“Where the…” Tye said.
Jerimiah was back. “We need to leave. Whatever you wish to keep you better grab it fast,” sang Jerimiah.
“I know that song,” Tye said.
“Good for you. Hurry. Let’s go before they surround us,” Jerimiah said.
“They?” Milly said.
“The lost.”
The party packed up and put out the fire. Smoke filled the small glade, obscuring the turtle from view. The answering cries of other horns spurred everyone forward. Tye’s nerves tingled, fear knifing through him for the first time since the armory.
“Wait,” Jerimiah said. “Stop moving. Stand still a minute.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not stopping,” Tester said.
“Let me get a picture,” the old man said.
Jerimiah was gone again.
Tye blinked, and Jerimiah was back.
“They’re going around the front like you dolts did,” Jerimiah said. “Wait here a second.”
An owl hooted in warning, and somewhere, Larry squawked franticly. Pepper and Turnip were back beside Milly, alert muscles tensed.
“When I go, follow me through the trees. Shadow me, if you can’t see me, stop. Got it?” Jerimiah said.
Tye nodded along with his friends. Yelps and howls could be heard as the lost came for them. The air was still thick with smoke, and Tye’s eyes stung. Crickets chirped, and the world lightened around him as his eyes adjusted to the blackness. The virals filled the street beyond the thin forest.
They waited another minute before Jerimiah said, “Now.”
He slipped into the trees and made a left and disappeared. Tye jerked to a stop, and the others followed his lead. Jerimiah was back and plunging straight on through the woods. The last of the passing virals didn’t spot them as they emptied out of the vegetation and headed back up Independence Avenue.
A Uruk jumped from behind the cover of a disintegrated truck and lunged for Robin. Milly shot the creature three times in fast succession and the viral went down, its cries echoing off the old stone buildings. Shrieks and shouts in the darkness and torches came at them from up the road. Tye sighted his rifle at the torchlight. He couldn’t see the virals yet, so he aimed below and to the left of the torch and fired. There was a loud wail, and the sound of thundering feet.
“This way,” Jerimiah said.
They ran straight on down a deer trail, stopping and changing direction periodically based on Jerimiah’s ever-changing predilections. The remains of large buildings rose around them, the echoes of their pursuers like thunder. Larry flew overhead, and Pepper and Turnip flanked Milly, one on each side.
Jerimiah stopped at a staircase that descended into darkness, a large sign above the entry. The sign was split in two, and its top half was missing, but Tye read it easy enough. “The subway? You really think underground tunnels are a good idea in this case?”
“You’re right. The virals live down there. But it’s night, and they’ll all be out on the town looking for tourists,” Jerimiah said. He skipped down the steps into the dark maw of the subway entrance and was gone.
Chapter Thirty
Year 2076, Respite
Randy didn’t understand how such a beautiful day could go the hell so fast, but it had. He and Hazel were supposed to attend Alex Serregio and Emily Pendaltine’s pairing ceremony together in the Womb, but old man Hasten had put a stop to that and Hazel said she had to stay with her mother and grandfather throughout the ceremony and she wasn’t allowed to talk to him after.
“No dance? No dinner?” Randy had said.
No, was the only answer he’d gotten, though he thought Hazel was upset about it. It was hard to tell with her. Some days she acted like she loved him and couldn’t wait for their fire guard test, but other days she acted like she didn’t want to know him. Was this one of those times? And why hadn’t Tris spoken up for her daughter? Did she hate Milly so much she’d take it out on her child?
The Womb was decorated with palm frond streamers and white gardenias, and the Perpetual Flame roared in its natural fireplace. The crowd was thick, but Randy saw Hazel standing between her mother and grandfather in the front row, head down. How he loved her. He wished he had someone to talk to about it but his father, Curso, was useless, a mere shell of the man he’d known as a young boy. Milly leaving had hollowed him out, left him nothing to care for, which hurt Randy more than he was willing to admit. His father didn’t care about him, or if he did, was unable to show it.
