecks of grey char from his pants. He looked into the fire for a moment, and then addressed the group. “If we keep skirting the Bramble, we won’t have enough food to make it all the way to Meritorium. If we delay our decision any longer, then we won’t even have any jerky left, which we’ll need if we go in. Anyone who doesn’t want to continue—now is the time to say so.”
Hank snorted. “It’s not exactly like we have anywhere else we can go. We can’t go back to Meritropolis.” His eyes took on a darker cast, reflecting the moonlight. “It’s not anything I’m too happy about, but I say we go forward, into the Bramble, if that’s the only way to get to Orson’s father.”
Sandy spoke softly. “Whatever we have to do to find Orson’s father, I say we do it, even if it means going into the Bramble.”
Sven threw a rock into the fire, dislodging a teepee of sticks that collapsed inward, scattering sparks upward. “Yes, we need to find Orson’s father. If he created the System, then he is the one we need to deal with.” He looked into the fire, a strange look appearing on his face, lit up by the flickering flames, and then abruptly cast into darkness as the fire died down again.
Charley stretched to his full height, looking at each of those around the circle in turn, trying to inspire a measure of confidence that he didn’t feel himself. “Tomorrow we go into the Bramble. We should be through it in about two days, and be almost to Meritorium.” His eyes hardened. “If we all are really serious about wanting to zero the System, for good, then we need to find Orson’s father.” Charley let his eyes lock onto Orson’s. “And kill him.”
Orson raised his eyebrows, taken aback for a moment. He looked over at Grigor and then waved his hand to the group, his dark expansive eyes revealing nothing. “The Bramble it is.”
CHAPTER 2
The Bramble
Charley groaned inside. But they were all watching him, so he made himself take the first step up to the Bramble. The viny undergrowth, overgrowth, outgrowth—whatever it was, it was a mess—bunched and pulsated, and the tangled gnarl of insurmountable plant life seemed to expand and twist as if animated by some unknown force. Maybe it was just the wind causing the primeval brush to expand finger-like tendrils toward Charley, but when he turned his head Charley could almost swear that he saw a vine straining against the breeze and winding toward his ankle.
“Would you look at that?” Sandy said wonderingly.
Charley turned to look at her. She was waving her hand slowly, like a snake charmer, in front of a tangle of rattan vines that swayed side to side and kept time with her hand.
Charley watched, mesmerized, his mouth gaping open. He knew that all plants were alive, of course, but these plants were alive, sentient almost. And aggressive. The gyrating rattan sprung forward at Sandy’s hand, thorns just missing her fingers, as Sandy snatched her hand back.
“I could use an industrial-grade sprayer of weed killer right about now,” Hank grumbled.
Sandy took three large strides back from the Bramble and turned to Hank. “Why does man’s first response to whatever it can’t control in nature have to be something malicious?” She pursed her lips. “This kind of thinking is what caused the Event, and what caused the animal combinations, and probably whatever is happening with the plant life of the Bramble.”
“She’s right,” Grigor said, placing a hand on Charley’s shoulder. “We’ve been hiking for a few hours now. Let’s regroup a little ways back from the Bramble, and then we can think through our plan of attack.”
“Plan of attack?” Sandy arched her eyebrows. “Didn’t you just say I was right? How about ‘let’s think through our game plan’—not ‘plan of attack’?”
“Point taken; right you are. I am not so sure that aggression is our best course of action to make it through the Bramble.” Charley noticed that Grigor still had not removed his massive hand from his shoulder, and it dawned on him that perhaps Grigor didn’t trust him not to whip out his blades and start hacking his way into the Bramble, come what may. Charley wondered if to Grigor he was still just a young hothead who solved all of his problems with violence.
Charley turned to Grigor, causing his hand slip from his shoulder. “Okay, good idea. Let’s regroup and think it through.” He would show Grigor that age and closed-mindedness could cause one to harden, but the beauty and possibility of youthful identity is that it’s infinitely moldable. He could do it. He could change.
Charley walked slowly away from the Bramble with Grigor and Sandy. He could control his anger, reinvent himself; he would do whatever it took to get through the Bramble, get to Meritorium, and find Orson’s father. He wanted—no, he needed—revenge for his brother Alec. For too long, though, the anger was all he had, all that kept Alec’s memory alive. He would need to control himself and use that anger for something useful.
“I could use something to eat before we try to enter the Bramble anyway,” Sandy said.
Charley turned. “Yeah, I was just going to say that. Let’s grab some durkey jerky and then I’ll decide what to do.”
Sandy frowned. “You’ll decide? Shouldn’t we maybe all talk this over together first?”
Charley fought back a spasm of annoyance and put what he hoped was a good-natured smile on his face. “Sure, yeah. We’ll talk it over, and then I’ll decide what to do.” Not giving Sandy a chance to continue the conversation, he turned to the others following close behind and manufactured a bright smile. “Let’s take a break and regroup for a few minutes.”
But in spite of his outward attempts, Charley knew, deep down, that nothing had changed.
The anger wasn’t going anywhere.
They walked to a natural clearing some twenty paces away, and Grigor began dispensing portions of jerky to the group. “This is as good of a time as any for another lesson on the Event. You are no longer my students in Meritropolis,” Grigor said, as he handed a small packet of meat to Charley, and then motioned to Sandy, “but Sandy has made yet another wise observation as we are out here in this real-world classroom—the most important classroom of all, I might add.”
“And what would that be?” Hank asked, as he gnawed on a corner of jerky.
Before Grigor could respond, Orson interjected. “Man’s tinkering with natu
re caused the Event—specifically, man’s desire to use nature as a weapon against one another caused the Event. And now, our tinkering with nature, even if only in the form of disrupting a habitat like the Bramble, only serves to make nature more hostile toward man.” Orson looked over at the towering jungle canopy of the Bramble; even he appeared cowed by the strange menace emanating from within.
“It’s true,” Grigor added with a nod.
Sandy frowned. “So, we know that man caused the Event, and that it happened twelve years ago, but what exactly, well—happened?”
Grigor turned to Orson, as if looking for permission, and Orson spoke. “Doctor Svetkalm back in Meritropolis could explain it better than me, but what we do know is that it involved genetic engineering on a massive scale, a military industrial-grade scale, one could say.”
“So, epigenetics, influencing chemical reactions that affect DNA—or maybe even gene splicing, right?” Sandy asked.
Orson nodded. “Something like that. The science is beyond all of us out here. However, what we do know is that someone—or more likely, a group of someones—unaffiliated with any sort of pre-Event government that we know of, caused it. Because of that, we still don’t know what exactly their intentions were, or even if it was planned. But we do know that they released these chemical reactions into the wild, and—”
“And the wild went wild,” Charley offered flippantly, still annoyed at Sandy for trying to wrest control from him.
Orson rolled his eyes. “Umm, yes, the wild flip-flopped through dozens upon dozens of strange permutations, until it reached a sort of critical mass—a combustible Event as such—causing it to turn on itself, and then eventually on us humans. Add in mankind’s tendency to weaponize anything and everything, and go to war at the slightest provocation, and you have the recipe for what is now known as the Event. Now we see all sorts of fallout.”
Sandy pointed across the clearing. “Like the Bramble. And animal combinations, erratic weather patterns, and who knows what else.”