Curso hadn’t come to the Womb for the ceremony. He rarely came to public events, and Randy didn’t blame him. The stares. The whispers. It was enough to drive any sane person bezoomny.
Fire Master Aragorn walked across the dais, bowed before the Perpetual Flame, then turned to the crowd. “My fellow citizens, we are gathered here today to mark the pairing of Alex and Emily, and bear witness as they take the rites before the adult members of our community. May we seal their bond and be the foundation in the house of their relationship.”
A muttering of amens. Randy didn’t think they sounded like a community that was excited to approve a union. The couple was an odd one. Emily had been named after Felix Hoenikker’s daughter from Cat’s Cradle because she was smart, and Alex and his droogs were considered leadership material, but he wasn’t particularly smart.
“Alex and Emily, please join me,” Fire Master Aragorn said.
The pair rose and clasped hands, then made their way to the fire master’s side. He placed a hand on Emily’s arm, then his other on Alex. He glanced over his shoulder and nodded to the Perpetual Flame, and bowed his head.
“Let us give thanks to the Perpetual Flame and all it provides,” the fire master said.
“Amen,” Randy said.
Fire Master Aragorn took the betrothed hands and linked them together, then put his hands on top. “Emily, do you take Alex, to love and cherish, through hardship, sickness and death?”
“I do,” she said.
“Do you agree to abide by the rules of Respite on all accounts, which includes the procreate pledge?”
“I do,” Emily said.
“Do you agree to be faithful in this lifetime commitment, and agree that once paired, the paring cannot be undone?”
“I do,” Emily said.
Fire Master Aragorn turned to Alex and asked him the same questions, all of which he answered in the affirmative. When they were done, Fire Master Aragorn said, “What say you Respite? Yay?”
A chorus of yays.
“Nay?”
Silence.
“Let it be marked then in the official record that on this day, February 19th, 2076, that Alex Serregio and Emily Pendaltine have become an inseparable one, and agree to live their lives together as a unit, and serve Respite as such,” Fire Master Aragorn said.
“I do,” the couple said.
“Very well. You are hereby paired and you may kiss your life partner,” Aragorn said.
Alex and Emily embraced and kissed to the serenade of the screaming crowd. Then the party started.
Randy hated big gatherings. He didn’t feel comfortable, and he knew Hazel didn’t either, but you’d never know it by the way she was dancing with John Hampton. The little shit.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Hazel’s mother, Tris.
“No food or drink for you? There’s no dinner tonight, you know, this is it,” she said.
Randy forced a smile, and said, “Yeah, I’m not that hungry.” He looked Hazel’s way, then realizing he’d done it, jerked his eyes to the ground.
Tris sighed. “I know this is hard for you to understand… you’re so young… but you and Hazel can’t be together. It just can’t happen.”
“But I—”
“But nothing. My father will kill you if he catches you near her again, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. Do you understand?” Tris said.
“No. I don’t. Is it my fault my mother is a flake and ran off with your husband? Is it my f
ault my grandmother and your father messed with each other? Sold out their families for sex?” Randy said. He was on fire and holding nothing back. She’d started the conversation after all.
“Watch your mouth. What do you know of it anyway? You’re a child,” Tris said.
“A child with eyes and a brain. Don’t take much else to see what’s going on,” Randy said.
Tris slumped, her bluster gone. “No, I guess it doesn’t,” she said.
“You think they found anything out there? Peter and my ma, I mean?” Randy said.
Tris didn’t answer at once. She stared at Randy for a long moment, then looked out on the crowd, then up at the star filled sky. “I don’t know. I believe in the gone world. There’s too much evidence right here on Respite that proves it. All the Eco salvage. Now, I’ve also learned over the years that stories grow and fade not with the level of their importance or truthfulness, but with how well and often the tales are repeated. So whatever the gone world was, it was probably much different than we’ve been taught.”
“Did you want to go?”
Tris rubbed her eye where a tear threatened to leak out, but she said nothing.
“You wanted to go. You did, but you cared about Hazel more,” Randy said. He looked for Hazel and found her watching him and Tris, a weird smile painted on her face. “Did Hazel ask you to talk to me? Tell me to leave her alone? Because if she doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me around, I’ll stay away.”
Tris said nothing.
“Yeah, so as long as you can’t answer that question, I’ll continue to do what I think is right, and your father can piss off,” Randy said.
He tried to walk away and Tris grabbed his arm. “Don’t think that because I’m trying to be nice to you that you can disrespect me, or my father, Randy Hendricks. Apologize for what you said before I drag your pa into this.”
“Go ahead. Good luck with that.”
Tris’ grip loosened and pity filled her face. That look of sorrow that everyone gave him. That look that said “neither of your parents gives a shit about you.”
Ben stepped in front of Hazel and rolled his finger at Tris. She sighed and said, “Just remember what I said, OK?”
Randy looked away but didn’t nod.
The crowd churned and drank and ate. The moon rolled overhead and one by one the people of Respite, survivors and descendants of survivors from the Oceanic Eco, an environmental adventure cruise ship that had traveled around the world to exotic places, began to shuffle home to Citi or their hovels. Randy had a hard time believing it despite the pieces of the Eco in the surf, but if not that, what? An experiment like sacred text Divergent? Were they lab rats? Were people observing him right now with something called a camera, watching pictures that traveled through the air? In this he understood his mother, and felt the pull to leave Respite. To see the gone world and whatever was out there.
As the last stragglers left the Womb, Randy pretended to leave, but backtracked. Two fire guards were on duty, but they sat before the Perpetual Flame. One was asleep and the other looked drunk. He kept tipping to the side and almost falling every few seconds. Randy snuck past them to the Hampton Infirmary and stood before the hole where the pillar had been. There was a bamboo cover atop the hole to keep people from falling in, but there was a ladder and the tunnels his mother and Hazel’s father had found were used for storage and meat curing.
He lifted the bamboo trapdoor and made his way down the ladder. He had no light, and the darkness was complete. He stood in the silence, listening to the wind whistle above, the singing of the insects and the answering complaints of birds and frogs. He felt safe. Confined.
The tunnel lit up above and Randy looked up to see Hazel’s face silhouetted in the torchlight.
Chapter Thirty-one
Year 2076, Fort AP Hill, Virginia
The day was blustery, cold, and miserable. Dark dirty-white clouds filled the sky, and more snow fell, trillions of tiny spears of ice draining her energy. Milly trudged through the snow, stepping in Ingo’s footprints, but still sinking deep into weeks of accumulation. They’d been forced to leave the remains of the road because an old land bridge had collapsed, leaving a thin valley and a stream to traverse. Tester and Tye believed the bridge had been intentionally destroyed because there were blackened pieces of metal and concrete that had been ripped apart, most likely by explosives. Jerimiah confirmed this, saying the squires… greenies, destroyed many things in the final days to keep people from moving around and maintain order.
“We’re not far now,” Jerimiah said. “I’ve come this way many times.”
Wolves howled in the distance, and Milly checked her Glock. She’d managed to hold onto the weapon, and that thought made her reach for the axe Peter found when they’d first landed in Mexico. It hung from her belt, and she rested her hand on its head. She intended to give it to Hazel if she ever saw the girl again. What must the child think of her? In Hazel’s mind, Milly stole her father, hurt her mother, and there had been bad blood between her grandfather and Milly’s deceased mother. Their families were like a jumble of rope and fishing wire tumbled by the sea, tough as rock and impossible to untangle. Ten years of Hazel brooding surely hadn’t helped the situation, and Randy had been infatuated with the girl since she popped out.
She hadn’t seen Larry in days, and Pepper and Turnip were looking the worse for wear. Turnip’s fur was matted and dirty, and Pepper was a white and gray mess, her two black eyes barely visible in the sea of hair. With the thick covering of snow on the ground, Turnip and Pepper’s sense of smell was no longer a help, so they stayed close to Milly and that eased her nerves.
Tye called a halt for the night. A huge boulder stood like a sentinel on the western side of the cut in the land, and they built a hasty lean-to against it. It was out of the wind, and while Tye and Tester constructed their shelter, Ingo, Robin and Jerimiah made a wall of snow around it and gathered wood. As the sun set, they all sat beside the fire.
Milly hadn’t seen any virals since they’d escaped through the Washington Metro, though the wildlife was plentiful and aggressive. Jerimiah said the winters were too harsh for the virals and they hid from the cold underground and in caves.
“Any fresh venison left?” Milly asked.
“Nope. Bone marrow and smoked venison soup tonight,” Tester said. Ingo placed the metal cookpot over the fire and fed it snow.
“There’s plenty of game out here, but they’re hunkered down beneath underbrush in the hollows and burrows out of the wind and snow,” Jerimiah said.
“Ever see an animal with XK119?” Tye asked.
“Nope,” Jerimiah said. “In fact, our demise served the animal kingdom well. Most species flourished after man disappeared, all except the ones that lived off our waste, or needed us to feed them. Rats, cockroaches, small dogs, guinea pigs, anything domesticated had major problems when their masters passed on.”
Milly stared through the cracks in their makeshift roof, searching for stars through breaks in the clouds. “What day is it, Tester? Do you still keep track?”
“Yeah, I still keep track. It’s February 27th,” he said.
“Why bother?” Robin said.
“Never know when the information might be handy,” Tye said.
“Old habits die hard,” Tester said.
The fire cracked and popped, and Milly thought of home, and of the Perpetual Flame and the Womb. She saw it all so clearly, every patch of herbs and tomatoes, every trickle of water that fell into the basin, yet she couldn’t remember the color of Curso’s eyes, or when he’d been born. Everyone she loved had been wiped away and all that remained was ten years of searching and yearning. She soothed herself with the fantasy that when she got home all she’d forgotten would be renewed, but what if Curso didn’t remember her? What if Randy didn’t want to remember her?
Milly was the last to fall asleep, and in her mind, she tried to make music of her companion’s snores, breaths, and farts. Wind tore at their she
lter, and snow leaked through a million cracks and covered her in a thin blanket of snow. Her last thought as darkness washed over her was of the day she took her leap of faith. The water had been so very cold. If things had gone as intended, Randy would soon feel that cold water biting at his senses. She’d be there in spirit, but she knew that would be of no help to her son.
The next day dawned bleak and frozen. The snow stopped, but the storm left behind huge drifts and it took an hour just to dig out of the lean-to. Milly started a fire and cooked breakfast, Pepper and Turnip’s eyes on her the entire time. They were down to their last rations and a morning portion couldn’t be spared for the animals.
They were slow to get started. Their lean-to was warm and somewhat dry and getting Robin and Tester out of their bedrolls proved to be a challenge. So much so that Tye and Jerimiah conferred about whether it made sense to stay put for the day and rest up. Milly had interjected, and with her support she and Jerimiah convinced Tye to continue on. In Milly’s experience it was too easy for one day to lead to two, then three. They’d lost over six years due mainly to a routine; not one of comfort, but of survival. Surviving trumped being an outcast with no food, water, or future, and this made places like Stadium easy to get used to. She couldn’t let that happen so close to the end of the road, even if it meant a delay of only a few days.
Midday found the fellowship fighting a sea of snow up the steep incline of old county road 301. The tops of rusted metal guardrails marked the edges of the road, and beyond, deep green pine and spruce dotted a forest of leaf-bare hickory and stunted-oak. Rays of sunlight broke through the cloud cover, casting targeted energy beams on the frozen land. She remembered sunshine, its warmth on her skin, pink skies inside her closed eyelids. She missed the sand between her toes, the rush and pull of the water tugging on sea shells and rocks, the rattle of palm leaves, and the sweet smell of the sea.
“What was the purpose of Fort Hill before the end?” Ingo said.
Keepers of the Flame Page 21
